History Literature / IncarnationsOfImmortality

* TheHecateSisters: Fate

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: The reason Satan helps out JHVH [[spoiler: by taking down Adolf Hitler, in order to end the persecution of Jews in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII.]]

* ''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

** 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 [[DownplayedTrope downplayed]] in his case, as he's the [[DontFearTheReaper most compassionate]] of the Incarnations, and the most willing to use his position to save individual lives.

* SecretTestOfCharacter: ''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. [[spoiler: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.]]

* CoolOldGuy: Two examples::

* RedHerring: [[spoiler: The great deal of time in ''...and Eternity'' spent on developing him, his backstory, and his relationships with the other characters (especially the Incarnations) sets the reader up to think Judge Roque Scott 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 [[RefusalOfTheCall 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 [[AlwaysMale built-in gender expectations]] for God (despite God [[NoBiologicalSex 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.]]

* CompletelyMissingThePoint: When Zane was still human, he was a photographer. He discovered how to take pictures of people's auras. He became depressed when his customers ignored the beautiful auras and only bought his photos because a side-effect of the aura-capturing technique was that the [[SexSells subject appears naked]].

* CuteGhostGirl: Molly Malone, Jolie, and Orlene.

* YourDaysAreNumbered: 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 a 10-year-old accidentally becomes the office holder in one of the books).

* YourDaysAreNumbered: Chronos is the only Incarnation with a fixed lifespan, that being the duration of his mortal life.

** Niobe's parents gave her to Cedric Kaftan. She protested at first, and didn't really realize how much she loved him until [[spoiler: after he died]].

* NowItsMyTurn: When Cedric confronts four drunk college students who were attempting to rape Niobe, he deliberately allows them to strike him first, [[PunchPunchPunchUhOh 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.

** The moral axis of the universe is dominated by a form of Christian morality laid down in the first century. [[SexIsEvil Sex Is Largely Evil]], bastards are born halfway-damned already by Original Sin, and suicide is seen as grave sin instead of a psychological problem. [[spoiler: 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.]]

* NeverMessWithGranny: Atropos[[note]]the one with the longest on-page tenure[[/note]] 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 [[spoiler: murder Satan's chosen agents]] with a smile on her face, and [[spoiler: [[HeroicSacrifice sacrifices herself]] without hesitation to save her granddaughter]].

* MerlinSickness: Chronos. 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.

* InstantExpert: [[spoiler: 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.

* PerfectlyArrangedMarriage: A couple of characters are married by arrangement; though initially unhappy, they eventually find happiness with their new spouses.

* {{GIFT}}: Possibly predicted in an older form, and alluded to, in ''Bearing an Hourglass'', when Chronos encounters a wall covered in graffiti, and muses that perhaps, in a perfectly free society, people do behave badly. He concludes that both the best and worst in society are equally necessary.

* SelfInflictedHell: A person's faith determines what afterlife it gets. Atheist souls disintegrate upon death.
** Becomes a bit of a FamilyUnfriendlyAesop, or possibly some variety of TakeThat at faith, when you realize that this means, as far as the universe of the books go, that those who believe will have to suffer for their sins... some intentional, many not... while atheists can be as evil as they want to be without any post-death repercussions.
** On the other hand, atheists ''[[CessationOfExistence disintegrate]]''. But that's what they're expecting, so they don't consider it any kind of punishment or bad thing.
** [[spoiler:It is this system that Satan is opposing through the sixth and seventh books.]]

* BiTheWay: Nicolai. Not only was he such a WholesomeCrossdresser in his youth that the master of the house stole a kiss from "her," he states that whether his partner is a man or a woman is less important than playing his role to perfection.