[[quoteright:273:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/godswarcover_2091.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:273:The cover of the first book, featuring our favorite BackToBackBadasses.]]

A ScienceFiction trilogy by Kameron Hurley, consisting of ''God's War'', ''Infidel'', and ''Rapture''. A subsequent series of shorter side-stories, initially published digitally, is collected as ''Apocalypse Nyx''.

On the plague-ridden planet of Umayma, a holy war has been raging for as long as anyone can remember. Nyxnissa so Dasheem, a [[ProfessionalKiller Bel Dame]] who cuts off heads for the government, could end the war with the head she's bringing home this time--but at what cost?

----
!!These books contain examples of:
* TheAlcoholic: Nyx. Her substances of choice seem to be whiskey, sen and sometimes morphine, but at the beginning of the second book she's "sworn off whiskey" and we see her down ''a fifth of vodka.'' For ''breakfast.''
* AlienSky: With BinarySuns--one big orange one and one little blue one--and multiple moons that take ''twenty years'' to complete their orbit.
%%* AntiHero: Nyx is a solid Type IV.
* ArcWords: "We're all trying to cure the war."
%%* TheAtoner:
%%** Rhys, to a significant extent.
%%** Nyx is this, too, as we find out more about what really happened at the front.
* AxCrazy: Rasheeda loves her some ColdBloodedTorture. She doesn't need weapons, either: Nyx notes that she has seen her ''claw out other people's eyes'' ''[[ImAHumanitarian and eat them]]''.
* BavarianFireDrill: This is how Nyx, Anneke and Khos get into Nikodem's residence in the first book.
* BeautyIsNeverTarnished: Averted. Aside from beatings and other bloody injuries, most of the women in the series have faces marked by wear and old wounds, with "mashed" noses being rather common. Replacement body parts, often with mismatched skin tones, are also not unusual.
%%* BelligerentSexualTension: Nyx to Rhys.
* BilingualBonus: "Bel dame" literally translates as "beautiful girl" and has been used ironically to refer to an ugly old woman, but while researching the book the author discovered [[PunctuationShaker "bel damê"]] was also [[InMyLanguageThatSoundsLike an ancient Assyrian/Babylonian term meaning "blood avenger"]].
* BioPunk: Kind of, but more specific. Kameron Hurley invented her own form of [[PunkPunk punk]]: Bug Punk.
%%* BlackAndGreyMorality
* {{Bloodsport}}: Boxing is a popular form of entertainment on Umayma, and far more brutal and seedy than the modern-day version. Weight classes are apparently not a thing, gloves are considerably less padded than our own, and bouts have no set number of rounds, so fights continue until one boxer is knocked out or submits. Certain passages even indicate that boxers losing eyes or bits of their ears is not an uncommon occurrence, nor are fights where the first row of spectators end up covered in blood. A boxer leaving the ring with a bashed-up face is practically a given.
* BodyHorror: SO MANY instances: [[spoiler:We know that Nyx cut off Raine's cock, inducing his RoaringRampageOfRevenge against her. Later in the first book Nyx loses two fingers to ColdBloodedTorture by Rashida, as well as almost losing her legs to bloodworms as part of the torture. In the second book her chest ''explodes'' from a magical disease, leaving her with almost no breast tissue. Or skin. Or muscle mass. The replacement skin they find for her--and where do magicians' stores of live organs come from? We know Nyx sold a few in the past--does not match her skin color, and also has to be slathered with salve for several days, and also there's medical-magical bugs crawling around underneath the new skin getting things hooked up.]] But the most horrifying example thus far is in the second book: [[spoiler: Rhys not only loses his hands, but ''has to have them replaced with someone else's.'' They're ugly and stubby and ''not his.'' Nyx hates them almost as much as he does.]]
* BookDumb: Nyx is pretty obviously (to the reader, anyway) dyslexic. When she was growing up, her teachers all thought she was just stupid.
* BoxingBattler: Quite a few characters are trained, competitive boxers, due to it being a popular pastime and a decent way to make money.
* CallingTheOldManOut:
** Nyx gets a nice one in at Yah Tayyib at the end of the first book.
** In the same book we learn that Rhys [[spoiler: tried to do this with his father. It didn't end well.]]
* ChekhovsGun: [[spoiler: With ''actual, literal guns'' which Anneke leaves in the trunk of Nyx's bakkie]] in the first book.
** In the second book, Chekov's [[spoiler: Giant Hornets]].
* CombatPragmatist: Nyx. In addition to not fighting fair, she is pretty much always armed to the teeth: a sword, knives, more knives, a pistol, [[MoreDakka bullets sewn into her clothing]], a whip, garroting wire (which she uses as sandal laces and clothing drawstrings), razor blades tucked into the soles of her sandals, and ''[[CrazyPrepared poison needles in her hair]].'' And we see her use ''[[ChekhovsArmoury all of them]]'' throughout the series.
* CrapsackWorld: And ''how!'' In addition to the holy war that's been raging for generations, the whole planet is an ecological mess. [[{{Terraform}} Terraforming]] somehow [[GoneHorriblyWrong went awry]], so Umayma is plagued by giant insects, blisteringly hot climates and deadly diseases. Skin cancer is as common as, well, the common cold, due to the twin suns in the sky. (Don't worry--I know a good magician who can [[{{Squick}} scrape you for cancers]].)
* CreepyCrawlyTorture: There are several scenes of torture by insect, although in this world practically all forms of technology involve insects.
* DarkAndTroubledPast: Just about ''everyone'' on Nyx's team.
* DeadGuyJunior: In the second book, we learn that Inaya's son is called [[spoiler:Tatie.]]
* DeathOfAChild: In the second book, [[spoiler:Rhys loses his children. Khos thinks he has lost his.]]
* DeathIsCheap: It is if you're a bel dame with access to a good magician.
* {{Determinator}}: Nyx, full stop. Khos's narration sums it up beautifully:
-->Her eyes were hard and black, and she looked at him the way she looked at everything else in her life--with cold determination, a willingness to part with whatever she knew, she saw, she had, to accomplish whatever she set herself to. [...] The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild.
* DoomMagnet: Nyx rivals only [[ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}} John Constantine]] and [[Series/{{Torchwood}} Jack Harkness]] for the number of her allies and employees who die horribly or end up alive but unspeakably traumatised.
* EveryoneIsBi:
** Nasheenian society is run by women because all their men get shipped off to the front at age 16. As a result, plenty of women sleep with other women.
--->'''Eshe:''' ''(about a girl to whom he was talking)'' "She has a girlfriend."\\
'''Nyx:''' "This is Nasheen. Everybody has a girlfriend."
** Chenjans view Nasheenians as [[DepravedBisexual godless and depraved]].
* EyeScream: The narration mentions a boxing match Nyx once witnessed where a boxer had been beaten so badly she had an eye dangling from the socket.
* FantasticRacism:
** There is serious societal discrimination against [[{{Shapeshifting}} shifters]] in Ras Tieg.
** Good old-fashioned racism abounds, too. During Rhys's time in Nasheen, practically every Nasheenian woman on the street hurls slurs at him, "black man" being the mildest although that's more political than anything since he comes from a country they've been at war with for three centuries.
* FantasticReligiousWeirdness:
** Mecca, and even Earth itself seem to, at best, be vague memories so of course no one prays in its direction. In addition the Chenjans have added a sixth prayer period. Nasheen which is an Islamic ''matriarchy''.
** Mhorians are a fully gender-segregated culture who keep Kosher, but have blonde dreadlocks. If a Mhorian doesn't want to be homosexual that individual can choose exile and a body full of tattoos.
* ForeverWar: Between Nasheen and Chenja, who have been fighting for over three hundred years. Also a HopelessWar at the start of the trilogy.
* GenderBlenderName: Played with. While at an illegal Chenjan fighting ring, Khos asks a local who is fighting that night, and becomes confused when the names sound masculine to him, since male boxers are rare. The local laughs at him and says his Chenjan needs work, and that the boxers are all women.
* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Taite]] in the first book. Subverted with [[spoiler:Nyx--she tells Rhys the truth about her time at the front near the end of the first book. Turns out she's not a war hero at all--she got her boys killed, then [[TheAtoner lit herself on fire in an attempt to punish herself]].]]
* HonorBeforeReason: Rhys. He ''is'' TheAtoner, after all.
* HumanAliens: Even if they're full-fledged ''H. sapiens'', human visitors from other worlds who make it through the KillSat array that guards the planet are referred to as "aliens".
* IneptMage: Rhys, quite a bit. He's not terribly good at controlling bugs--a skill which is at the heart of all magic in this 'verse--at the ''best'' of times, let alone under pressure. And Nyx and her team are ''always'' under pressure.
* InternalDeconstruction: According to Hurley, she started writing the trilogy because of her dissatisfaction with the way that {{Action Girl}}s in SF and UrbanFantasy were often written: as having been made that way [[ItSucksToBeTheChosenOne against]] their [[PhlebotinumRebel wills]], lamenting their [[IJustWantToBeNormal inability]] to achieve AcceptableFeminineGoals, and benefiting from BeautyIsNeverTarnished to keep them sexy for male audience members. She decided to create a female character who actually was a gender-swapped version of a truly badass male action hero. Then she decided that action heroes of that kind were basically assholes regardless of gender, explaining why the books become gradually less approving of Nyx as a person as they go on.
* InternalizedCategorism: Inaya against shifters in the first book.
* LeastCommonSkinTone: Inverted. The majority of the cast is black or Middle Eastern, and when Nyx first sees a white person in the middle of the first book, she wonders what kind of horrible skin condition made her look like that.
* MagicPants: Averted. Every time a shifter transforms back into his or her human form, s/he's stark naked, [[{{Squick}} covered in mucus]], and [[BigEater starving for protein]].
* {{Magitek}}: Actually, the life energy of ''bugs'' is magic as technology. Almost every kind of technology on this world--from automobiles to lamps to security cameras to [[LockDown quarantine]] [[SomeKindOfForceField filters]]--runs on bugs.
* MandatoryUnretirement: The Queen forces Nyx to work for her again in the second book.
* MenAreTheExpendableGender: And how.
* MilkyWhiteEyes: One eye in the case of Husayn, a boxer and former soldier.
* NotSoDifferentRemark: The Queen tries to pull this on Nyx at the end of the first book. Nyx doesn't buy it.
-->'''Queen Zaynab''': "We must decide, in the end, whose life matters most and how many can be sacrificed to preserve those few."\\
'''Nyx''': "Who decides who the best few are?"\\
'''Queen Zaynab''': "We do, Nyxnissa. We are not so different, you and I."\\
'''Nyx''': "From where I'm standing, you and me don't have much in common."
* OrganicTechnology: Umayman society runs on this, especially, though not exclusively, on various mutated insect forms.
* PrettyBoy: Rhys, A ''lot''. Almost ''every'' character comments on how pretty he is. And due to his status as an IneptMage, it may well be the only reason Nyx keeps him on the team in the first book.
* RemovingTheHeadOrDestroyingTheBrain: You need to do the latter to make sure a bel dame ''stays'' dead. Besides, if you don't decapitate or burn a regular corpse, it will come back as a bug puppet.
* RunningGag: Nyx is a lousy shot. She may be a decent boxer, and an excellent fighter when it comes to swords, knives, and her whip (her favorite)--but she can't shoot worth a damn.
* SexIsViolence: Implied early in the first book when Nyx sleeps with a boxer named Jaks after watching her get beaten up and knocked out in a match (though Nyx is primarily there for business).
* ShownTheirWork: Hurley featured details of boxing down to how to wrap ones hands in the first book. In real life, she trained as a recreational boxer. May also be AuthorAppeal.
* TheSvengali: Raine to Nyx, complete with "I made you!" as they fight [[spoiler:before Nyx kills him]] in the first book.
* TimeSkip: At the end of Part I of the first book, we skip a year (the year Nyx is in prison). Then seven more years pass between Part I and Part II. And between the end of the first book and the start of the second, there is another time skip of six years. Same thing between the second and third books.
* TranslationConvention: All the dialogue (at least, all the dialogue the characters can understand) is written in English, though they are speaking Nasheenian, Chenjan, etc.
* TrueCompanions: Nyx's team. [[spoiler:That is, until Khos leaves a battered Nyx and a wounded, drugged Rhys for dead in the desert at the end of the first book, taking Inaya and the bakkie with him.]]
* UniversalUniverseTime: Averted. A day on Umayma has 27 hours and a week has 9 days. (It's not really clear how long a year is.)
* UnresolvedSexualTension: Discussed InUniverse, even! Khos asks Nyx if she's fucked Rhys yet. When she says no, he replies with something along the lines of "Just do it, already!"
* UnusualEuphemism[=/=]FutureSlang:
** "Catshit" is used in place of "bullshit" (sandcats are large creatures used to pull carts).
** In the second book, Eshe becomes enamored of the colorful phrases a Tirhani taxi driver hurls at the group: "Did he just call us 'whores of roaches'?"
* WorldOfActionGirls: Most of the main cast is made up of tough women hardened up by their harsh environment, who have histories of being soldiers, assassins, and the like. More generally, boxing is a popular pastime in this world, and almost completely female-dominated due to many men being away for the war.
* YoungerThanTheyLook: Most women, Nyx notes, are "broken old crones" by the time they're 30. It's partly the desert, partly the two suns in the sky, and partly the hard living. The Queen of Nasheen and others of wealth who have lived their lives indoors tend to be OlderThanTheyLook.
----