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Incarnations of Immortality is an eight-book fantasy series by Piers Anthony. It tells the story of mortals who assume various immortal offices, becoming the Anthropomorphic Personification of varying concepts. The first five books deal with that person's life as they assume the office, as well as their first encounter with Satan, who attempts to use their lack of experience to his own advantage. The series was originally conceived as being only five books long, but by popular demand the author wrote three more. The sixth book tells the story of Satan, and offers a Perspective Flip on some of the events of the previous books. The seventh book deals with a recurring character trying to save her baby's soul, and in turn, becoming the Incarnation of good (God). The last book deals with how Nox, aka Night, assumed her Office and became heavily involved in Satan's Xanatos Gambit (explaining some plot from prior books along the way). By the end of the series, all of the Incarnations are related to one another somehow.

The books and the incarnation featured in them are, in order:

  • On a Pale Horse featuring Zane as Thanatos, the Incarnation of Death.
  • Bearing an Hourglass featuring Norton as Chronos, the Incarnation of Time.
  • With a Tangled Skein featuring Niobe as Clotho and Lachesis (at different times), aspects of the Incarnation of Fate.
  • Wielding a Red Sword featuring Mym as Mars, the Incarnation of War.
  • Being a Green Mother featuring Orb as Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature.
  • For Love of Evil featuring Parry as Satan, the Incarnation of Evil.
  • ...and Eternity featuring mysterious stuff about God, the Incarnation of Good.
  • Under a Velvet Cloak, which is largely a prequel to the main series, featuring Kerena as Nox, the Incarnation of Night.

The series makes use of the following tropes:

  • All-Loving Hero: Most of the Incarnations play this trope straight (oddly, even Evil), but Zane takes the cake because that's why he was manipulated into becoming Death, as the sorcerer in question wanted a man in the office who had compassion for those he collected.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: In For Love of Evil, Satan tries to meet up with the other Incarnations and make friends. With the exception of Chronos, they treat him utterly like crap, to the point of watching while Gaea has him raped by an ape.
  • Alternate History: Many minor details about the world are changed because of the existence of magic and divinities. Iraq and Iran are called Babylonia and Persia (but still have a war), India is a collection of unrelated sultanates, Islam is not mentioned (though Allah and Mohammed do receive very brief references in For Love of Evil), and "pigskin" (football) uses magic as part of the game, is measured in feet instead of yards, and is an all-female game. Also, some historical events are changed in-series, up to and including Satan manipulating Chronos into preventing World War II and the Holocaust.
  • Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy: The martial arts master Samurai in With a Tangled Skein.
  • Artistic License – Religion: In Wielding a Red Sword, Mym says that the closest equivalent to Satan in Hindu terms would be Shiva. In actuality, while Shiva is "the Destroyer", he is also a beloved and heroic deity revered by all Hindus. He's the destroyer of evil, the guy who kills demons, and thus could hardly be more opposite to the traditionally-held image of Satan (as to Satan himself in this series...it's complicated).
  • Asmodeus: Asmodeus first appears in the sixth book as a former Incarnation of Evil who now works for Lucifer, the current officeholder, managing the day-to-day operations of Hell. Becomes a minor antagonist when Satan takes the office away from Lucifer, since he initially remains loyal to the old regime.
  • Author Appeal: Piers Anthony has been vocal in the past about his belief that pedophilia isn't really as bad as it's made out to be. This is showcased in ...And Eternity when Vita, a fifteen-year-old prostitute, falls in love with a judge in his fifties and they end up in a sexual relationship. It also appears in the description of the tanana in Being A Green Mother, with girls as young as six performing it and Orlene musing that she can understand why many Gypsy girls are sexually active before puberty even sets in.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: In Being a Green Mother, For Love of Evil and ...And Eternity, Satan wins major victories. He wins Orb's love and marries her, but commits suicide through the wedding; he is freed and regains his position as Satan; he gets his chosen God elected.
  • Balancing Death's Books: In this case, it's "balancing Fate's books." When someone lives who isn't supposed to, it means Fate has to rearrange the skein to account for their being alive. Atropos substitutes her own death for her daughter's, allowing everything to work smoothly despite her granddaughter's survival.
  • Because You Were Nice to Me: The reason Satan helps out JHVH by taking down Adolf Hitler, in order to end the persecution of Jews in World War II; it repays a favor from near the beginning of Satan's term.
  • Been There, Shaped History: Lilah was the serpent that caused Adam and Eve to fall from grace.
  • Best Her to Bed Her: Asian Clotho in With a Tangled Skein; she only falls in love with Samurai after he defeats her in combat and shows her her place. That being said, she was using the Sword of War in the fight, and was therefore literally incapable of losing. She forfeited the match so that Samurai wouldn't be humiliated in front of his students.
  • Better the Devil You Know: Literally. After Parry abdicates his position as Satan, the vacant office automatically goes to the (current) most evil man in the world: a serial murderer, rapist, and pedophile. The other Incarnations agree that they vastly preferred Parry to his replacement.
  • Big Bad: Under a Velvet Cloak reveals that the Incarnation of Darkness, Erebus, has been working on destroying all of reality for eons, out of a combination of Revenge, It Amused Me, and megalomania. The fact he is also Cain doesn't help either.
  • Breast Attack: Luna is tortured by Satan's minions giving her electric shocks right against her breasts.
  • Brick Joke: Orlene, when inside the body of one of the flying saucer hostages, has to tell the terrorists that the captain refuses to surrender control to them. The person she's possessing is too frightened to do so, so Orlene does it for her with the rather ballsy, "when God kisses Satan and the Incarnations applaud, maybe then". And then it happens at the end, once she is made God(dess) and kisses Parry in thanks for him making it all possible.
  • Bullying a Dragon: Satan's retaliation against Gaea turns out to be hitting Europe with the Black Death after she retires and is replaced with an inexperienced successor, which ends up nuking most of Europe and teaching Satan a lesson in uncontrolled revenge.
  • Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Zane is a compassionate Death, saves many people who were meant to die, and takes a holiday at one point to fight a scheme of Satan's. These traits don't stop him from doing his job very effectively indeed, and in fact Zane's compassion is why Fate chose him to become Death in the first place, because it meant that he wouldn't put up with Satan's gamesmanship.
  • Cessation of Existence: In On a Pale Horse, it's stated that people generally go to an afterlife, but which afterlife depends to some extent on what they believe; one incidental character is a firm atheist who believes that cessation of existence is what happens to everybody when they die, and although he's wrong about the "everybody", it is indeed what happens to him.
  • A Chat with Satan: All of the protagonists have conversations with Satan, most quite casual.
  • Chekhov's Gunman: Quite a few. Most notably Orlene, who serves only to set up Norton into becoming Chronos by dying, then becomes the main character of ...And Eternity.
    • Nicolai appears in Being a Green Mother as someone Orb meets during her travels (and is left to find a rich adoptive family for Orlene), but in ...And Eternity he becomes an aspect of Fate.
  • Children Are Innocent: Mostly. Oddly enough, children can be "tainted" by their circumstances, in which case they are not evil but are still treated as such by the system.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Incarnations of good and evil gain power by how many people believe in them. When religions fade away, so do their respective Incarnations of good and evil.
    • Certain spells work this way, as Satan (Parry) learns of the spell to destroy his own demonic minions; it works because the target believes it works.
    • Thanatos' protective outfit has shades of this: it does protect him when worn properly, but Zane realizes that he doesn't need to wear (all of) it if he truly believes in the job he's doing. But if he were to get tired of the duty, and act as if the items aren't as effective....
  • Cloak of Defense: The Grim Reaper's cloak and mask render the wearer completely invulnerable. It is later revealed to be partly a Magic Feather — whoever holds the office of Death is immortal when they want to be, but they can also loan out the cloak.
  • Cue the Flying Pigs: Orlene, when inside the body of one of the flying saucer hostages, has to tell the terrorists that the captain refuses to surrender control to them. The person she's possessing is too frightened to do so, so Orlene does it for her with the rather ballsy, "when God kisses Satan and the Incarnations applaud, maybe then". And then it happens at the end, once she is made God(dess) and kisses Parry in thanks for him making it all possible.
  • Deity of Human Origin: All of the present Incarnations were originally human, including God.
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance:
    • The moral axis of the universe is dominated by a form of Christian morality laid down in the first century. Sex Is Largely Evil, bastards are born halfway-damned already by Original Sin, and suicide is seen as a grave sin instead of a psychological problem. The crux of Satan's plan is to get a new God who is as evil as possible by the old standards and has suffered terribly from them, while actually being of unimpeachably good moral character, because that's exactly the kind of woman who can help fix the world's moral mess.
    • An issue between Clotho and Samurai is that they're both Japanese, but have very different definitions of what that means; Clotho comes from the Westernized modern Japan, while Samurai identifies with the medieval Japanese ways.
  • Demon Lords and Archdevils: Subverted. Hell initially appears to be set up this way, with Satan at the top of a hierarchy of other archdevils and demon lords who manage the infernal bureaucracy and sometimes perform tasks in the mortal realm at Satan's orders. In a twist, however, none of the named denizens of hell except Lilith are actual demons or devils (while there are many true demons in Hell, almost all of them are unnamed mooks). Satan is the throne name of a living human holding the office of the Incarnation of Evil, and most of his key underlings such as Lucifer, Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Mephistopheles are also former officeholders. While they still retain certain powers such as Beelzebub's control over insects, they are merely damned souls whose mortal lives ended once they were overthrown, and they effectively only have as much political power in Hell as Satan allows them to have.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Part of Satan's desire to take power from God is because he discovered that this is the case in Hell: People are damned for relatively minor sins or sins that were justified under the circumstances. (For example, there's a guy in there whose only sin was stealing food so that his family would have enough to eat.) He wants to change this situation, but is unable to do so because changing the definitions of good and evil requires him and God to reach a mutual agreement, which is impossible because God isn't paying attention.
  • Don't Fear the Reaper: Zane is unique among Incarnations of Death in that he has compassion and does his best to help people in his job, and hang the rules. Later on, he learns to work with the other Incarnations and stops saving everyone he can, but he still can chat with a dying person if it'll ease their pain. This trait is why Fate manipulated him into becoming Death.
  • Electric Torture: Luna gets this. Her kidnappers strip her topless and then zap her bared nipples. It's made explicit that it's very painful.
  • Escaped from Hell: When Satan tricks Mym, the Incarnation of War, into Hell to keep him out of the way while he enacts his plans, Mym successfully leads a revolt.
  • Everyone Is Related: By the ending, every Incarnation is either a member of the Kaftan family by birth, by marriage, or by fathering a bastard on a family member.
  • Faking the Dead: When Nicolai is chosen to become Atropos, he decides to "pass away in his sleep" instead of explaining his new circumstances to his clan. Since he's an old man, they were already expecting him to go soon.
  • Fisher King: Gaea's feelings affect the planet. It rains when she cries, and her anger can cause earthquakes.
  • Foreshadowing: In Wielding A Red Sword, Chronos sees that somebody gained the ability to freeze time from advice he got in a dream with assistance from Satan. He references the fact this isn't the first time he's seen that happen. Since Chronos's tenure in office starts in the future and works his way back, he knows that in Being A Green Mother, Satan uses dreams to trick Orb into falling in love with him.
  • Forgot I Could Change the Rules: Played with. In the first novel, it isn't so much that Death forgot that he could change the rules; it's that he didn't know that he could (in fact, he didn't even know half of them), causing infant souls born under questionable circumstances to go to Purgatory and later triggering an end to all death worldwide because he refused to take one soul. At the end of the book, he realizes that it's his prerogative to do what he damn well pleases as the Incarnation of Death, and that all of Satan's rulesmongering didn't mean a damn thing. He also changes the rules regarding infant souls, sending one to heaven instead of Purgatory in the end. The last is retconned in later books, as Death is acting outside of his authority.
  • Fox-Chicken-Grain Puzzle: Presented as a Demon-Rapist-Girl Puzzle, with three women and three demons, and if the demons outnumber the women at any point they'll be raped.
  • Friendly Enemy: Satan in the last book is this to Orlene. He tries to tempt her to do evil because that's his job, but otherwise he does his best to help her with her quest, and neither side holds grudges.
  • Gambit Pileup: Satan, various Fates, Norton as Chronos, Nox, and the Archangel Gabriel have all set up Xanatos Gambits and Roulettes, some hundreds of years long, to manipulate each other, the other Incarnations, and any mortal who might be useful in the final conflict, until everything finally comes crashing together in ...And Eternity. Subverted in the end, everyone won. And I mean everyone. Except Erebus.
  • Gender Bender: Orlene getting temporarily turned into a man as described in I'm a Man; I Can't Help It below. There's also Nicolai turning into a woman when he becomes an aspect of Fate.
  • Gender-Restricted Ability: Subverted. Death, Time, War, Evil and Good have always been men, and Fate and Nature have always been women. It's not actually a rule. In ...And Eternity, Nicolai becomes Atropos, an aspect of Fate, and then Orlene becomes Goddess.
  • God's Hands Are Tied:
    • The fact that Satan's agents frequently interfere in the mortal world, while God apparently does nothing, is initially attributed to God and the Devil having made an agreement to leave the mortal world alone, which the Devil of course immediately broke but God still keeps. (This eventually turns out not to be true, but it's initially portrayed as a straight example of the trope.)
    • At one point, Fate mentions that she cannot physically intervene when meddling in a tangled skein, because that leads to unmanageable snarls. If physical intervention (as opposed to simply cutting and pulling threads) is necessary, she needs to use agents to do it.
    • An Incarnation cannot directly oppose another Incarnation within the latter's sphere without their consent. For example, Chronos cannot rewind time unless all Incarnations have agreed (including Satan, who can be awfully sticky about it), because otherwise he's stepping on everyone else's past actions. Satan does do this, but even then, the Incarnation in question has usually given their implied consent (for a very loose definition of "consent") or doesn't know the rules.
    • The resolution of On a Pale Horse hinges on an aversion. The climactic storyline was about Death being forced to take a holiday to spare a single soul, but it turns out that Thanatos can choose to spare lives or let them end as he pleases, and even God and Satan can't stop him from doing so. It's probably no surprise that he develops into the Bunny-Ears Lawyer of the Incarnations.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Or in God's case, zonked out on his own Divine Presence.
  • Gone Horribly Right: Lucifer sent Lilah to turn Parry, leader of the Dominicans and his deadliest foe, to evil. He succeeded...and Parry promptly overthrew him. Remember, Prince of Darkness, Evil Is Not a Toy.
  • Good Is Not Nice:
    • Thanatos develops a bit of this by ...And Eternity. It's the nature of his job as Death; he starts referring to children's deaths in callous, technical terminology, like a surgeon who's been in the business for a while. It's still downplayed in his case, as he's the most compassionate of the Incarnations, and the most willing to use his position to save individual lives.
    • Lachesis is one of the premier Chessmasters on the side of Good. She's responsible for wrecking Zane's life to the point where he contemplates suicide, because she needs him on the front line against Satan.
  • Go Seduce My Archnemesis: In addition to Lucifer's attempt in book 6, described above, in book 4, Satan tries sending Lilah to seduce and corrupt the new Mars. Once again, it ends up backfiring.
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: Satan prevents Hitler's rise to power, and only JHVH and himself remembers this. Orlene, Jolie, and Vita eventually learn about this.
  • The Grim Reaper: Subverted, as it's only a costume Thanatos wears.
  • Have You Seen My God?: The Christian God, who is the current Incarnation of Good, is inattentive because He is contemplating His own goodness to the exclusion of all else. In ...and Eternity, He is impeached and replaced by a new God.
    • And, he doesn't realize this because he is still into himself too much.
  • Heaven's Devils: This is how it's supposed to work, but in practice the system has broken down and God and Satan are not working together. Supposedly, Satan is corrupting people and manipulating souls for the purpose of self-aggrandizement, while God is not minding the store, leaving the other Incarnations to fight against Satan's plots. In his own book, however, Satan is portrayed as a Punch-Clock Villain who has gotten tired of the system's breakdown, and is plotting a takeover so that he can update the system's definitions of Good and Evil, and stop souls who are supposed to go to Heaven from ending up in Hell. After the Incarnations defeat Satan's final plot, God is fired, Satan chooses God's replacement, and the system starts working again.
  • The Hecate Sisters: Fate; three people sharing one body, with different roles for each one.
  • Hero with Bad Publicity: Both Death and Satan get a bad rap, the former because he's The Grim Reaper, the latter because he was literally the most evil person alive when he got the job. Okay, that might not make him sound like a hero, but read his book and you'll get it.
  • Heroic Bastard: Orlene is the bastard daughter of Mym and Orb, but she is a woman of unimpeachable goodness. This becomes a major plot point in ...And Eternity, as she comes to represent everything that's wrong with the setting's existing definitions of morality.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Atropos cuts her own life short to save her granddaughter from her abusive husband and put the bastard away for good.
  • Historical Person Punchline: Or literary person, depending on viewpoint—Lila(h) turns out to be the Lilith of the Bible, while Erebus is revealed to be Cain.
  • Historical Rap Sheet: Satan engineered the Black Plague by tricking Gaea. He later regretted how far it went, and the experience taught him his responsibility as the Incarnation of Evil. Inverted later as he tricks Chronos into averting the Holocaust and World War II as a favor to JHVH though this costs him his friendship with subsequent Incarnations of Time who till then were the only ones friendly to him.
  • Hitler's Time Travel Exemption Act: Averted. To repay a debt to the Jewish God JHVH, Satan convinces Chronos through Reverse Psychology to prevent Hitler's rise to power. While there is still a war that Germany starts, it is as the restored Holy Roman Empire, and the Holocaust never happens.
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: Happens to Satan in book 3 by the Fates. By his own admission, even the Master of Lies can be fooled.
  • Honor Before Reason: By the seventh book, it's clear that Satan and the other Incarnations are actually on the same side. The reason that Satan opposes the overthrow of God is essentially because he's been fighting the Incarnations for centuries and it would be unsporting to not at least try to oppose them, even if their success would give him a complete victory too.
  • Horsemen of the Apocalypse:
    • The Incarnation of War is accompanied by Famine, Conquest, Slaughter, and Pestilence.
    • The Incarnation of Death, of course. The first book lampshades it with its title being a paraphrase of the Bible: Death rides On a Pale Horse.
  • * Humiliation Conga: Zane is subjected to this at the beginning of On A Pale Horse, which convinces him to commit suicide.
  • Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Three out of the seven books have a "[Verb] [a/an] [Noun]" pattern for their titles:
    • On a Pale Horse
    • Bearing an Hourglass
    • With a Tangled Skein
    • Wielding a Red Sword
    • Being a Green Mother
    • For Love of Evil
    • Under a Velvet Cloak
  • Idiot Ball: When Orb sings the "Song of Chaos" despite being warned not to.
  • I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Plays a major role in the events of Under a Velvet Cloak, which leads to all the Incarnations being affected in some way.
  • I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: In ...And Eternity, Orlene is transformed into a man and immediately becomes an aggressive, misogynistic, testosterone-charged boor, attempting to rape her friend Jolie. Upon having her female form restored, she and Jolie are horrified and conclude that "Men have passions that women do not", and that the reason all men are not constantly overwhelmed with violent lust is that "they have learned control".
    • Possibly subverted, as both Orlene and Jolie were transformed into a specific man (the grown version of Orlene's child) to show what his genetic affliction would do to him. The purpose of this was ultimately to teach Orlene to show compassion even towards rapists, which is relevant to her future role.
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: Because Orlene is a ghost when she assumes the Office of Good, Vita points out that this makes her a Holy Ghost.
  • Informed Attribute: At the beginning of the series, Zane (Thanatos) is informed that the Incarnations have to be immortal so that they can focus on their jobs. However, of the 5 standard ones, this only counts for two of them (Fate and Nature - and it's unlikely to be a coincidence that they are the female Incarnations). Death can be killed by a client, War moves on to the afterlife if all War ceases, and Time is the worst of all - he specifically has only his regular lifespan that he has lived so far to live out in reverse before he fades and is replaced, so he is most definitely not immortalnote . The aspects of Fate, on the other hand, stay in office as long as they like, and decide when the time is right for them to leave. Nature can feel when someone is becoming strong enough to take over, and chooses to allow the next office holder to claim the office, effectively stepping to the side.
  • Interrupted Suicide: Zane is interrupted by Thanatos and kills him, claiming the office.
    • Also the Asian Clotho in With a Tangled Skein; she is preparing to commit suicide when the Fates swoop in and make her Clotho.
  • Invincible Hero:
    • Zane in On a Pale Horse. Justified because of the logical paradox that is in play at the time: When he took the office of Death, his soul became temporarily balanced between good and evil. As such, if he were to die, Death would have to collect his soul...and he's Death. Since collecting his own soul is physically impossible, he can't die. Death in general has this. At the end of the book it's revealed that the cloak is more of a Magic Feather: Death can only die if he (at least subconsciously) desires to. As such, the only way for Death to die is if he wants it (Essentially it requires Death to kill Death).
    • Except for Chronos (who exists primarily during a fixed period of time) and Mars (who dies if world peace ever breaks out), no Incarnation can be deposed if they don't want to retire. God can only be impeached because He's too self-absorbed to even notice the impeachment proceeding; if He were defending His turf, then deposing him would be impossible.
  • Ironic Echo: In book two, when Norton has confronted Satan and undone his latest scheme to take over, and threatens to keep interfering until Satan gives in and fixes the timeline.
    Satan: What do you want?
    Norton: Need you ask, sirrah? Explanation 
  • Karma Houdini: At the beginning of On a Pale Horse, Zane goes into a shop where an extremely dishonest shopkeeper sells magic stones. Zane was fated to win the love of an incredibly beautiful and rich woman, but the shopkeeper tricks him into trading this destiny for a magical stone whose powers are all but useless. The shopkeeper gets to marry this beautiful, rich, and loving wife, while Zane is so distressed by losing this chance at happiness that he is Driven to Suicide. We never see this shopkeeper again, so his story ends with him Riding into the Sunset with the woman whose love he stole from Zane.
  • Like a Duck Takes to Water: The inexperienced Nicolai is better at reading a messy tangled skein than the vastly-more-experienced Lachesis or Atropos. On his field test, he neatly unravels one of Satan's plots with only six deaths, while the existing Fates all miss the trick and their solution involves over twenty.
  • Living MacGuffin: Luna. Niobe to a lesser extent, before she stops being a chess piece and starts playing.
  • Living Motion Detector: Zane fights a demon like this in the first book.
  • Loophole Abuse: A ghost is installed in the position of Incarnation of Good, as there's no actual rule specifying it can't be done. The rule only limits eligibility to those who remain in the mortal realm, which includes the ghosts.
  • The Lost Lenore: Jolie is this to Parry (and later becomes his Morality Pet). Orlene was also this to Norton.
  • Love Redeems: After falling in love with Orb, Satan kills himself, thereby abdicating the Office of Evil. It doesn't stick, because everyone prefers Satan to his replacement and the Incarnations fish him out of his cell.
  • Louis Cypher: Natasha — Ah Satan, Backwards
  • Magic Feather: All the Incarnations' implements function more or less like this. They're symbolic of the Incarnations' power, but mostly act as tools of visualization and control; Death doesn't need his cloak for invulnerability, and Gaea and Satan use their music as an easy focus for their techniques. The only apparent exceptions are the skeins of fate, and possibly the Hourglass of time.
  • Magic Music:
    • The Llano, a song that can do strange things. Nature and Satan use it.
    • Earlier, Orb learns the tanana, which is an erotic Gypsy dance with surprising efficacy on nonhuman entities (although this is more likely the result of Orb's nascent powers), and uses it on her quest to find the Llano.
    • Cedric Kaftan and his cousin Pacian (Orb's father) both have an inherited brand of magic that causes invisible orchestras to spring up with sparkly backing tracks whenever they sing. Niobe instantly falls in love with each of them in turn after hearing their singing.
  • Merlin Sickness: Chronos lives backwards from the time of taking the Hourglass to his birth. Understandably, this gets pretty confusing for other characters. In one scene in For Love of Evil, Satan goes to visit Chronos for advice and finds that the new Chronos doesn't like him. When the new Chronos rails on Satan for his various atrocities, Satan has no clue what he's talking about.
    • In With a Tangled Skein, Niobe, newly assuming the office of Clotho, meets Chronos for the first time, and he immediately kisses her. He is confused when she slaps him, but eventually it turns out that they have had a long-time Friends with Benefits affair. Later in the book, when Chronos is nearing the end (beginning from his perspective) of his time in office, he becomes far more awkward and unsure around her, to the point that she has to seduce him for the first time after having had a decades-long sexual relationship.
  • More Expendable Than You: When Cedric discovers a plot to kill Niobe, he decides to make the Heroic Sacrifice by taking her place without telling her.
  • Naked First Impression: Zane meets Luna when she is teleported out of the shower.
  • Never Mess with Granny: Atroposnote  is an old Black woman with no time for foolishness and empowered to cut the threads of fate. She can threaten a teenager into a better life or murder Satan's chosen agents with a smile on her face, and sacrifices herself without hesitation to save her granddaughter.
  • Noble Demon: Pretty much Satan in a nutshell. In his mortal life he was Parry, an honest and honorable priest who sought to punish the truly wicked while saving the souls of creatures and men who were technically evil but were not truly evil in their souls. Now he is Satan, the Incarnation of Evil, but his goal remains the same. His reason for the war against God is that the system for determining whether a person goes to Heaven or Hell is flawed, and he gets too many good people. He makes a deal with the Archangel Gabriel to keep the war from harming mortals. He is friends with JHVH, the previous Incarnation of Good.
  • No Name Given:
    • With a very few exceptions, none of the Incarnations other than the specific protagonists of each novel are ever named.
    • Despite getting a fair amount of screentime, Orb's bandmates in Being a Green Mother are only ever referred to as "the guitarist", "the drummer", etc.
  • No-Sell: Every Incarnation has supreme authority in his own domain and possesses one ability that the other Incarnations cannot block (e.g. if Time stops time, it stays stopped; if Death refuses to take souls, no one dies). Incarnations also cannot directly harm each other. This forces a certain level of cooperation and diplomacy... or at least, it's supposed to.
  • Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep: In On a Pale Horse, Death decides to read his mail against the advice of his household staff, and one of the letters is from a girl who is afraid that she'll die in her sleep because her mother makes her recite this prayer before going to bed.
  • Now It's My Turn: When Cedric confronts four drunk college students who were attempting to rape Niobe, he deliberately allows them to strike him first, which has no effect. He then grins and says, "Now you have had the first blow, I'll have the last," and proceeds to lay out all four of them in seconds. This turns out to be deliberate, as his professor is able to use water magic to "replay" the scene, disproving the drunks' accusations that Cedric attacked them for no reason.
  • Omniscient Morality License:
    • When Zane calls Fate out for wrecking his life in On a Pale Horse to force him into the job of Incarnation of Death, and asks her what right she has to meddle with his life, she calmly puts him down. He doesn't take this very well, but in later books he's become more-or-less used to working as an Incarnation, though he remains one of the most compassionate of the bunch.
      Lachesis: By the right of necessity. All mankind will be damned if we don't meddle.
    • All the Incarnations, when "on the job," operate on a much larger scale than individual human lives. As a result, Fate is a grade-A bitch to anyone who has the misfortune of being caught in a tangled skein, while Thanatos, Mars and Gaea all dispassionately oversee such things as teenagers dying of enchanted heroin overdoses, mothers recruited as suicide bombers to feed their children, and ecological devastation without so much as blinking or intervening to save the people involved; Thanatos is a maverick because sometimes he will step in and save someone who was supposed to die, which isn't usually done because it makes more work for the other Incarnations. And Satan is doing his job as the Adversary to evoke the evil in humanity so that it can be dealt with properly.
  • One Degree of Separation: Everyone's related! Justified by the Gambit Pileup revealed in the later books.
  • Overpopulation Crisis: In ...And Eternity, Gaea's assignment for the protagonists is to study a girl who's about to become pregnant, relate that to the looming population crisis facing the Earth, and come up with solutions.
  • Paperwork Punishment: The Magician's soul is sent to the Mundane Afterlife of Purgatory because he wasn't a good person but wasn't evil enough for Hell. His first task is to complete the forms that itemize the morality of his actions on every single day of his life.
    Magician: Where do you think the Revenue Department gets its inspiration? It will take me eternity to get through this paperwork.
  • Passing the Torch: While some of the incarnations (like War and Evil) pass to a particular mortal with the right characteristics (being the most violent man, being the most evil man), and Death is a You Kill It, You Bought It situation, others can choose their successors, such as Norton being chosen by Chronos in the second book.
  • Perfectly Arranged Marriage: A couple of characters are married by arrangement, sometimes Because Destiny Says So; though initially unhappy, they eventually find happiness with their new spouses.
    • On his deathbed, the Magician throws his daughter Luna at Zane and tells them both that they're going to get married. Luna accepts this as her duty, while Zane is horrified by the thought. They fall in love later.
    • Niobe's parents married her to Cedric Kaftan. She protested at first, but then after living together for a while, and seeing what a good man he was, realized that she had fallen in love with him. (Also, she got to see that he was a hunk and a badass.)
  • Pretty in Mink: An heiress in the beginning of the first book wears a "magic mink coat".
  • The Problem with Fighting Death: Well, sort of. If you kill Death you get his job — whether or not it was intentional or you want the burden. Although in that case you can just find someone more willing and let them kill you.
  • Public Domain Character: Thanks to how long-lived Nox turns out to be (Kerena was from the Middle Ages), both Morgan le Fey and the original Gawain of the Round Table (ancestor of the one from Norton and Orlene's backstory) appear in the last novel.
  • Punch-Clock Villain: Satan, particularly as characterized in the later books, is just doing a dirty but necessary job in tempting humans to sin and punishing the guilty. Most of his predecessors really were genuinely evil, leading to some really ugly office politics before Orlene becomes Goddess and patches things up.
  • Purgatory and Limbo: Limbo is where the various Incarnations live when they aren't on Earth actively running the universe. Their "support staff", the people who serve and support the Incarnations in their jobs, are all dead people who weren't good enough to get into Heaven, nor evil enough to be sentenced to Hell.
  • Red Herring: The great deal of time in ...and Eternity spent on developing Judge Roque Scott, his backstory, and his relationships with the other characters (especially the Incarnations) sets the reader up to think he will be the new God; this was in fact Orb's intention when she set Jolie to watching Vita (whom Fate knew would encounter him), and it's what all the other Incarnations think too, and even vote for. Even Satan is willing to elect him due to his sinful nature. But he turns them down flat—mostly to be with Vita, but also because he is too afraid of screwing up the cosmos as God. Orlene is elected instead. Aided by the built-in gender expectations for God (despite God not explicitly having a gender in the Bible, the male pronouns are still used, after all), although having Nicolai become an Aspect of Fate should have been a big clue for other possible subversions.
  • Rerouted from Heaven: The system for processing souls is rather messed up, due to God slacking off. Zane, the new Death, is unsatisfied with babies going to Purgatory, and manages to get the system adjusted to send them to Heaven instead...only to learn that he's acting way outside of his authority. Later on, when Parry takes over running hell in For Love Of Evil, he realizes a large portion of souls arriving there don't deserve it, and tries to show them A Hell of a Time instead. Eventually he instigates a plan to get God replaced.
  • Reset Button: The ability to push this (albeit only under the most dire and necessary of circumstances, since it would tangle the threads of Fate) is one of Chronos's main and most useful powers. One of its most notable uses is in Being a Green Mother when, after she agrees to marry Satan, Orb's use of the Llano to bring about The End of the World as We Know It is undone this way.
  • Retcon: Satan in the first four books appeared to be pure, irredeemable evil. In the fifth book, he gets cast more sympathetically, and after that he's a Necessarily Evil Punch Clock Anti-Villain. Re-reading the series later thus has some interesting effects, particularly in how the later characterization makes scenes common to all the books look when the reader sees them again from the Incarnations' perspectives.
    • Similarly, the succubus "Lila" sent to seduce Mars in book 4 turns out to be much more than a low-ranking succubi: she was "Lilah", the same succubus that turned Parry to evil, and was also the "Lilith" of folklore who rejected Adam because he refused to acknowledge her as an equal.
    • Also, at the end of the original book, Death changes the rules for infant souls born in bad situations to send them to Heaven. Later books establish that that is not within his competence.
  • Runaway FiancĂ©: Asian Clotho in With a Tangled Skein; she runs away from her strict family because she doesn't like the husband they have chosen for her.
  • Satan Is Good: The sixth book's entire premise. (Sort of.)
  • Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Zane as Thanatos is not bound by Honor Before Reason, and is happy to tell everyone else where to stick the rules of death, the afterlife, and the war between God and Satan. If he wants someone to live, that person lives, and nothing Satan, Fate or anyone else says can change that. He mellows out later and stops saving everyone he can, to avoid making too much work for Chronos and Lachesis, but even then he'll exercise his prerogative for good reason.
  • Secret Test of Character: ...And Eternity has one of these, when Orlene asks Thanatos to give her the soul of an infant to repair the damage done to her baby's. He takes her to a dumpster where an abandoned baby is about to be crushed, and tells Orlene to take the infant's soul. She refuses and instead asks Thanatos to save the baby, even if it means failing her quest. Thanatos saves the infant, then explains that the test was to see whether Orlene would value a soul for its own sake, instead of as a means to an end, and agrees to get her a soul from an infant who couldn't be saved.
  • Self-Inflicted Hell: A person's faith determines what afterlife it gets. Atheist souls disintegrate upon death. It is this system that Satan is opposing through the sixth and seventh books.
  • Sex Is Evil: Sex outside of marriage is evil, according to the rules God set down. Most of the other characters consider this particular bit of moralism stupid, but God isn't listening.
  • Sex Is Evil, and I Am Horny: Judge Scott, with Vita and Orlene in ...And Eternity.
  • Sharing a Body: The three persons of Fate (Clotho, Lachesis, Atropos) can manifest physically, but only one at a time. Being Fate requires some diplomacy to work out who will have the body at any given moment.
  • Shown Their Work: The depiction of Morgan le Fey in Under a Velvet Cloak is neither outright evil (as her usual depiction) nor a poor misunderstood woman manipulated by others and unfairly condemned for her magical nature and adherence to pagan ways (as she is often reimagined as in modern works), instead being a cunning, sophisticated manipulator who works to get what she wants by often underhanded and dark ways but who also possesses emotional depth and well-roundedness and inspires some sympathy—in other words, much closer to her more complex (and conflicting) portrayals throughout Arthurian canon.
  • Signs of the End Times: Plague, earthquakes, floods, and volcanic eruptions are all the result of singing the Llano of Chaos, which ends all living things within weeks of it being sung. Although one could argue that these are less signs of the end and more the cause.
  • Sins of Our Fathers: It turns out the malady in Gawain's family which eventually dooms Orlene's baby came about thanks to the original Gawain giving in to temptation with Kerena and thus failing to be pure enough to obtain the Holy Grail. Her conversion to vampirism while pregnant doesn't help their child much, either.
  • Spell My Name With An S: The succubus "Lilah" goes by slightly different names at different points in the series, changing it depending on the persona she is assuming at the time.
  • Strictly Formula: The first four books, and to a lesser extent the sixth, follow a rather linear path: We are introduced to the soon-to-be-incarnation, who because of some issue related to someone they are in love with, becomes an incarnation (often because they cannot be with the one they love). The new incarnation gets the run down of their office and the office's supporting cast. Meets the other Incarnations and Satan. Uncovers Satan's scheme, and narrowly averts it, usually by learning the full extent of their duty as an Incarnation, usually using it as a bluff or threat against Satan (Death threatens to kill Satan, War threatens to start the end of days before Satan can win, Fate threatens to cut the strands of fate of all of Satan's minions).
    • Interestingly, the above plots even happen in the sixth book, where Satan is the protagonist. Instead of beating Satan, Satan needs to beat his successor to reclaim the office. The third book also mixes things up by having the whole thing happen twice - with Niobe first as Clotho then later when she returns as the middle aspect of fate, Lachesis. The fifth book is about Orb, but gives her very little time as Gaea, and Satan wins this round, though he has to die to do it.
  • Succubi and Incubi: Lilah and Jezebel. Not to mention the various male demons encountered, several of which attempt to rape female protagonists. But for a subversion, note that the Angel Gabriel is severely tempted to have a sexual encounter in Under a Velvet Cloak, and eventually does succumb after the victory over Erebus.
  • Supernaturally Young Parent: Niobe doesn't age during her stint as Clotho, with the result that when she attends her son's wedding she looks younger than him.
  • Sweet Polly Oliver: Gender-inverted. As Fate is traditionally female, Nicolai adopts a female identity when he becomes Atropos.
  • Takes One to Kill One: A convoluted version of this, but the Incarnation of Death can only die by consenting to their death, since Death is supreme in its own domain as Zane realizes at the climax of the first book. As the Incarnation of Death is guaranteed passage in heaven upon its death if his performance rating is good, an Incarnation of Death can subconsciously "consent" to Death if he's weary of his office. Zane's predecessor subconsciously consented to his Death when he got shot by Zane, as he was not wearing his cloak of protection properly.
  • Tangled Family Tree: A mild one as things go, but the Kaftan family still has to deal with time travel, prophecies, and temporary agelessness, leading to Niobe's daughter and first granddaughter being born about the same time, and Niobe herself screwing her second granddaughter's affair from the future. Come to think of it, we should be very grateful that Incarnations can't reproduce while in office.
  • Team Switzerland: Prior to Norton, Chronos was usually neutral between Satan and the other Incarnations, and he and Satan had a good working relationship.
  • Thanatos Gambit: Satan wins Orb's love and her hand in marriage, but to do so, he has to burn his own life out and damn himself to Hell. His death is temporary, though.
  • Time Loop Trap: One of Hell's key punishment forms, shown in ...And Eternity. The sinner is condemned to experience the consequences of their sins, one sin at a time, until each is repented.
  • Time Stands Still: Any Incarnation can do this in some way, though ultimately the power derives from Chronos.
  • To Hell and Back:
    • After Cedric sacrifices himself to save Niobe, Niobe travels to Purgatory in an attempt to make a deal with death and bring her husband back to life, even if it means she must die in his place. Sadly, Death is not convinced that her "but I love him!" argument outweighs the fact that Niobe's survival is crucial to the betterment of mankind.
    • All the Incarnations visit Hell at some point in their careers. Usually it's a trap, sometimes it's just to negotiate.
  • 12 Coins Puzzle: In With a Tangled Skein, The Heroine has to solve this puzzle to find a certain soul disguised as a demon, out of the 12 demons. She only knows that, so initially does not realize how weight plays a factor. After some internal panic, she remembers that sin weighs souls, so a good soul will be lighter to drift to heaven. It doesn't work due to Satan, but things resolve regardless.
  • Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: Zane, while not exactly ugly, is average at best, while Luna is one of the most beautiful women of her generation. Zane was also destined to marry a comparably beautiful and rich woman before a shady salesman tricked him into giving up this destiny.
  • Unicorns Prefer Virgins: In For Love of Evil when Parry is about to marry Jolie, someone drives a unicorn into the bridal party, but Jolie is able to call and touch the unicorn, proving she is still a virgin (and stunning her father and the entire town).
  • Vapor Wear: Two cases:
  • Villainous Breakdown: Satan in Wielding a Red Sword when Mars threatens to start World War III and the Apocalypse early. Satan may have been faking, though.
  • Villain with Good Publicity: Satan advertises hell openly as a "Cool" place to hangout to entice mortals to sin and doom themselves. We find out that this is Satan's means of weeding out those who are latently evil, so as to properly classify them under the headings of "Good", "Evil", or "Neutral".
  • We Want Our Jerk Back!: Satan falls in love and, to prove it's real, kills himself and goes to hell. The other Incarnations are quickly horrified to learn that he was actually a good guy and his replacement is an absolute abomination of a human being.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: Zane rips the Fates a new one when their lack of knowledge about the threads causes them to trim the wrong end of the threads and he has to collect an entire ward of newborns at a hospital.
  • Why Isn't It Attacking?: Zane wonders this about a monster Satan sent after him in On A Pale Horse. He eventually works out that the monster isn't attacking him because it would create an impossible situation: Zane's soul is perfectly in balance until the end of his trial period in office. If the monster attacked and killed him, then Death would have to come and collect his soul...except Zane is Death. Since it's not possible for him to collect his own soul, the monster can't kill him.
  • World's Most Beautiful Woman: Niobe for her generation, her daughter Orb for her generation, and her granddaughter (via her son) Luna for her generation.
  • Xanatos Gambit:
    • By the end, things end up arranged so that Satan gets what he wanted regardless of whether Good or Evil ends up in charge of the world. If Good wins, God gets replaced by someone who is going to do the job properly. If Evil wins, Satan gets to take over. Either way, Hell stops getting souls who don't deserve to be there.
    • Under a Velvet Cloak reveals that the entire series was one for Nox, who was working to stop Erebus from destroying all of reality.
  • You Kill It, You Bought It: The office of Death is transferred this way. This is also one of the ways the office of Evil can be transferred.
  • Your Days Are Numbered: Chronos is the only Incarnation with a fixed lifespan, that being the duration of his mortal life. This throws a bit of a wrench into both the title and concept of the series - the incarnations are supposed to be immortal so that they can focus on their jobs, but Chronos is clearly NOT immortal, and in fact knows exactly when he is going to die - the day of his birth (this is really brought home when an 8-year-old accidentally becomes the office holder in one of the books).

Alternative Title(s): On A Pale Horse, Bearing An Hourglass, With A Tangled Skein, Wielding A Red Sword, Being A Green Mother, For Love Of Evil, And Eternity, Under A Velvet Cloak

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