I feel incapable of talking about this series; how I feel about it is both beyond words and yet somehow feels so trite and obvious to say. I feel like I'm losing my mind, like I'm outside and I've found a brick and I am yelling at everyone: "look at this brick!" But everyone has seen thousands of bricks so they pass it by.
There is no grand high-stakes narrative here, there is no spectacular heroes journey, it is a slice of life through and through. And yet—it is anything but mundane. It is intense—reading it felt like going outside in the bright sunlight after being indoors, and being completely blinded and in pain for 15 minutes while my eyes adjust. This series hammered itself into my soul. I will never, ever exist as a person who hasn't read this series, and I would never have it any other way.
The book’s definition of the ‘soul’ is ‘what makes you identifiable to yourself,’ which I could spend ages pondering and debating edge cases of. And the sole commandment for the world that is and the world to come, is ‘your lives will argue for you,’ which the inhabitants of this world have.
There are a lot of clever and sometimes-playful, sometimes-bitter-and-biting reversals of assumptions or common cultural/genre connotations, where the things the characters assume and believe are the opposite of what lots of irl readers would. There's a utopian bent to the setting, as well as the themes, but it mostly expresses itself in a lot of unusually-paced, detailed authorial curiosity about eg, what the core meaning of something like the power to create from one's soul is, when completely divorced from something like "what use does it have." Or what desire to know something could be so intense you’d pay anything to see it. Or, if a traumatic, intense suffering you experienced was immediately acknowledged, rectified, and the world remade to ensure that no one else would suffer so, would you ever heal from it or grow at all even then.
A lot of the main plot seems to conclude by the end of this book, but that's deceptive, as the plot and interactions also stand as a sort of petri-dish proof-of-concept for larger and larger ideas and conflicting worldbuilding elements for the next two books.
main characters: a law major (miserable and lonely), a philosophy major (miserable and lonely and also bitterly disillusioned), a blind street vendor (blisteringly gleeful but just getting started), a fallen angel (delicate, needy, and rigid, also miserable).
minor characters: well-adjusted helpful roommate (annoying), irritable writer (one-armed, hot), multiple academics of various levels of competence (societally interesting), God (hot).
Favorite chapters: “She Hadn’t Known a Thing” “There’s Something A Little Dangerous” “The Idea of Her”
Favorite epigraph: desert-burned | the river its sand | bright as salt
This book (and the rest of the series) has been an obsession of mine since I read it 2 years ago, and as a Jew with an intense relationship to the communities and experiences of mysticism, otherkin, guttertrash, and also psychosis and other madness, I have never before discovered a book that combines so many unrelated ideas that are appealing, recognizable, frankly poking, and wrestling to my worldviews and culture into one single book.
The setting is a pair of motorcycle-filled Levantine fantasy cities with 1930s-ish technology and a casual, blithe attitude to the presence of angels, morally equivalent fallen angels, magical manifestations of people’s souls that are given businesslike and normalized legal protections, gnomish bucolic demons who run orphanages in the wilderness, or harsh and half-mad street merchants and authors scorched into disability by G-d-fire. (G-d is an endlessly curious, mirthful, and flamingly harsh inhuman beautiful entity with no words or body but a very strong and specific sense of personhood; though in personality They more resemble a devil. And those attracted to Them are more arrogant, amoral, and abnormal, like my favorite character Tamar, who has what many would call an inflated ego in her demanding greed and bargaining for a most extreme experience.)
The plot focuses on the minute implications (personal and in the worldbuilding and internal history) of the concept of Theurgy, as the de facto main character Eliya learns it, which is maybe the best take on ‘soul magic’, or magic that comes from one’s soul, achieved through careful pondering and self-understanding of identity and interiority. Anyone who has strenuously pondered their own gender, sexuality, or neurotype would find it recognizable (but more expansive).
this book and series are truly fantastic. deals with metaphysics, philosophy, and complex uncomfortable social entanglements where most parties involved have a questionably functional relationship to the idea of disrupting the status quo. sehhinah as a series and a setting seems fascinated by asking 'and then what?' to concepts that would be the end point of many other series. god negotiates with their creations about their personal preferences wrt existence and life after death and creates a new agreement - and then what? what is it like to live in a world where anyone can talk to god and god has demonstrated interest in life's well-being? what's it like to be an "ordinary person" in a world where anyone (with effort and practice) can cause an expression of their soul to physically exist? what kind of conflicts arise in this manner of utopia, and what kinds of viewpoints? the characters are all specific and strong, with a range of personalities and problems that feel both rooted in their fantastical setting and deeply relatable. plus it's just interesting, and genuinely unexpected in a lot of ways. this book sucked me in first and foremost because i wanted to see what happened next and hear what else the characters had to say.
do not go into this book with the idea that either straightforward christianity or typical 'christian-inspired' concepts and tropes will be a useful framework for what's going on.
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I feel incapable of talking about this series; how I feel about it is both beyond words and yet somehow feels so trite and obvious to say. I feel like I'm losing my mind, like I'm outside and I've found a brick and I am yelling at everyone: "look at this brick!" But everyone has seen thousands of bricks so they pass it by.
There is no grand high-stakes narrative here, there is no spectacular heroes journey, it is a slice of life through and through. And yet—it is anything but mundane. It is intense—reading it felt like going outside in the bright sunlight after being indoors, and being completely blinded and in pain for 15 minutes while my eyes adjust. This series hammered itself into my soul. I will never, ever exist as a person who hasn't read this series, and I would never have it any other way.
The book’s definition of the ‘soul’ is ‘what makes you identifiable to yourself,’ which I could spend ages pondering and debating edge cases of. And the sole commandment for the world that is and the world to come, is ‘your lives will argue for you,’ which the inhabitants of this world have.
There are a lot of clever and sometimes-playful, sometimes-bitter-and-biting reversals of assumptions or common cultural/genre connotations, where the things the characters assume and believe are the opposite of what lots of irl readers would. There's a utopian bent to the setting, as well as the themes, but it mostly expresses itself in a lot of unusually-paced, detailed authorial curiosity about eg, what the core meaning of something like the power to create from one's soul is, when completely divorced from something like "what use does it have." Or what desire to know something could be so intense you’d pay anything to see it. Or, if a traumatic, intense suffering you experienced was immediately acknowledged, rectified, and the world remade to ensure that no one else would suffer so, would you ever heal from it or grow at all even then.
A lot of the main plot seems to conclude by the end of this book, but that's deceptive, as the plot and interactions also stand as a sort of petri-dish proof-of-concept for larger and larger ideas and conflicting worldbuilding elements for the next two books.
main characters: a law major (miserable and lonely), a philosophy major (miserable and lonely and also bitterly disillusioned), a blind street vendor (blisteringly gleeful but just getting started), a fallen angel (delicate, needy, and rigid, also miserable).
minor characters: well-adjusted helpful roommate (annoying), irritable writer (one-armed, hot), multiple academics of various levels of competence (societally interesting), God (hot).
Favorite chapters: “She Hadn’t Known a Thing” “There’s Something A Little Dangerous” “The Idea of Her”
Favorite epigraph: desert-burned | the river its sand | bright as salt
This book (and the rest of the series) has been an obsession of mine since I read it 2 years ago, and as a Jew with an intense relationship to the communities and experiences of mysticism, otherkin, guttertrash, and also psychosis and other madness, I have never before discovered a book that combines so many unrelated ideas that are appealing, recognizable, frankly poking, and wrestling to my worldviews and culture into one single book.
The setting is a pair of motorcycle-filled Levantine fantasy cities with 1930s-ish technology and a casual, blithe attitude to the presence of angels, morally equivalent fallen angels, magical manifestations of people’s souls that are given businesslike and normalized legal protections, gnomish bucolic demons who run orphanages in the wilderness, or harsh and half-mad street merchants and authors scorched into disability by G-d-fire. (G-d is an endlessly curious, mirthful, and flamingly harsh inhuman beautiful entity with no words or body but a very strong and specific sense of personhood; though in personality They more resemble a devil. And those attracted to Them are more arrogant, amoral, and abnormal, like my favorite character Tamar, who has what many would call an inflated ego in her demanding greed and bargaining for a most extreme experience.)
The plot focuses on the minute implications (personal and in the worldbuilding and internal history) of the concept of Theurgy, as the de facto main character Eliya learns it, which is maybe the best take on ‘soul magic’, or magic that comes from one’s soul, achieved through careful pondering and self-understanding of identity and interiority. Anyone who has strenuously pondered their own gender, sexuality, or neurotype would find it recognizable (but more expansive).
this book and series are truly fantastic. deals with metaphysics, philosophy, and complex uncomfortable social entanglements where most parties involved have a questionably functional relationship to the idea of disrupting the status quo. sehhinah as a series and a setting seems fascinated by asking 'and then what?' to concepts that would be the end point of many other series. god negotiates with their creations about their personal preferences wrt existence and life after death and creates a new agreement - and then what? what is it like to live in a world where anyone can talk to god and god has demonstrated interest in life's well-being? what's it like to be an "ordinary person" in a world where anyone (with effort and practice) can cause an expression of their soul to physically exist? what kind of conflicts arise in this manner of utopia, and what kinds of viewpoints? the characters are all specific and strong, with a range of personalities and problems that feel both rooted in their fantastical setting and deeply relatable. plus it's just interesting, and genuinely unexpected in a lot of ways. this book sucked me in first and foremost because i wanted to see what happened next and hear what else the characters had to say.
do not go into this book with the idea that either straightforward christianity or typical 'christian-inspired' concepts and tropes will be a useful framework for what's going on.