Incarnations of Immortality
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Incarnations of Immortality is the name of a seven-book fantasy series penned by author Piers Anthony. The books are each focused upon one of seven supernatural "offices" (Death, Time, Fate, War, Nature, Good and Evil) in a fictional reality and history parallel to ours with the exception that society has advanced both magic and modern technology. The series covers the adventures and struggles of a group of living humans, called "Incarnations", who hold these supernatural positions during a certain time in the history of this alternate Earth.
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Themes
Incarnations is designed to confront serious questions regarding the nature of life. As each character goes from a mortal life to the "office" of an Incarnation, he or she is forced to contemplate their actions on a daily basis. The conceit of the "office" is that it may be personalized: each person may use their office, within limits, as they see fit. This system humanizes what would otherwise be impersonal forces (both in the world of the Incarnations and in the reader's mind). The Incarnation of Death, for instance, allows Anthony to speak about the necessity and goodness of death under certain conditions, while also remarking on its sometime cruelty. The Incarnation of War sees how war changes the world for good; Fate faces the limited choices of humanity and the Incarnations themselves, and so on.
Another, more humorous side of Incarnations, is the portrayed magic/technology duality. Most series emphasize one or the other means of understanding and manipulating the world, but in Incarnations each method is equal in usefulness and respect. This leads to a number of amusing parallels, such as competition between automobile and magic-carpet manufacturers.
A third theme of Incarnations is the multigenerational soap opera between the Incarnations. Previous characters repeatedly appear in later novels, and by the final novel, every major character is related by blood, marriage, or affair.
Series synopsis
On a Pale Horse
First printing: New York: (Ballantine Books) Del Rey Hardbound Edition 1983, 249 pages.
In the late 20th century, Zane is living a pathetic life without money or employment. When a magic gem merchant cheats Zane out of an opportunity for romance, Zane decides to take his own life. However, when he sees the spectre of Death (Thanatos) advancing on him, he has a change of heart and turns the gun on Death instead. He is then visited by a woman who introduces herself as the Incarnation of Fate, and insists that Zane must now assume the position of the man he has killed. This entails residing in Purgatory and visiting Earth to collect the souls of humans who are in a close balance of good and evil and cannot determine their eternal destination (Heaven or Hell) without help.
In the course of learning the job, he discovers that his fate had been manipulated into the office of Death by a powerful magician. Despite being a mortal, this magician has strong ties to the other Incarnations from Purgatory and reveals to Zane that the Incarnation of Fate arranged Zane's destiny for the magician's purpose. There is a prophecy which states that Luna Kaftan, the magician's daughter, is destined to go into politics and thwart the schemes of Satan, the Incarnation of Evil. Luna Kaftan is thus a target for the forces of Hell and is in need of supernatural protection. The magician, who has done a great deal of research, feels that Zane is the best candidate for the Incarnation of Death to fall in love with Luna and thus want to protect her.
The only way for the magician Kaftan to meet with Death without Satan's knowledge is to die with his soul in balance. The magician chooses to sacrifice his own life in order to introduce Zane to Luna and explain to Zane the circumstances which brought him into the office of Death.
Unfortunately, the dead magician's plans go terribly awry. Due to manipulation by Satan, Luna is also destined to die before she can fulfill the prophecy. The magician had used too much black magic for his soul to be in balance. In order to bring it into balance before committing suicide, he has transferred the excess evil on his soul to Luna's soul, whom he has assumed to be innocent of evil. However, Luna has a burden of evil on her soul already, and her father's scheme has put her on the course to Hell. To correct this, she volunteers to switch places with one of Death's other clients. By sacrificing her own life to save another, she manages to balance the evil on her soul.
Her actions play right into Satan's trap, who doesn't care whether she goes to Heaven or Hell, only that she dies and is no longer a threat to his plots. However, Zane has already fallen in love with Luna by this time, just like the magician had planned, and he refuses to take the soul of the woman he loves.
Now the motives behind the magician's choice of Zane are made clear to him when the other four Incarnations from Purgatory approach him and explain that they were all in on the plan. The previous Death could not be manipulated into betraying the duties of his office for love, so the Incarnations decided to replace him with a young, stubborn man like Zane, who could.
Because Luna's soul is next in the queue, Zane cannot take the souls of other mortals until he deals with hers. He refuses to do so, thereby going on strike and leaving dying mortals in agony, unable to be released by death. As this is not to Satan's advantage, he first tries to bribe Zane, then intimidate him into going back to work.
Zane, however, has had a conversation with Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature, who has demonstrated to him the absolute power each Incarnation wields in its own sphere of influence. Zane eventually realizes that the office of Death is unassailable by Satan and that he cannot be harmed within the sphere of that office. As an Incarnation, Satan himself has a soul and is subject to Zane's dominion. The conflict ends in a draw and Satan has no choice but to admit defeat.
With Satan's plot exposed, Purgatory changes Luna's destiny and she is free to return to life. Zane lifts his strike, and with Luna under his protection, Satan can no longer interfere with her fate through the means of death.
- Trivia
- Disney is working on a movie adaptation of this novel to be released tentatively in 2005, directed by and starring Jamie Foxx.
- One minor problem with the continuity of the series is that, throughout the rest of the novels, the official title for the Incarnation of Death is Thanatos and everyone recognizes this, both Incarnations, dead souls, supernatural beings, and mortals. However, in this first novel of the series, the title is simply Death, though Gaea (Nature) does call him Thanatos as her own pet name for him.
Bearing an Hourglass
20 years after the events of the first story, Norton, a man of about forty, is living a life of nomadic wandering when a ghost named Gawain asks him to father a child to his widow, Orlene, whom Norton eventually falls in love with. Gawain then has Gaea, the Incarnation of Nature, make the child in his own likeness so his bloodline would continue. Unfortunately, the child ends up dead due to a disease that runs in Gawain's family. Orlene then commits suicide.
Feeling a bit down about the disastrous results of his affair with Orlene, Norton is approached by Gawain again, who offers Norton the position of Time (Chronos), where he must rule over all Earthly aspects of that seemingly intangible concept. Gawain explains to Norton that Chronos lives backwards in time until the moment of the birth of the office holder's previous self, who is still living forward. The ghost baits Norton, explaining to him that, by living backwards, he can continue to see Orlene, since she is still alive in the past. Norton accepts, and Gawain leads him to the spot where the future office holder of Time, Nortons predecessor, will pass the hourglass onto Norton.
Norton immediately starts literally living life backwards in time, though he can temporarily go forward in order to interact with others. However, when he is living backwards, he is not visible to mortals. Norton experiments with his hourglass, recognized by all the Incarnations as being the most powerful magical device in the universe, to halt and/or reverse time, travel many millions of years into Earths past, and work with the Incarnation of Fate, who needs his hourglass to help fix tangles in her threads of fate.
Because Norton lives backwards in time, his past is everyone elses future, making him a bit of an isolated character, even among the other Incarnations. He also realizes this will make it impossible to have a relationship with the forward living Orlene. He does, however, have an affair with Clotho, the youngest aspect of Fate. This is both awkward and intriging to Norton since her past is his future.
Residing at his new residence in Purgatory, Norton is then visited by Satan who informs Norton that, while Norton can travel anywhere in time with his hourglass, he cannot leave Earth. Satan claims to have the power to travel the whole universe, since evil permiates all of reality, and gives Norton a couple samples by having him travel to a couple other planets where Norton gets involved in both a space opera and an epic fantasy adventure. Satan offers Norton the ability to have that power if Norton will grant Satan a favor; to go back in time 20 years and save a man from committing suicide.
Norton goes back in time to check out this young man but after consulting with the other Incarnations, he is informed that this man is the current office holder of the Incarnation of Death (Thanatos) and that it is his attempted suicide that brought him to that position. This man is needed as Thanatos in order to protect his girlfriend, Luna Kaftan, from Satan's mischief so she can go into politics and fulfill a prophecy of thwarting Satan.
However, a relic Satan had given Norton turned out to be a demon in disguise. When Norton went back in time, the demon disembarked a few years in the past to prevent Luna from going into politics (the demon gives an incubant politician an antidote to keep him alive so Luna doesn't take his place). Due to some limitations of the hourglass, intercepting this demon was difficult but Norton managed to pull if off.
Not giving up just yet, Satan tries one more time by trapping Norton on one of the other planets he had an adventure on. Not sure how to get back home, Norton starts toying with the hourglass, traveling all the way back to the beginning of the known universe and all the way to its end (from the big bang to the point where all matter became trapped in black holes) and realizes that his adventures on other planets were an illusion created by Satan, that Norton had in fact never left Earth.
Norton then finds out that the demon that created the illusion had been attached to him and, once again, disembarked at a point in the past, two years after the events of the first book, to begin a campaign to discredit Luna so she doesn't run for office. Norton then goes back in time to this point and uses his hourglass to show the world all the bad things that will happen if Luna doesn't get elected. Norton no longer fooled by Satan's illusions, Satan stops trying to exploit him.
- Trivia
- During Norton's obstacles as Chronos, he is assisted by a snake ring named Sning that knows everything but can only answer yes or no questions with squeezes. While all the Incarnations in these books have someone or something to help assist them, Sning is a unique situation because he is not part of the office but was actually a gift given to him by Orlene.
With a Tangled Skein
Set at the time of World War I, a young Irish woman named Niobe has a marriage arranged for her by her parents. Her husband-to-be is a teenage boy named Cedric Kaftan. She considers him too immature for her, but can find no way out of the marriage. As he matures and finds his niche in magic and wetland studies, she falls in love with him and bears a child. A few years later, however, he is assassinated by the agents of Satan. She learns not only of the plot, but that she was the real target of it and not her husband.
She is invited to join the Incarnation(s) of Fate, three women sharing one physical body. Eager to thwart Satan's plans and have her revenge, she leaves her child with Cedric's cousin and becomes Clotho, the youngest aspect of the three Fates. The three Fates weave the tapestry of life and have disposition over the length of human lives and the pattern they produce. Clotho, the youngest, spins the threads from the substance of Void; Lachesis, the middle aspect, measures the threads and Atropos, the oldest, cuts the thread of each individual human. When she takes the aspect of Clotho, Niobe must journey to the edge of the Void without aid from the other Fates and replenish her stock of thread-material.
Because Incarnations do not age, Niobe spends many years as Clotho. She frequently visits her son, who has befriended Cedric's younger cousin, Pacian. Because her lack of aging would be noticed, she takes the form of the grandmotherly Atropos, pretending to be a concerned family friend. One day, the Fates take the two boys to a fortuneteller, who gives them disturbing news -- each of the boys will have a daughter who will oppose a tangle in the threads of life. However, one of the girls is fated to marry Death, and the other is fated to marry Evil.
Niobe leaves the office of Clotho and returns to mortal life in order to marry Pacian, who has matured while she was in office. She gives birth to a daughter they call Orb, at around the same time that her son, who is now a powerful magician, has a daughter called Luna. The two girls grow up together under the magician's protection. At one point the girls and Niobe go on a quest for powerful artifacts that will enhance their natural talents, and Satan takes the opportunity to send demons against them. Although one of the girls is to marry him, he is not interested in a wife who is not evil. Niobe helps the girls to get through safely, though, and Satan's plot comes to nothing.
One year after the events of On a Pale Horse, the middle-aged Niobe is asked to join the Incarnation of Fate once again, this time as Lachesis. Satan has arranged to have all three women leave the office at the same time, thus making the Incarnation of Fate inexperienced in all three aspects simultaneously. The current office-holders hope to use Niobe's previous experience as aspect of Fate as an ace in the hole to prevent Satan's current plot from coming to fruition.
They learn that Satan plans to cause political turmoil in the UN by having one of his minions plant a stink-bomb. They are forced to waste time by investigating the likely minions one by one, but in the meantime Satan is offering aging political candidates a chance at eternal youth in exchange for their resignation from office. He plans to replace them with his own minions, who would work against Luna. The three Fates realize that their inexperience is a liability, so they seek help. They learn that Niobe's son, the magician, can help them -- unfortunately, he is now in Hell. Satan can't prevent them from searching for the magician, but he can make the quest very unpleasant and one of them must risk her own soul in the process. Niobe is worried that Satan will cheat, so she arranges for the Incarnation of War to supervise the contest.
Niobe leaves the collective body and goes to Hell. She must beat Satan's challenge, a puzzle-maze, in order to get the answers she is looking for. At the end, she finds her son, but Satan has cast an illusion over him. She puzzles out the answer anyway -- that Satan's plot can be stopped by the Atropos aspect of Fate. Atropos can cut short the lives of Satan's minions, making his plot futile. Niobe wins the game and is allowed to leave Hell freely.
Wielding a Red Sword
Mym, an Indian man and prince to a throne, defies his father's arranged marriage and instead joins a travelling circus. He is soon discovered, and rather than marry a woman other than the one he loves, he takes up the offer of becoming the Incarnation of War (Mars). His ultimate goal was to use his position to ameliorate some of the suffering being caused by war on Earth, and is surprised by Satan's encouragement. Soon he realizes the subtle importances of human war and conflict, and defies Satan by allowing the act of war to continue on Earth.
'Trivia'
While every other incarnation is called by their Greek name (Thanatos, Chronos, Gaea, Atropos/Lachesis/Clotho), the incarnation of War is consistently named Mars rather than Ares.
Being a Green Mother
It is discovered that young Orb, the sister of Luna, has the gift of conjuring natural music that emanates from things in nature. She sets off on a quest for a magical song known as the Llano, and joins up with a rock and roll band. Her magical singing allows them to lose their drug addictions, and they quest together until she is approached by her grandmother, Niobe, in the guise of Fate. She is told that she has been selected to fill the role of Nature (Gaea), but that a prophecy foretells that she will one day be married to Satan. She balks at this idea, opting instead to marry a man, Natasha, whom she has met and who is teaching her the Llano. When she learns that this man is Satan in disguise (Natasha is Ah, Satan backwards), she immediately takes the position, but marries him regardless, now in a position to defend herself against any evil-doing.
For Love of Evil
Parry, a musician and white magician, begins to doubt God when his love Jolie dies. He is approached by a demoness named Lilith who gradually leads him down a path of evil, going from sorcerer to monk, and finally to deadly inquisitor. When he dies, he goes, appropriately, to Hell, and confronts Satan himself in a duel for the right to hold the position of all Evil.
...and Eternity
In the seventh novel of the series, three women - the ghost of Jolie, the ghost of Orlene (daughter of Orb), and a human prostitute named Vita - question the usefulness of a God who refuses to intervene with the evil doings of Satan. As Satan is not honoring the covenant to not interfere with human life, they feel God's need to honor it is no longer required. They go to visit him in Heaven, and discover that he has not been paying attention to human affairs for thousands of years, instead consumed with the contemplation of his own greatness. They begin a campaign to oust the current Incarnation of Good (God) and replace him with Orlene. To do so, they must have the approval of all Incarnations... including Satan. But why would Satan agree to replace a God who is allowing him to get away with huge amounts of Evil? Thus the ultimate battle between Good and Evil is fought.
Under a Velvet Cloak
This novel, co-authored with Stephen Smith, is currently in draft. It is expected to be marketed in late 2004, and will be about Nox, the Incarnation of Night.
References
- The Complete Piers Anthony (http://www.piers-anthony.com/complist.html)