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A review by chime_detroit
The Stars that Rise at Dawn by Ivana Skye
emotional
funny
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
I’ve never seen such a geologically-layered example of an author going through it, where ‘it’ is neuroses and insight impressed and pushing through each other like pegmatite igneous rock spurs pushing through each other — hard insight piercing through thick layers of neurosis, and crystallized neuroses unable or unwilling (perhaps due to affectionate loyalty to the author’s past self) to melt itself down even in the sharp pressure of insight.
The quote I come to is one of James Baldwin: It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I'd been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.
The entire novel reads as proof of this quote. Not as a full process of the vomiting, nor a securely backwards-looking reflection of how the vomiter went through this process, with careful assurances that the writer knows full well that the vomiting-of-filth had happening and is simply reflecting on it. But something more like a several-stage epistolary presentation of an event: the base text as a woozy and unpleasantly self-abasing, unselfaware, neurotic, and in-denial discord liveblog of a short snapshot of time with the vomiting sufferer slumped over the toilet, starting well after the vomiting has begun, and ending long before the vomiting has ended; then a subsequent screenshotting of a pared down collation of the most interesting parts of the liveblog in a blog post, with fascinated reflective presentation of the insights the live blogger failed/refused/lied about looking at; and then finally, the final text, as a collaged remix of the liveblog and its collation, but without ANY smug commentary or ego-stroking parading of self-awareness — prizing emotional honesty to the liveblogger of that past snapshot, including honesty to the persistent dishonesty of that liveblogger. Most of the text examines the vomit, little of it is concerned with pointing out that it is vomit, or that it’s being vomited, much of it comments on a distanced-from-the-liveblogger Someone Else’s process of ignorance and realization and eventual understanding that has little resemblance (but does have relevance) to the vomiting depicted in the the novel.
And interspersed, reluctantly a center of gravity while denied to be, are the vomiting liveblogger’s intrusive dazzled intermittent thoughts that maybe, perhaps, it might be possible to walk on the earth as if they have a right to be there, which flicker in and out, the central line yet repeatedly shied-away-from, repeatedly looked at and looked away from. Much like the burned-out flaming eye-prices of Tamar that flit through a story whose word count is textually dominated by strange narrative treacles.
And interspersed, reluctantly a center of gravity while denied to be, are the vomiting liveblogger’s intrusive dazzled intermittent thoughts that maybe, perhaps, it might be possible to walk on the earth as if they have a right to be there, which flicker in and out, the central line yet repeatedly shied-away-from, repeatedly looked at and looked away from. Much like the burned-out flaming eye-prices of Tamar that flit through a story whose word count is textually dominated by strange narrative treacles.
I’ve read three editions of this novel and it’s given me a huge amount of ideas about storymaking. But I’ll focus on the most recent edition. The points, driving force, of the novel goes something like this:
Two years ago, Tamar, just turned 17, an impulsive and arrogant skater/biker girl type, motorbikes alone and without telling her friends Elīya and Yenatru, out of the middle-eastern-coded fantasy city of Ennuh and into the desert, propelled by an intense passion and curiosity even she can't quite understand. And at the top of Erezel Plateau, which has inexplicably loomed in her heart entwined with this desire, tell God, who is a bodiless entity of laughter and fire and harshness right out of Sinai of Exodus, that she wants Them to show her Their soul. After a moment of warning and wrestling, They do, and in glee and shock, looking at a sky of cresting and rippling stars that is the entire soul of God, Tamar's eyes burn out forever, leaving them still burning.
This is the prologue, and is around 5 pages, which really puts into perspective some things about the next half of the book. The pacing is very uneven, and many of the longest scenes are the emptiest, and the shortest the most powerful.
The time skip of 2 years is heralded and punctuated by a epigrammical quote that both sharpens the two personalities in the preceding prologue, and overhangs and mockingly dogs what is to immediately follow:
Once, Heaven expected; all after death to wake to fire. Now understood desires many. One day at world end, all resurrect to more choices. Which choices? What you wish; I the flame know not. Yet. Your lives will argue for you.
-Evian translation of God's Covenant, originally
delivered without words, 0 A.C. (After Covenant)
Because in the current day, it immediately cuts to Elīya and Yenatru, Tamar's old friends from high school, who are in college, drifting apart and aggravated by their lukewarm education and experience of life. For the hundredth time, they discuss how Tamar broke a promise the three of them had made to share everything interesting that happened with each other, because after the event of the prologue, Tamar never talked to them again, but moved away to a neighboring but a good day's-drive-away ancient desert city of Eden. (The technology level of the setting is ambiguously early-20th-century: electricity and printing are established and widespread; motorcycles, old-fashioned landline telephones, radios, silent movies, and the like are newer tech; there are no computers let alone internet or smartphones, nor commercial airplanes or cars, and as far as I can tell, no trains either, at least not passenger ones.) The two of them can't understand why Tamar did it, and can't quite put their finger on why it haunts them still, but the loose end and riddle looms large in their unsatisfying lives, where neither of them have any feelings about anything about life or the world strong enough to even guess at Tamar's. Instead, they have college.
This college is quite USAmerican-coded, which is somewhat odd as a choice but the scenes are viscerally and unpleasantly believable. I could almost smell the old classrooms and dull quad, not to mention hear the pointless, busywork questions and group-discussion instructions of the professors. From this we get a couple of interesting details: 1) angels are well-known-enough appearances and personages to be referred to in the way that, if this was a different genre, established superheroes might be referred to. 2) Elīya is a philosophy major, and is much smarter and more invested in her work than her classmates, which mostly just makes her insufferable but is also embarrassingly relatable and sympathetic. 3) The aforementioned quote -- the Covenant -- is a core element of society and theology, as it marks a shift, which happened nearly 6,000 years ago, where due to the actions of two historical and elusive but immortal figures -- Lilith and Lucifer -- God announced to the world that They didn't know what all the choices, desires, and possibilities of other people might entail, yet, but is promising to learn what they are and give the world these possibilities in the afterlife, if people will use this life as an opportunity to teach Them what these possibilities might be.
Suddenly, the momentum of the pacing drops, though with several fascinating worldbuilding concepts. Elīya complains bitterly to her Exposition-Deposit BFF who is...a demon. What's a demon? Nothing special, or even cool looking: a horned human, much more normally human and far, far less demonic than any Homestuck troll. As the book doesn't get to that until later, I won't either. Yenatru, in the massive college Library (I can also almost smell this, but it's a better smell), begins to practice Theurgy from a small mysterious book written by the angel Israfil (the Islamic form of Rafael). What's Theurgy? Oddly, looking up the definition of theurgy in real world historical magical practices yields almost the opposite definition to what it means here. The dictionary definition of Theurgy:
Two years ago, Tamar, just turned 17, an impulsive and arrogant skater/biker girl type, motorbikes alone and without telling her friends Elīya and Yenatru, out of the middle-eastern-coded fantasy city of Ennuh and into the desert, propelled by an intense passion and curiosity even she can't quite understand. And at the top of Erezel Plateau, which has inexplicably loomed in her heart entwined with this desire, tell God, who is a bodiless entity of laughter and fire and harshness right out of Sinai of Exodus, that she wants Them to show her Their soul. After a moment of warning and wrestling, They do, and in glee and shock, looking at a sky of cresting and rippling stars that is the entire soul of God, Tamar's eyes burn out forever, leaving them still burning.
This is the prologue, and is around 5 pages, which really puts into perspective some things about the next half of the book. The pacing is very uneven, and many of the longest scenes are the emptiest, and the shortest the most powerful.
The time skip of 2 years is heralded and punctuated by a epigrammical quote that both sharpens the two personalities in the preceding prologue, and overhangs and mockingly dogs what is to immediately follow:
Once, Heaven expected; all after death to wake to fire. Now understood desires many. One day at world end, all resurrect to more choices. Which choices? What you wish; I the flame know not. Yet. Your lives will argue for you.
-Evian translation of God's Covenant, originally
delivered without words, 0 A.C. (After Covenant)
Because in the current day, it immediately cuts to Elīya and Yenatru, Tamar's old friends from high school, who are in college, drifting apart and aggravated by their lukewarm education and experience of life. For the hundredth time, they discuss how Tamar broke a promise the three of them had made to share everything interesting that happened with each other, because after the event of the prologue, Tamar never talked to them again, but moved away to a neighboring but a good day's-drive-away ancient desert city of Eden. (The technology level of the setting is ambiguously early-20th-century: electricity and printing are established and widespread; motorcycles, old-fashioned landline telephones, radios, silent movies, and the like are newer tech; there are no computers let alone internet or smartphones, nor commercial airplanes or cars, and as far as I can tell, no trains either, at least not passenger ones.) The two of them can't understand why Tamar did it, and can't quite put their finger on why it haunts them still, but the loose end and riddle looms large in their unsatisfying lives, where neither of them have any feelings about anything about life or the world strong enough to even guess at Tamar's. Instead, they have college.
This college is quite USAmerican-coded, which is somewhat odd as a choice but the scenes are viscerally and unpleasantly believable. I could almost smell the old classrooms and dull quad, not to mention hear the pointless, busywork questions and group-discussion instructions of the professors. From this we get a couple of interesting details: 1) angels are well-known-enough appearances and personages to be referred to in the way that, if this was a different genre, established superheroes might be referred to. 2) Elīya is a philosophy major, and is much smarter and more invested in her work than her classmates, which mostly just makes her insufferable but is also embarrassingly relatable and sympathetic. 3) The aforementioned quote -- the Covenant -- is a core element of society and theology, as it marks a shift, which happened nearly 6,000 years ago, where due to the actions of two historical and elusive but immortal figures -- Lilith and Lucifer -- God announced to the world that They didn't know what all the choices, desires, and possibilities of other people might entail, yet, but is promising to learn what they are and give the world these possibilities in the afterlife, if people will use this life as an opportunity to teach Them what these possibilities might be.
Suddenly, the momentum of the pacing drops, though with several fascinating worldbuilding concepts. Elīya complains bitterly to her Exposition-Deposit BFF who is...a demon. What's a demon? Nothing special, or even cool looking: a horned human, much more normally human and far, far less demonic than any Homestuck troll. As the book doesn't get to that until later, I won't either. Yenatru, in the massive college Library (I can also almost smell this, but it's a better smell), begins to practice Theurgy from a small mysterious book written by the angel Israfil (the Islamic form of Rafael). What's Theurgy? Oddly, looking up the definition of theurgy in real world historical magical practices yields almost the opposite definition to what it means here. The dictionary definition of Theurgy:
- the operation or effect of a supernatural or divine agency in human affairs.
- a system of white magic practiced by the early Neoplatonists.
or:
the art or technique of compelling or persuading a god or beneficent or supernatural power to do or refrain from doing something
or:
A form of magic designed to allow for worship or conjuration of, or communication with spirits or deities.
The definition of Theurgy in Šehhinah, meanwhile, is the art of creating a permanent physical manifestation of one's own soul. In Yenatru's case, he creates first a permanent lipstick made of his soul, which when touched in a kiss, conveys knowledge of the nature of his soul (safety, healing, and comfort).
I have no idea if the author knows or cares that calling this 'Theurgy' is deranged and bewildering, but I'll get to that.
In any case, while doing this Yenatru meets Lucifer. Who's Lucifer? A Fallen Angel. Oh Chime Detroit, you say, that's a perfectly familiar description of Lucifer! Well no. What's a fallen angel? What's an angel, and what is falling? In any case, Lucifer is not only definitively not Satan, they also are not at all cool, ambitious, demonic, evil or even morally gray, feared, hated, a leader, or even in possession of any mission or role. They're famous, but only because of the Covenant. In fact, they're casually affected and chatty, and generally seem like they walked off the page of a Neil Gaiman book.
Lucifer befriends Yenatru. This is well characterized but honestly, I can not only now smell the college, but feel the black cloud of college depression and bleak loneliness descending on me out of the past. Yenatru's reaction to being Befriended, his gratefulness at being noticed and liked, is excruciating in familiarity. Lucifer's squirmy, OCD self-conscious Gaiman-ness is excruciating too, but more thought-provoking, as this is a person who is supposedly as old as the universe who acts exactly like a college kid.
Their loneliness and arrested development both do get some contextual elaboration in the next chapters, as they complain to Yenatru that they only make friends with humans, as other fallen angels want them to be an important leader or spokesperson of some sort, and are shown reading a fiction book about a cult forcing a girl into doing what Tamar did, and Lucifer's exaggerated demonstrations of disgust at the concept of anyone doing this elicit neither reaction nor even thoughts from Yenatru. It's difficult to tell if hearing Tamar's choices framed as brainwashed tragic mistakes is spinelessness, agreement, or thoughtful nonjudgmentalness from Yenatru.
Elīya of course, finds out about Lucifer, and somehow manages to decide: this qualifies as an interesting thing that has happened, so she's clearly obligated to tell Tamar. Wouldn't Lucifer please go track down Tamar and tell her to come meet Elīya, who is keeping her promise?
Understandably, Lucifer doesn't agree -- but then relents, and says they will but only under the condition that Elīya agrees to do Theurgy too. Their teachings of Theurgy are fascinating scenes, albeit sometimes uncomfortably veering towards contemporary witchy meditation woo in tone (this decreases significantly over the course of the book). But it's much more convincingly as if from an angel as old as the universe than they ever do with Yenatru, though both in pedagogically-inconvenient intimate ease/familiarity with soul manifestation and marked amounts of long-calcified non-receptivity to the potential of a novice's fresh eyes, when they talk like this:
"So, to say it another way, your soul's your self. Who you are. Everything that makes you you."
"Others may identify me by my body. If it's what makes me identifiable, isn't that part of what makes me me?"
Lucifer sighs. "Okay, I get what's going on here, which is that you're not even halfway on the same page as me. I think a way I could say this that connects more to your perspective would be, your soul's what makes you identifiable to you. The experience of being you, maybe."
Elīya gets a great deal out of these lessons, but what actually really changes things for her, speeding her progress way faster than Yenatru's (!) is when she finally catches Yenatru out in his lie-by-omission and realizes he's been learning Theurgy for over a year as well. And then, Yenatru kisses her hand, with his lips that are covered in a manifestation that is his soul, and Elīya is for the first time in her life, thunderstruck and world-shaken by the presence of an existence of a person that she can't misunderstand or filter away. She realizes what Theurgy actually means and is, and that she had never known a thing about Yenatru before, in all her years of talking to him. Now, she finally starts to get it. And Yenatru, the immensity of his understanding that he has been seen pushes him into hysterical overwhelmed tears. I don't know whether to be surprised or appreciative of the way the author did not choose something evocative of Tamar's seeing God as an epigrammal quote, it might have made the analogy too obvious.
But it begs the question for me: did God feel the way Yenatru did, to be seen?
Some of the most interesting material yet on the form of Theurgy, rather than the experience, comes now, with Lucifer describing how their own Theurgy works to Yenatru: a body that shape shifts to a form that holds an expression of one of Lucifer's infinite genders upon eye contact with another person. Hence Lucifer is referred to as 'she' by Yenatru, 'they' by Elīya, 'he' by Tamar (later). Lucifer becomes more and more accidentally hilarious, noticing neither the parallel between what Yenatru did to Elīya, nor the parallel between the way their soul and God's soul reacts to the act of being seen. Their traumatic dissembling becomes less funny though, when they desperately hope that Tamar is a deluded or forced victim of someone else, rather than someone who looked at God willingly (and Yenatru again does/thinks nothing).
Let's get back to demons, just before we return to Tamar. What's a demon? Demons are people who are raised communally after being kidnapped as children from abusive families by Lilith, another former human who, 6,000 years ago, did exactly what Tamar did but to an even greater extent: demanded contact with God, which immolated her (but not only her eyes, as with Tamar, but her entire body, rendering her -- unlike any other holy however -- immortal and ghostlike) and gave her deep access to God's knowledge and very narrow (but in Lilith's specific case, immense and practical, due to the kidnapping/horn-granting ability) access to Their power. As with with Tamar, this alchemical, bizarre, smoky, bloody, black magical, Old Testamental, almost Satanic rite -- oh let's not beat around the bush shall we? Jewish. It's Jewish, and deliciously so -- is called, ironically and satisfyingly, becoming a Holy.
And so we return to Tamar, she is blind, her eyes gone and in their place is fire, she can see only God's flames but is absolutely anything other than disconnected or prophetlike. Rather, she is blistering, just as swaggering as before if not more, and metal in her amoral, frightening, sensuous aliveness; with more luxuriation in the non-sight sensory experience of her surroundings in a few paragraph than the other, sighted, pov characters have in their many chapters. No college for Tamar -- she's a street merchant, selling motorcycle batteries charged by her eyes, scandalizing her customers. God is visually and communicatively linked to her, though still a deep riddle even to Tamar, but is full of reactivity and curiosity, flames ruffling and sparking as They drink in the feeling of the minds of the whole world, try to explain something fun about a carved graffito Tamar touches, or wonder at her about why customers are shocked.
As I said about Theurgy, I have no idea if the author knows or cares that calling this 'Theurgy' is deranged and bewildering. On the other hand, who on earth defines words like 'demon' or 'holy' or even 'god' as defined here? A bit of receptive and reparative reading here immediately opens up far, far more fluidity of cultural touchstones and assumptions among the characters and world than a skeptical reading does.
In any case Tamar encounters Lucifer at her door, and Lucifer is incredibly contemptuous and hostile at her, disappointed that she isn't miserable and wounded by her choices. This rolls off Tamar's back -- too many other people direct feelings like that at her. For amusingly, the narrow power siphoned from God that the callous and rude Tamar has gained as a side-effect of her state is the ability to pick up on other people's emotions. Clearly it hasn't softened her or made her more empathetic in any way. If her older friend Safirah, another holy, who first piqued her curiosity in holies, is anything to go by, a hard, blistering self-possession is in fact a commonality among holies.
And when she agrees to meet Yenatru and Elīya back in Ennuh, she's sharpened to an intensity of this that's almost unbearable to look at the page:
"I know what you mean, Tamar says matter-of-factly. "I broke a promise to you
"Yes." Eliya's hands are clenched so tightly it almost hurts.
Tamar tosses her head. "I'm sure you'd like to hear that I regret it, but I don't. And you like honesty too, so I'm not gonna say I do if I don't."
Eliya's mouth twitches. What she wants to say is flame you, but she knows well as fire that this might actually be her fault. So instead she just takes a breath through clenched teeth
Yenatru's eyes widen a little; he shifts his weight, trying to look anywhere but at his two old friends.
"Why did you do it?" Eliya finally asks
"Because I wanted to," Tamar says in a voice so low it could almost be mistaken for sad or regretful--but it isn't, and Eliya knows it. "I wanted to badly."
"Which would not have in any way prevented you from saying something beforehand."
"Wouldn't it?" Tamar tilts her head. "I had to do it, Eliya. Before there was any chance of the impulse fading.
"You became one of the Holy on an impulse?" Eliya's eye is outright twitching now. How could anyone-flames, she can't even believe this.
"It wasn't exactly a quiet or subtle impulse, if that's what you're thinking. And I've never regretted it once, so I wasn't wrong."
"You were wrong not to tell us. The whole point of a promise is that it is wrong to break
Yenatru rubs his arm a little.
"Sure," Tamar says with another flick of her head and a small shrug. "But it would've been
worse to not do it."
As the epigrammal quote for this chapter goes: desert-burned | the river its sand | bright as salt.
After this, Tamar and Elīya argue as Elīya motorcycles them off on their camping trip with Yenatru and Lucifer — the mode of forced proximity that Lucifer decided to use to facilitate the reunion of the friends, in a show of their characteristically abysmal imagination. But the long, tense conversation between Elīya and Tamar is engrossing — infuriating — relatably dysfunctional and unskilled and emotionally volatile. I’m pretty sure these two have some repressed lesbian thing going on, especially in light of the prequel short story that provides a truly surprising but in hindsight very believable glimpse of their dynamic before Tamar’s desire was awoken. That context is unnecessary here, though, because the bitterness and frustration feels like an irl conversation transcribed verbatim. In any case, Elīya ends it emotionally destroyed and dislocated by Tamar’s taunt that she has nothing about her or in her life that has a substance or meaning other than ethicality or lack thereof. The book, and the whole series, contains many surges of distaste for goodness-for-the-sake-of-being-a-good-person and for transactional sympathy based on a sliding scale of faultlessness, even while this book (and the second book) also backslides and falls back on it as a emotional operant or excuse repeatedly, in a self-intimidated manner, like the many failed attempts of a victim to leave.
the art or technique of compelling or persuading a god or beneficent or supernatural power to do or refrain from doing something
or:
A form of magic designed to allow for worship or conjuration of, or communication with spirits or deities.
The definition of Theurgy in Šehhinah, meanwhile, is the art of creating a permanent physical manifestation of one's own soul. In Yenatru's case, he creates first a permanent lipstick made of his soul, which when touched in a kiss, conveys knowledge of the nature of his soul (safety, healing, and comfort).
I have no idea if the author knows or cares that calling this 'Theurgy' is deranged and bewildering, but I'll get to that.
In any case, while doing this Yenatru meets Lucifer. Who's Lucifer? A Fallen Angel. Oh Chime Detroit, you say, that's a perfectly familiar description of Lucifer! Well no. What's a fallen angel? What's an angel, and what is falling? In any case, Lucifer is not only definitively not Satan, they also are not at all cool, ambitious, demonic, evil or even morally gray, feared, hated, a leader, or even in possession of any mission or role. They're famous, but only because of the Covenant. In fact, they're casually affected and chatty, and generally seem like they walked off the page of a Neil Gaiman book.
Lucifer befriends Yenatru. This is well characterized but honestly, I can not only now smell the college, but feel the black cloud of college depression and bleak loneliness descending on me out of the past. Yenatru's reaction to being Befriended, his gratefulness at being noticed and liked, is excruciating in familiarity. Lucifer's squirmy, OCD self-conscious Gaiman-ness is excruciating too, but more thought-provoking, as this is a person who is supposedly as old as the universe who acts exactly like a college kid.
Their loneliness and arrested development both do get some contextual elaboration in the next chapters, as they complain to Yenatru that they only make friends with humans, as other fallen angels want them to be an important leader or spokesperson of some sort, and are shown reading a fiction book about a cult forcing a girl into doing what Tamar did, and Lucifer's exaggerated demonstrations of disgust at the concept of anyone doing this elicit neither reaction nor even thoughts from Yenatru. It's difficult to tell if hearing Tamar's choices framed as brainwashed tragic mistakes is spinelessness, agreement, or thoughtful nonjudgmentalness from Yenatru.
Elīya of course, finds out about Lucifer, and somehow manages to decide: this qualifies as an interesting thing that has happened, so she's clearly obligated to tell Tamar. Wouldn't Lucifer please go track down Tamar and tell her to come meet Elīya, who is keeping her promise?
Understandably, Lucifer doesn't agree -- but then relents, and says they will but only under the condition that Elīya agrees to do Theurgy too. Their teachings of Theurgy are fascinating scenes, albeit sometimes uncomfortably veering towards contemporary witchy meditation woo in tone (this decreases significantly over the course of the book). But it's much more convincingly as if from an angel as old as the universe than they ever do with Yenatru, though both in pedagogically-inconvenient intimate ease/familiarity with soul manifestation and marked amounts of long-calcified non-receptivity to the potential of a novice's fresh eyes, when they talk like this:
"So, to say it another way, your soul's your self. Who you are. Everything that makes you you."
"Others may identify me by my body. If it's what makes me identifiable, isn't that part of what makes me me?"
Lucifer sighs. "Okay, I get what's going on here, which is that you're not even halfway on the same page as me. I think a way I could say this that connects more to your perspective would be, your soul's what makes you identifiable to you. The experience of being you, maybe."
Elīya gets a great deal out of these lessons, but what actually really changes things for her, speeding her progress way faster than Yenatru's (!) is when she finally catches Yenatru out in his lie-by-omission and realizes he's been learning Theurgy for over a year as well. And then, Yenatru kisses her hand, with his lips that are covered in a manifestation that is his soul, and Elīya is for the first time in her life, thunderstruck and world-shaken by the presence of an existence of a person that she can't misunderstand or filter away. She realizes what Theurgy actually means and is, and that she had never known a thing about Yenatru before, in all her years of talking to him. Now, she finally starts to get it. And Yenatru, the immensity of his understanding that he has been seen pushes him into hysterical overwhelmed tears. I don't know whether to be surprised or appreciative of the way the author did not choose something evocative of Tamar's seeing God as an epigrammal quote, it might have made the analogy too obvious.
But it begs the question for me: did God feel the way Yenatru did, to be seen?
Some of the most interesting material yet on the form of Theurgy, rather than the experience, comes now, with Lucifer describing how their own Theurgy works to Yenatru: a body that shape shifts to a form that holds an expression of one of Lucifer's infinite genders upon eye contact with another person. Hence Lucifer is referred to as 'she' by Yenatru, 'they' by Elīya, 'he' by Tamar (later). Lucifer becomes more and more accidentally hilarious, noticing neither the parallel between what Yenatru did to Elīya, nor the parallel between the way their soul and God's soul reacts to the act of being seen. Their traumatic dissembling becomes less funny though, when they desperately hope that Tamar is a deluded or forced victim of someone else, rather than someone who looked at God willingly (and Yenatru again does/thinks nothing).
Let's get back to demons, just before we return to Tamar. What's a demon? Demons are people who are raised communally after being kidnapped as children from abusive families by Lilith, another former human who, 6,000 years ago, did exactly what Tamar did but to an even greater extent: demanded contact with God, which immolated her (but not only her eyes, as with Tamar, but her entire body, rendering her -- unlike any other holy however -- immortal and ghostlike) and gave her deep access to God's knowledge and very narrow (but in Lilith's specific case, immense and practical, due to the kidnapping/horn-granting ability) access to Their power. As with with Tamar, this alchemical, bizarre, smoky, bloody, black magical, Old Testamental, almost Satanic rite -- oh let's not beat around the bush shall we? Jewish. It's Jewish, and deliciously so -- is called, ironically and satisfyingly, becoming a Holy.
And so we return to Tamar, she is blind, her eyes gone and in their place is fire, she can see only God's flames but is absolutely anything other than disconnected or prophetlike. Rather, she is blistering, just as swaggering as before if not more, and metal in her amoral, frightening, sensuous aliveness; with more luxuriation in the non-sight sensory experience of her surroundings in a few paragraph than the other, sighted, pov characters have in their many chapters. No college for Tamar -- she's a street merchant, selling motorcycle batteries charged by her eyes, scandalizing her customers. God is visually and communicatively linked to her, though still a deep riddle even to Tamar, but is full of reactivity and curiosity, flames ruffling and sparking as They drink in the feeling of the minds of the whole world, try to explain something fun about a carved graffito Tamar touches, or wonder at her about why customers are shocked.
As I said about Theurgy, I have no idea if the author knows or cares that calling this 'Theurgy' is deranged and bewildering. On the other hand, who on earth defines words like 'demon' or 'holy' or even 'god' as defined here? A bit of receptive and reparative reading here immediately opens up far, far more fluidity of cultural touchstones and assumptions among the characters and world than a skeptical reading does.
In any case Tamar encounters Lucifer at her door, and Lucifer is incredibly contemptuous and hostile at her, disappointed that she isn't miserable and wounded by her choices. This rolls off Tamar's back -- too many other people direct feelings like that at her. For amusingly, the narrow power siphoned from God that the callous and rude Tamar has gained as a side-effect of her state is the ability to pick up on other people's emotions. Clearly it hasn't softened her or made her more empathetic in any way. If her older friend Safirah, another holy, who first piqued her curiosity in holies, is anything to go by, a hard, blistering self-possession is in fact a commonality among holies.
And when she agrees to meet Yenatru and Elīya back in Ennuh, she's sharpened to an intensity of this that's almost unbearable to look at the page:
"I know what you mean, Tamar says matter-of-factly. "I broke a promise to you
"Yes." Eliya's hands are clenched so tightly it almost hurts.
Tamar tosses her head. "I'm sure you'd like to hear that I regret it, but I don't. And you like honesty too, so I'm not gonna say I do if I don't."
Eliya's mouth twitches. What she wants to say is flame you, but she knows well as fire that this might actually be her fault. So instead she just takes a breath through clenched teeth
Yenatru's eyes widen a little; he shifts his weight, trying to look anywhere but at his two old friends.
"Why did you do it?" Eliya finally asks
"Because I wanted to," Tamar says in a voice so low it could almost be mistaken for sad or regretful--but it isn't, and Eliya knows it. "I wanted to badly."
"Which would not have in any way prevented you from saying something beforehand."
"Wouldn't it?" Tamar tilts her head. "I had to do it, Eliya. Before there was any chance of the impulse fading.
"You became one of the Holy on an impulse?" Eliya's eye is outright twitching now. How could anyone-flames, she can't even believe this.
"It wasn't exactly a quiet or subtle impulse, if that's what you're thinking. And I've never regretted it once, so I wasn't wrong."
"You were wrong not to tell us. The whole point of a promise is that it is wrong to break
Yenatru rubs his arm a little.
"Sure," Tamar says with another flick of her head and a small shrug. "But it would've been
worse to not do it."
As the epigrammal quote for this chapter goes: desert-burned | the river its sand | bright as salt.
After this, Tamar and Elīya argue as Elīya motorcycles them off on their camping trip with Yenatru and Lucifer — the mode of forced proximity that Lucifer decided to use to facilitate the reunion of the friends, in a show of their characteristically abysmal imagination. But the long, tense conversation between Elīya and Tamar is engrossing — infuriating — relatably dysfunctional and unskilled and emotionally volatile. I’m pretty sure these two have some repressed lesbian thing going on, especially in light of the prequel short story that provides a truly surprising but in hindsight very believable glimpse of their dynamic before Tamar’s desire was awoken. That context is unnecessary here, though, because the bitterness and frustration feels like an irl conversation transcribed verbatim. In any case, Elīya ends it emotionally destroyed and dislocated by Tamar’s taunt that she has nothing about her or in her life that has a substance or meaning other than ethicality or lack thereof. The book, and the whole series, contains many surges of distaste for goodness-for-the-sake-of-being-a-good-person and for transactional sympathy based on a sliding scale of faultlessness, even while this book (and the second book) also backslides and falls back on it as a emotional operant or excuse repeatedly, in a self-intimidated manner, like the many failed attempts of a victim to leave.
Continuing to go through the plot of this book is perhaps a losing battle, as I'm not willing to spoiler what this book's definition of a fallen angel is, and it becomes increasingly hard to discuss the book without it, so I will end it here. But a structure which I collated while doing my best to gather some thoughts on this bizarre novel by combing social media for its small scattering of devoted fans:
Another Baldwin quote: "Passion is not friendly. It is arrogant, superbly contemptuous of all that is not itself, and, as the very definition of passion implies the impulse to freedom, it has a mighty, intimidating power. It contains a challenge. It contains an unspeakable hope. It contains a comment on all human beings, and the comment is not flattering."
The passion is Tamar’s, perhaps also it is God's to Tamar, or the world's to God, especially Lucifer and Lilith's to God millennia ago. And the one who hears a comment and challenge is Elīya. And the other characters? Well.
The biggest weakness of this book, but a very curious one when viewed in context, retained through the versions in a pleasing geological-layering that enriches the book's strengths through this element's very weakness, is in the narrative-surroundings of Yenatru and Yenatru's relationship with Lucifer. According to the structure I've outlined in the first paragraph of this review, this novel cannot quite bring itself to let Yenatru be unflatteringly commented-on -- or more specifically, be admitted to be in a position that needs commenting-on. He hears it and is not allowed to notice it hit himself. The text insists he is self-knowing, self-actualized, undeluded, and on the right track, and therefore the text demands, albeit with slip-ups, that he not be a co-recipient of the highly-productive scathing critique aimed at Elīya. Yenatru is no such thing that the text insists, Yenatru managed to be a more harrowing horror subplot I have seen in most horror novels. But he is, at least, soft and feminine, which clearly at some point in the geological pressure process of this novel, was of highest importance.
The biggest weakness of this book, but a very curious one when viewed in context, retained through the versions in a pleasing geological-layering that enriches the book's strengths through this element's very weakness, is in the narrative-surroundings of Yenatru and Yenatru's relationship with Lucifer. According to the structure I've outlined in the first paragraph of this review, this novel cannot quite bring itself to let Yenatru be unflatteringly commented-on -- or more specifically, be admitted to be in a position that needs commenting-on. He hears it and is not allowed to notice it hit himself. The text insists he is self-knowing, self-actualized, undeluded, and on the right track, and therefore the text demands, albeit with slip-ups, that he not be a co-recipient of the highly-productive scathing critique aimed at Elīya. Yenatru is no such thing that the text insists, Yenatru managed to be a more harrowing horror subplot I have seen in most horror novels. But he is, at least, soft and feminine, which clearly at some point in the geological pressure process of this novel, was of highest importance.
I'm absolutely FASCINATED by this character. On every reread moreso, from my vague boredom/annoyance the first time I read it to the increasing overwhelming obsession by the most recent time I read it. The depth to which Yenatru -- not according the lies of psychiatric tales of pure nature-based disorder -- but by his negotiation with the surrounding world, has a level of a constellation of traits one could label 'personality disorder' for convenience, is intense and yet completely counterintuitive, and utterly convincing, perhaps because it's unintentional.
But the most interesting character in the book isn't Tamar, Yenatru, Elīya, Lucifer, or even God. It's the author, Skye. There may not be a frame narrative in this book, but parts of the narrative are so strangely put-upon on the content that the author's presence kicking and screaming and fighting with something that never quite makes it onto the page here (not fully until the last book in the series, The Lives That Argue For Us), is an entirely parallel narrative of its own, glinting and hinting, in the redacted gaps between revisions, in the gap between narrative and depiction, made of the things that are forced in and the things she can't force herself to take out.
Another James Baldwin quote is something I’d partially-assign and partially-deconstruct in light of the author's continual self-soothing lapses as she digs herself and falls back into the hole that is not her grave and sternly tells herself to get out of the hole, this is not her grave: It starts with “Sentimentality, the ostentatious parading of excessive and spurious emotion, is the mark of dishonesty, the inability to feel; the wet eyes of the sentimentalist betray his aversion to experience, his fear of life, his arid heart;” And then continues “and it is always, therefore, the signal of secret and violent inhumanity, the mask of cruelty.”
The last bit of this quote has always deeply disagreed with me, a dismissal and incuriosity that disappointed me coming from Baldwin. The first part of the quote is excruciatingly true. But it is far, far less likely to be 'the signal of secret violent inhumanity' than to be the signal of a depression, repression, and denial: the roaring water of real feeling squirting through the dissembling channels of sentimentality that are the only ones society deems socially safe. Channels that, if subjected to mockery from either readers or the expresser’s own self-scrutinizing brain, ensure that the mockery will never quite touch the expresser’s true feelings or heart, and therefore leaves the expresser unwounded and intact.
Or: How long will you sit here in this room, eating your heart out? Judging by the publish dates of the next two books, the author only sat in that bathroom eating and vomiting her ate-out wounded heart for two or three years at most. By The Lives That Argue For Us, the geologic layering is not only volcanically cohered, not only protostar-igniting, but primordial-soup-life-sparking. That's a lot more than I can say of myself.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Injury/Injury detail, Ableism, and Abandonment