Bernie And The Wizards by Steve LeBel

Bernie has a problem.  He's been given a project that as a god and a builder he should be able to solve.  A universe that another god has created isn't performing as expected.  It was created to produce guidpeppers.  At first everything worked fine and the production and harvest of the peppers proceeded on schedule.  But lately, something was wrong.  Pepper production was way down and even worse, the inhabitants of the planet, a docile group created for their docility and farming skills, were not acting normally at all.  There was a war going on with entire villages being burned and its inhabitants slaughtered.

Now Bernie has to fix someone else's mistakes and he has to do it quickly.  Much is expected of him as he has just won the most prestigious builder award in years.  He has to handle the publicity and adoration that has brought into his life, and that's a tall order for someone who has just finished his training and isn't really sure about himself at all.

Bernie visits the planet and what he discovers dismays him.  The inhabitants believe in magic, of all things, and their social structures revolve around the village shamans.  The shamans are the first born children of previous shamans and they must undergo seven years of intensive training to become fully vested to serve.  But the shamans have no answer to what is happening and the aggression that is tearing their society apart.  Worse, the builder gods are constantly threatening Bernie that the easiest thing to do would be to kill off all the inhabitants and start with a new species.  Since Bernie is one of the few gods to believe that their creations also have souls, he wants to find a solution that will avoid that.  Can he solve his problem and save the inhabitants?

Steve LeBel has created an interesting world that proves a setting in which ethical questions can be played out.  There is the question of whether these created individuals should have the same rights as the gods do.  There is the question of how Bernie will adapt to sudden fame and if he can retain his childhood friends when he is surrounded by others who now want to be with him.  There is even the problem of how he will handle his father who deserted the family but now wants to reconcile.  The reader will be interested to see how these problems are resolved.  This book is recommended for young adult fantasy readers.