Line #22 Literature/TheIncarnateTrilogy


1	[[quoteright:183:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/incarnatebook_6196.png]]
2
3	The Incarnate Trilogy is a series of books by Jodi Meadows.
4
5	Ana is new. For thousands of years in Range, a million souls have been reincarnated over and over, keeping their memories and experiences from previous lifetimes. When Ana was born, another soul vanished, and no one knows why.
6
7	Ana’s mother thinks she’s a nosoul, an omen of worse things to come, and has kept her away from society. To escape her seclusion and learn whether she’ll be reincarnated, Ana travels to the city of Heart, but its citizens are suspicious and afraid of what her presence means. However, she also meets Sam, a young man who believes her soul has worth--but can he love her knowing Ana may only live once?
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9	The second book, ''Asunder'', was released in 2013, with a novella, ''Phoenix Overture'', following soon after. The final book, ''Infinite'', was released in 2014.
10
11	Not to be confused with the comic ''ComicBook/{{Incarnate}}''.
12
13	----
14	!!These books contain examples of:
15
16	* AbusiveParents:
17	** Li to Ana - partly because she genuinely fears Ana to be a bad omen, partly because the vanished soul Ana replaced was a friend of hers, but mostly because Li is vicious by nature.
18	** Sam's original father in ''Phoenix Overture''.
19	* AbusivePrecursors: [[spoiler:Their desire for immortality led them to allow the murder of countless newsouls]].
20	* AllPowerfulBystander: Justified. The phoenixes are godlike but lose their immortality when they take a life. They prefer not to risk it, only intervening when they have no other choice.
21	* AlwaysChaoticEvil: Subverted with [[spoiler: the sylph, but most people think they play it straight.]]
22	* BigBad: [[spoiler:Janan is the main villain of the story, who is revealed to have given the people of Range the ability to reincarnate in exchange for allowing him to devour newsouls]].
23	* {{Bizarrchitecture}}: The temple of Janan recalls an M. C. Escher drawing, with pure white shadowless walls, holes that draw gravity upward, and stairs that look like they move up but really move down.
24	* ButterflyOfDeathAndRebirth: Ana is hurt when Sam compares her relatively short lifespan to a butterfly's, but she embraces the symbol anyway by dressing as a butterfly for the masquerade.
25	* CelebCrush: Ana had one on Sam long before they met, from listening to his music.
26	* TheChosenOne: [[spoiler: The sylph believe Ana is the key to their redemption.]]
27	* TheCutie: Serit is the nicest and most innocent character in the books.
28	* DanceOfRomance: Ana and Sam at the masquerade.
29	* DealWithTheDevil: In ''Asunder'', it's revealed that [[spoiler:the people made a deal with Janan to let him feast on newsouls in exchange for reincarnating them after death]].
30	* DeathIsCheap: The people of Range constantly reincarnate, so death means nothing to them. Sam even jokingly reproaches Stef for the hard work he put in cleaning one of Stef's corpses out of a broken machine. [[spoiler:This eventually revealed to be Janan's doing. Subverted by the end of the series, when everyone is given a last chance to reincarnate, after which they will permanently die]].
31	* TheDragon: [[spoiler: Meuric and later Deborl are Janan's main collaborators.]]
32	* DuetBonding: Sam teaches Ana to play the piano and compose her own music, which becomes a deep bond between them; he even grants her a symbolic immortality by writing a waltz for her.
33	* EldritchAbomination: The sylph can best be described as [[CastingAShadow shadows]] that [[PlayingWithFire burn]].
34	* EnemyMine: [[spoiler: Humans and dragons grudgingly agree to help each other stop Janan.]]
35	* TheExile: [[spoiler: Ana at the end of ''Asunder''.]]
36	* FantasticRacism: Toward Ana because she is a newsoul. Since arriving in Heart, Ana has been denied citizenship, dehumanized, harassed, and assaulted by people who view her very existence as an abomination. [[spoiler:The newsoul children born after her are also targets of prejudice and violence]].
37	* ForScience: Menehen's motivation.
38	* FriendsWithBenefits: Cris and Stef both have a history of this with Sam, somewhat to Ana's dismay.
39	* GadgeteerGenius: Stef.
40	* GenreBlending: Fighting dragons with laser pistols and running a supernaturally built city with automatic maintenance systems.
41	* HeroicBSOD: [[spoiler: Sam had one after he returned home to find all his instruments destroyed.]]
42	* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler:Cris]] in ''Asunder''.
43	* {{Irony}}: The oldsouls despise Ana [[spoiler: and the other newsouls]] because they believe a newsoul is unnatural and wrongfully replaces an innocent oldsoul. [[spoiler: It's actually the other way around: the oldsouls have been robbing the newsouls of a chance to live by way of a DealWithTheDevil.]]
44	* LaserGuidedAmnesia: [[spoiler: Janan made the inhabitants of Range forget that they had made a DealWithTheDevil to obtain immortality. Each time they reincarnated, they were actually feeding a newsoul to Janan in exchange for their own life.]]
45	* LightIsNotGood: [[spoiler: [[BigBad Janan's]] temple]] shines brightly and only goes dark when he's been weakened.
46	* MadScientist: Ana's absent father Menehem. [[spoiler: It was his experiment in trying to "poison" Janan that caused Ana to be born in the first place.]]
47	* MayflyDecemberRomance: Ana and Sam, which some fellow citizens (including Li) find quite disturbing. Ana herself is sometimes upset by what she perceives as condescension on Sam's part, while he is bewildered by the "impulsive" reactions of her young mind.
48	* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Sam in ''Asunder'', after realizing exactly how reincarnation was begun: [[spoiler: If not for a certain failed experiment, his beloved Ana would have been eaten by Janan along with all the other newsouls.]]
49	* NonHeteronormativeSociety: Queer relationships are commonplace and unremarkable. Orientation isn't really an issue when you and your lovers have lived as both male and female dozens of times. Sam does mention a couple that used to dislike being born as the same sex, but they adjusted, and are happily together as women at the time of the novel. Also, Stef and Cris have both loved Sam over many lifetimes regardless of their bodies.
50	* QuestForIdentity: Ana wants to find out where she came from.
51	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Everyone except Ana. [[spoiler: And the baby newsouls in ''Asunder''.]]
52	* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Sine.
53	* {{Reincarnation}}: Everyone is reincarnated after death, but Ana is new.
54	* ReincarnationRomance: [[spoiler:Infinite ends with Ana and Sam meeting again many years later]].
55	* RescueRomance: Combined with FlorenceNightingaleEffect when Sam rescues Ana from a sylph and nurses her back to health. She later repays the favor by helping him with PTSD after a dragon attack.
56	* RunningGag:
57	** Serit coming up with new insect based nicknames for Ana.
58	** Sam insisting that not all music is song because songs have words.
59	* TrademarkFavoriteFood: Ana is touchingly grateful when Sam gives her a jar of honey, after Li having punished her for eating it as a child.
60	* TyrantTakesTheHelm: [[spoiler: When Deborl becomes speaker of the council.]]
61	* WasOnceAMan: [[spoiler: The sylph are humans who were cursed by the phoenixes]].
62	* WhoWantsToLiveForever: This is explored throughout the books, and Ana ultimately decides that [[spoiler:everyone will reincarnate only once, to make room for the newsouls]].
63	* WouldHurtAChild:
64	** [[spoiler: Lidea lives in constant fear that someone will hurt or kill her newsoul son. Then she learns that her partner actually hates newsouls and betrayed her friends to Deborl.]]
65	** [[spoiler: The homes of five pregnant women were bombed because their children might be newsouls. Two of the women died and one miscarried.]]

Context Literature / TheIncarnateTrilogy