History Literature / TheLongPriceQuartet

This four-book series by author Daniel Abraham (an alum of the same New Mexico writer's workshop as Gardener Dozois, Melinda M. Snodgrass and George R. R. Martin) focuses on the lives and relationship of two men, Otah Machi, an [[TheExile exiled prince,]] and Maati Vaupathi, with an array of secondary characters who come and go as the series progresses. Long Price takes place primarily in a collapsed TheEmpire known as the Khaiate where poets bind ideas to human form and wield unimaginable power through their slaves, the andat. The series follows Otah and Maati from their childhoods to their old age, chronicling their friendship, antagonism and the decline of the fortunes of the Khaiate as they come into conflict with their trading partners, the Galts.

* NoManShouldHaveThisPower: Balasar Gice has seen how easily and casually the ''andat'' could be used to destroy everything, and his life's goal is to remove the ''andat'' from existence as permanently as possible.

* ItOnlyWorksOnce: Every andat binding only works once. Trying to reuse an old one makes it automatically fail, with messy results.

* OnlyWorksOnce: Every andat binding only works once. Trying to reuse an old one makes it automatically fail, with messy results.

* YouCannotKillAnIdea: Discussed in the final chapter. Otah points out that the hardest thing about binding the andat was learning that they ''could'' be bound. Once the thing is known to be possible, people will try and achieve it. Without the Khaiate grammers to help focus the mind, or the records of past bindings to know which ideas have already been used up, the cost in failed bindings will be huge. But sooner or later, someone will succeed.

** Otah is forced to [[spoiler: kill the poet Heshai in AShadowInSummer. Granted, Heshai sort of wanted to die so that his andat wouldn't be turned into a weapon of genocide, but still.]]

** Maati [[spoiler: Who spends most of ThePriceOfSpring ignoring the fact that his pupil blinded ''all of Galt'' on a whim.
** Idaan is callous and homicidal even ''after'' her HeelFaceTurn.]]

* BatmanGambit: [[spoiler:The Andat Seedless arranges for Heshai to perform an abortion on a young girl (who doesn't know what's happening thanks to a helpful language barrier) in hope of [[DrivenToSuicide driving Heshai to suicide]], thus releasing Seedless from his binding.]]

This four-book series by author Daniel Abraham (an alum of the same New Mexico writer's workshop as Gardener Dozois, Melinda M. Snodgrass and George R. R. Martin) focuses on the lives and relationship of two men, Otah Machi, an [[TheExile exiled prince,]] and Maati Vaupathi, with an array of secondary characters who come and go as the series progresses. Long Price takes place primarily in a collapsed TheEmpire known as the Khaiate where poets bind ideas to human form and wield unimaginable power through their slaves, the Andat. The series follows Otah and Maati from their childhoods to their old age, chronicling their friendship, antagonism and the decline of the fortunes of the Khaiate as they come into conflict with their trading partners, the Galts.

The Quartet deals heavily with issues of racism, progress, sustainability, aging and love. The unusually large timeframe (the series spans nearly sixty years from the first chapter of ''A Shadow In Summer'' to the epilogue of ''The Price Of Spring'') allows a very real look at how flawed people deal with family, responsibility and guilt. The issue of abuse of power is also prominent due to the world-spanning power of the Andat and, by association, the poets who wield them.

* BothSidesHaveAPoint: In ''The Price of Spring'', Otah has excellent reasons for not wanting to start the whole mess with andat-binding again but instead seek to fix the generational crisis by importing fertile Galtic women. On the other hand, Eiah is right that in doing so he's essentially washing his hands of an entire generation of Khaiate women who have been grievously injured through no fault of their own and refusing to try the one thing that might help them. [[spoiler: In the end, Eiah squares the circle by binding one last andat and using it to undo Sterile's work, then releasing it and agreeing to not pass on her knowledge.]]

* DealWithTheDevil: Poets call Andat into being by describing them with a complex, risky grammatical structure. Then they have to keep a constant mental leash on them. Forever. Oh, and the Andat live only to escape their bindings.

* ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin: All Andat names.

* FunctionalMagic: Theurgy - the Poets create the Andats who actually peform the magic.

* GoodIsNotNice: Otah is forced to [[spoiler: kill the poet Heshai in AShadowInSummer. Granted, Heshai sort of wanted to die so that his Andat wouldn't be turned into a weapon of genocide, but still.]] Also Maati [[spoiler: Who spends most of ThePriceOfSpring ignoring the fact that his pupil blinded ALL OF GALT on a whim. Plus, Idaan is callous and homicidal even AFTER her HeelFaceTurn.]]

* HoldingBackThePhlebotinum: The Andat, despite being able to literally level continents are rarely, if ever, employed in war. Conflicts between poets are implied to have rendered huge swaths of the Khaiate states uninhabitable. [[spoiler: Two Andat, Corrupting-the-Generative and Clarity-of-Vision, are wielded in the series. Corrupting-the-Generative is unleashed without a true binding and sterilizes all Galtic men and all Khaiate women. Clarity-of-Vision is used by the insane Vanjit to blind EVERYTHING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD.]]

* MaternallyChallenged: Idaan mentions at one point that she did have maternal instincts for a while, but they eventually went away and she now regards it as a passing madness.