Incarnations of Immortality/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

* In contrast, Mym figured out intuitively how to get out of his body, when Zane had no idea how to do it in ''On a Pale Horse'' - Molly had to guide him through it. This may be partially justified by the fact that one of War's main abilities is to phase in with living people, but it still bugged me when I read it.

** There's also the possibility that Mym is just smarter than Zane.

* So far in the first three books, Piers Anthony seems to have an affinity for forced relationships: Luna and Zane's forced meeting (with intent to make them date), Orlene and Norton's forced dalliance (with intent to make her pregnant), Niobe and Cedric's forced marriaged, to name a few. I didn't really bat an eye at any of it until Niobe -- shown explicitly not to love Cedric at all, except in a patronizing, ''motherly'' way -- instantly falls in love with him when he beats the daylights out of some would-be rapists. They immediately make sweet love and everything is wuvvy-duvvy, going-at-it-like-rabbits (both of them were virgins until that point) from then on. Urgh. I groaned out loud when that happened.

** More forced relationships in books 4-7: Mym/Rapture (the Incarnation of War), an [[Arranged Marriage]] between a prince and princess; Parry/Jolie (the Incarnation of Evil), also some kind of arranged marriage. In Volume 5, there's a prophecy that Orb will marry Satan, and that's also a forced relationship--but unlike the others, Orb avoids this marriage until the very end of the book, when [[You Can't Fight Fate|she can't fight fate]] and does marry Satan. Volume Seven involves Vita, who is a forced prostitute, but it doesn't get any closer than that.

**** Non-Christian nations weren't at issue in the vote to impeach God. One of the Incarnations (Nature I think) stated that the vote would be cast only among those mortals that believed in God. (How exactly that was supposed to work was not explained.)

* "Oh, hey, I'm technically legal now that I've been off time-traveling and shit! Time to boink!"

* There are a couple of discontinuities that are especially glaring on re-read, the first meeting with Chronos in the first book should have been Chronos's farewell, and there is an incarnation of dreams mentioned by Lilah in "For Love of Evil" that shouldn't exist until centuries later, in the resolution of the last book.

** I think Chronos was trying not to freak out the new guy with the whole "I live backwards" thing on his first day.

* Satan had a wager revolving around him damning one person or their descendants, to the third generation. Peachy. The plot of the first six books is eventually revealed to revolve around stopping him from damning Cedric and Niobe's family. Once, it bugged me that this essentially reduced decades of god-level conflict to a grudge against a handful of random people, but en even bigger issue is this: to get the edge to save his family from Satan, The Magician (Cedric and Niobe's son) sold his soul. And then went to hell for it. So... didn't Satan win the wager?

** No. The wager doesn't just involve him damning the person. The deal was that he had to corrupt or otherwise influence Niobe, or her child, or her grandchild in a way that would enable him to take power from God. Having the Magician's soul in Hell didn't give him any leverage over God, so he didn't win the wager. Furthermore, I'm not sure if "grudge" is the right choice of words. Satan didn't have anything personal against Niobe or her family, he just saw them as a means to a larger end.

** In ''For Love Of Evil'', Satan is revealed to be generally good, despite being the Incarnation Of Evil. Perhaps he wants to fight fair. As for re-arranging Heaven by pretending to be God, he would have two problems with that: 1) His issue isn't with Heaven, it's with the [[Celestial Bureaucracy]] as a whole. He wants to change how good and evil are defined and influencing the angels isn't enough to make that happen. (In "...And Eternity", he says that a joint meeting between himself and God is necessary to change those definitions.) Thus, in order to accomplish anything, he would need to either be God or have a new God to deal with. 2) Although he holds the title of the Father Of Lies, Satan believes in keeping his word when [[I Gave My Word|it is given.]] He made an agreement with the Angel Gabriel that he would abide by the terms of the wager, which states that he must influence the members of Niobe's bloodline. Attempting to influence Heaven would be cheating. (And in any event, Gabriel knows that God is tuned out, so he would most likely see through the charade.)

** Satan can't really put them in a constant fantasy for too long. Death alone can't take too long from his duties. None of the Incarnations can. If one of them was missing too long, it would throw the system off horribly along with his plans. All he can do is distract them away from his true goals and hope they don't catch it.

 

[[Category:Literature/Headscratchers]]

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