Reviews - In the Wake of Infinities

3 reviews for:

In the Wake of Infinities

Ivana Skye

4.33 AVERAGE

chime_detroit's review

4.0

dark emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

The standard way to review something is in a 4-part template that is so sterilely standardized it negates itself: 2 sections of praise, followed 1 section of criticism, and then 1 more section of praise. This format manages to both undermine all the praise in a review and undermine the strength of the reviewer’s criticisms at the same time. More than that, it tends to misunderstand and misrepresent the significance or meaning of whatever the aspect worthy of criticism is. In the case of In The Wake of Infinities, the relationship between what it does poorly and what it does very well is fascinating, because it’s clearly an exchange.

The parts that are bad clearly should come first: this novella undermines some of the most admirably open-ended parts of The Lives That Argue For Us; such as the mysterious, knife-edge wobbling of breaking-open possibilities and held-breath that comes of the theological scrabbling at the very end, and even moreso, the long-belated, but self-propelled and immensely satisfying role Lucifer plays in finally overriding their trauma and avoidance to insist that God keep Their promises with the world even when the present world seems to seek to overrule Them. It downplays the acts of Tesena and of Kjorel, imbalances and flattens the subtle flammable explosiveness the role of holies in general and the ambiguous possible-holifying of God played in the series. And it nearly completely eradicates the character of Eliya, terraforming the uniqueness and fertility of her own particular self-conception, and especially her relationships, into fodder for another character’s development.

But the thing is, that surely the author knew all this. The more interesting question, and the more helpful type of question when it comes to major problems of either craft or idea in books, is what was it that was so important to the author that it had to be expressed, even at the cost of creating these great fonts of frustration and destruction?

In some books the answer is dull and easy to answer: more books, cliffhangers, ideological pandering or anxiety, ignorance or myopia. This time it is not. But logically, it appears that the basic story of ITWOI must have been of utmost importance to tell: the idea that Lucifer is a god and has been in denial of it all their life, the idea that a large part of this denial stemmed from experiences of being worshipped as a Christ-like figure by other fallen angels in the period shortly after their fall, the idea that the only way they would ever admit this to themself at this point in time was by force, and the idea that some of the intensity of their reaction to both the worship in the past and the admittance in the present can be chalked up to having observed the same devotee behavior being inflicted on God, to equal distress.

This novella appears to mostly spring out of a particular scene in The Lives That Argue For Us:

[Nam’ir says] “…sometimes, someone does want these things. There have always been Holies, since the first one—since before you fell. People who want that other. Because it is other."
"But it's not them to become someone else."
And now [Nam’ir] wonders if [Lucifer] realizes what he's saying. That he's saying that no person should want the otherness of her. That for someone to want the God that is Nam'ir is to un-become, even though it is her to be a soul who extends into unknown reaches, for those who want to travel to them.
But of course he doesn't realize it. He'd never think about it from the point of view of a God. Even if that God was her. How would he?
"Sometimes it is someone," she says, "to never not have the knowing—the knowing of someone else. Or to never not have someone entangled. Or to never again be the same—like you weren't the same after you fell—"
"That was becoming me," Lucifer hisses, "not the opposite—"
And hurt makes her words sharp. "Do you think God would have any respect for someone who tried to use Them to become less themself? Them? The inviter of everything that is not-Them?"

The take ITWOI decided on was to make Lucifer themself a god, essentially by Eliya figuring it out and accidentally forcing them to make her into a holy. This, honestly, feels very frustrating, especially so because Eliya had been pondering a number of fascinating ideas for how to define ‘a god’ just before she suddenly flattens all those ideas into nothing, saying with narratively unearned sureness: “only a god can make someone holy.” (Is this true? How would she know if so? In Lives it was that someone (God) experiencing seeing the entirety of someone’s (Tesena’s) soul could be made to understand that whatever‘a god’ was, Tesena was one if God was one — not that the act of holifying was a god-only behavior, like some silly miracle through which divinity was proven.) It also doesn’t seem to give any indication of why Eliya would not be as upset as Lucifer by this happening to her — there’s nothing to show why in God’s names Eliya wants to be a holy of Lucifer once it happens, Lucifer who she largely dislikes and who largely dislikes her. Certainly nothing compared to Tamar's relations to God or Kjorel's to Tesena, both of which were depicted as moments of such hushed, unbearable intimacy and wonder that it was impossible for either of them to explain afterwards.

But it’s easy to see why this was written, for the purpose of the narrative: nothing but a claim of ‘proof’ could have ever possibly convinced Lucifer to admit to themself that they were a god. And this convincing is the aim of the whole book.

Elīya’s interactions with Lucifer are also much less interesting than Lucifer’s writhing in mental torment alone or in conversation with God or in conversation with other characters, partly because it’s an odd avoidance or minimizing of what she got out of Theurgy — or perhaps even moreso, what she got out of her relationship with Tamar. In fact some of the scenes between Eliya and Tamar are accidentally hilarious because they somehow manage to read in much the way that happened often, especially in media from several years ago, where intensely homoerotic relationships between two same-sex characters are lovingly depicted but hastily “no homo’d” by setting up a less interesting relationship between one of the characters with a third character of the opposite sex and insisting it’s more meaningful and something that can’t be satisfied by the same-sex relationship by dint of identity, without bringing much compelling depiction to the table, therefore leaving no angle satisfied.

And while this all may have been forced, may not ‘work’ logically within the strictures of the worldbuilding or the characterization, the author cannot be accused of not having incredibly complex and powerful thoughts to express once this forced thing happens. Namely, it brings us to some of the most pure and crystalline expressions of hatred and the inability of most personhood-having conscious beings to admit to being something that is incompatible with their self-conception because their hatred of that something is the core of their self-conception:

e already knows that there’s only one person they can—
—believe relief from?
“Fuck me,” he says to xyrself and—
—GodGodGod please / the desperate grasping of hands / tell me I’m not / the devouring the too-bright / I’m not like / the sun spilling into the ocean / the sun that scorched the desert bare / like You.

Lucifer is no Kjorel, but these scenes are still delicious in the same way Kjorel’s interactions with Tamar were delicious.

“Yes, thing,” Lucifer responds / bile / biting / “I do mean myself by that—”
So downcast Their flames. / Their wings covering Their eyes. / A single word makes it through the quieted song / a word in Their thousand voices: / why…?
Her, a thing / him a horrible stabbing bleeding / thing / when all xe ever wanted / all they ever wanted / was to be a person.
God flaps Their wings in offense / chimes in a thousand bells another set of words / a reflection of ones They know so well / you are? / You are? / You are? You are?
“No,” e hisses / if she is that thing on that hand then he is not a person at all but a stab wound / an endless stab wound right through reality / right through an / actual person—
God pulls Their wings tight around Their wheels. / Eyes closing like / like too heavy with something to open / something / sadness, Lucifer realizes / and the feeling, the concept is pulsing through Their fire / but Lucifer feels the effort to reach into that concept to make it words / feels how much They want to be absolutely sure e understands—
—and God says / clear as They ever have
am I not a person?

The most incisive and woven-together aspect of this is in the conflations in Lucifer’s mind that they cannot unglue. Any reader would recognize the insurmountability of the kinds of conflations people make in their minds that seem impervious to all explanation and logic. In this case, a short list of Lucifer’s conflations are between 1) being a god, 2) being worshipped as a savior, 3) being damaging and dangerous to those who are exposed to their presence, 4) this damaging being an inherently nonconsensual and personhood-destroying thing to the people damaged by it, 5) being a non-person, 6) being like God-the-individual-person, 7) turning other people ‘into themself.’ There’s probably more. Any traumatized person knows first-hand this vicious, world-destroying artificial concordance/synonymizing that makes large portions of reality a mass of undifferentiated and undifferentiatable homogeneous evil.

And the source of this 5,800 year long self-negation and hiding is revealed as sharply and masterfully as this is: half of it is what was fully admitted and explained by Lucifer in The Stars That Rise At Dawn: the fact that they experienced being an angel, aka having their body be a manifestation of their soul entwined with a manifestation of God’s soul, as a self-negating torture. The other half is something technically new but which was always hiding in plain sight, in Lucifer’s vague insistences that they need to make friends with humans and don’t hang out with other Fallen because the other Fallen idolize them too much; or that they’ve never had an opportunity to heal properly because everyone sees them as the famous First to Fall. From some time shortly after their fall, so perhaps close to 5,800 years ago:

She’s closer / fingertips gently against his / so gentle / like she knows exactly how much pressure / won’t be too much.
“Asriel, I—”
“You’re remembering again, aren’t you?”
His organs / that weren’t his organs / his veins / that weren’t his veins. / “Yes.”
“Then remember also that I am here. I can do anything you need, to help remind you who you are. Lucifer.”
It could help / couldn’t it? / “Tell me, then. What you know I truly am.”
“Lucifer.” / Her fingertips brush the back of his hand / almost with reverence. / “You are so brave, so beautiful, for it was you who had the courage to come down to the level of humans and show them the way, show them and us as well the truth.”
“What” / he strains / “truth?”
“That a person can be who they are. That it is possible to purely be, that there are things that are, underneath this falsehood-ridden world, made by God” / he shudders / “and angels. Even in a world as impure as a smoking flame there are some things that are purely and truly only themselves. And the first of them was you.”

[…….]

Called over / the group / fluttering in excitement / about how they / are the one / who will show the world the way / to the truth—
—and then e / makes another / wall.
How can progress feel so slow / when each moment of its happening / is all at once like when he ripped / that / from himself—
Another / gives her a gift / they keep calling him / First to Fall / only Asriel keeps saying / Lucifer—
—the final / wall / of the spire.
The sun sets / the moon rises / there’s a gathering / before Lucifer / asking eir to strip / to look at his back / the perfect lack of scars / she didn’t let them touch xyr / but they wanted to / just six of them / but it feels like a crowd / maybe because each of them is so / themself / and just / themself / having ripped / that / out / or maybe it’s because / all / their attention / is on Lucifer—
The Fallen bow to / their beloved First to Fall.
Lucifer just / stands / bored, perhaps—

There are testimonials and essays written about the punishing, dehumanizing experience of idealization and idolization, but it does appear to be one of those things that’s hard to convey to those who haven’t experienced it. Only on rare occasions, like this one, does someone’s depiction succeed in making the blood run cold.

In fact the prose kind of spirals around it, restless and obsessive and unable to say everything or say the exact right things to fully explain the horror that suffuses these scenes and memories. There's chunks missing from the context that only serves to make it more believable, more realistic, more recognizable. Why is the sight of Asriel exposing her organs to Lucifer and asking if she is clean the most horrific thing that has ever happened to them? It's not quite clear, and because of its unclearness it refuses to separate itself from the way the reader might see another, fundamentally other person's inexplicable trauma-corroded horror, or might recognize their own shame-filled trauma-corroded horror they've never been able to make anyone else understand.

“And God asked [Pāulòs] to play this game with Them, and he said, I will kill anyone who dares think they could win against You. And when God started—screaming? You haven’t seen God scream like that, so angry, you don’t know—he thought this was an agreement, an anger not at him but at that hypothetical person who wanted to win against God—”

And it does connect, cryptically but not wholly without material for inroads and hypotheses, to the earlier point: something about what is expressed in this book was of such absolutely crucial importance to express that it was worth throwing multiple elements of the series into disarray to express it.

So the clear aims of the book are fulfilled, along with tantalizing glimpses of ancient-times worldbuilding that comments savagely on IRL religious behavior, and astonishing and delightful swings of characterization from Nam’ir; from Yenatru; and from God. If the author has more stories or novellas waiting in the wings for this world I would be more than happy to struggle with contrived, disappointing, or puzzling setups if the ideas that are required to be expressed are as creative, insightful, and personally urgent-feeling as this one.

Content Warnings

silkyzacuto's review

4.5

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A friend of mine summed this book up jokingly as 'nothing will help you kick your ocd or other bad mental habit like asking 'and if i did this for six thousand years would that be interesting and cool of me or would i look like this guy [gestures at lucifer].'' I gotta admit this sentence is hard to beat. This novella is one of the most excoriating looks I've ever read of an aspect of trauma that no one wants to really discuss: it makes you a worse person, but not necessarily as in 'morally worse.' More humiliatingly than the evillest supervillain, I mean worse as in more boring, stupider, slower, duller, more self-obsessed, more conservative, more reactionary, more suspicious, more superficial, less tolerant, less able to engage in abstract and complex thought, less flexible, less passionate, less brave, less curious, less, less, less. Less alive. Less of a person. The more unfair and intractable cost of suffering trauma. There's no replicatable one-size-fits-all method to overcome it, and the book doesn't purport to give an answer to one. The method of overcoming it that worked here would be a dreadful idea for most people to follow. But the book does convey how urgent it is to overcome it, and conveys through its depiction, something of an idea of how to take the opportunity by the neck if by some chance it happens to start working.

Content Warnings

elishevachang's review

4.5

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Very aggressive, curious, pushy novella addition to the Sehhinah series. Set after the third book, it dives inwards to explore deeply, rather than broadly, the implications of godhood as the series sets it up. It does this by revealing a preexisting character's own godhood to themself -- when that character themself is the person who least wants to hear that they're a god. Walks a careful tightrope between not closing down the wonderfully open ending of The Lives That Argue For Us, nor being pointless filler that doesn't change anything. This novella causes several scenes in the series to be recontextualized in an extra slant of light, but without retconning them, and in several cases by deepening implications that were already there. It has some of the most experimental and complex prose in the series as well, which works very well with the plot's harrowing focus on bitterly twisted, long-repressed trauma.

I think this novella's greatest strengths are its depiction of multi-layered trauma, which has taken on a form that manages to be both festering and calcified, where a new revelation is enough to tumble down a longstanding, precarious house of cards that has been keeping

Lucifer's mental health together for millennia, since being subjected to dehumanizing pedestaling and worship thousands of years ago from the other fallen who should have been their fellow survivors and friends.

And to turn it into a set of vicious weapons against themself and others. This depiction is tight, believable despite its severity, and written very, very cleverly. I'm taking a half a star off only because some of the other characters' positioning and behavior suffered a little in service to the main premise and the main character's character arc, and some of the overall plot was a bit contrived in comparison to other books in this series.

Content Warnings

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