The Darkglass Mountain Trilogy
By Sara Douglass...
In the begining there was the darkness of chaos named Kanubai. He got lonely and made two beings named Light and Water. Light and Water made Life, and this pissed Kanubai off because he had no part in the process, and he therefore wanted to destroy life. Light and Water then Imprisoned Kanubai. Years pass.
Then the Magi wanted to build a giant glass pyramid, so they could be a part of the One. Unfortunately... they built it on top of Kanubai's Prison. This goes as well as you would expect.
2,000 years later.
It's been five years since Tencendor sunk into the ocean. Ishabel Brunelle, high priestess of the order of the coil, is ordered by the great serpent who is actually Light to marry the Lord of Elcho Falling, Maximilian Persmius (the hero of Beyond the Hanging Wall) in order to save the world. Meanwhile, Isaiah who is actually water, the tyrant of Isembaard, has resurrected Axis Sun Soar from the after life so he can act as an adviser on dealing with the Skrailings and can help him take over the central kingdoms. Essentially, he wants to combine all their forces to assault Darkglass Moutain - but things don't go quite as planned. The novels in the series are as follows:
- The Serpent Bride (2007)
- The Twisted Citadel (2008)
- The Infinity Gate (2010)
- Aerith and Bob
- Exclusively Evil:Skraelings
- Anthropomorphic Personification
- Back from the Dead: Axis
- Big Bad: Kanubai
- Bigger Bad: The One
- Canon Welding: The Axis Trilogy, The Wayfarer Redemption,Beyond the Hanging Wall and Threshold.
- Complete Monster: Kanubai. Responsible for a lot of really bad things happening, including infanticide.
- Cosmic Horror:
- Darker and Edgier: and that is saying something when the previous books involve some of the most horrifying demons since Berserk.
- Deal with the Devil: People who stay near that evil pyramid tend to be corrupted into one of these deals by either it, or Kanubai, the Cosmic Horror of all Cosmic Horrors dwelling inside of it.
- Like Ba'al'uz
- Eldritch Location: that pyramid is not natural, it knows what you want and how to help you attain it...oh, you have a soul? That would be a perfectly acceptable price for whatever you want...
- First Law of Resurrection: Axis
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Ba'al'uz
- God Is Evil: the One
- Gorn: reaches a certain level of it in the first book.
- High Octane Nightmare Fuel: The murder of that kid in the first book, Ba'al'uz himself and how the pyramid works.
- The demon Skraelings...just...the demon Skraelings...
- When Salome is reviled to be an Iccari. Well... it involves being tied to a stake; being raped and having chamber pots poured on her. As well as the same fate as her son (plus getting castrated).
- Improbable Species Compatibility: The entire Lealfast were conceived by one Icarii SummerStar after having sex with a Skraeling she has over 200 Lealfast children.
- Humanoid Abomination: The One
- Hybrid Monster: Lealfast.
- Infant Immortality: averted rather harshly and nightmarishly in the first book.
- The Chick: Salome
- The Load: Hereward
- The Man Behind the Man: The One
- Redemption Equals Death: the Skraelings become River Angels by drowning themselves in a lake.
- Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: to many, Axis in these books is much more tolerable because Azhure is not revived with him.
- Resurrection Sickness: Axis
- Scrap Heap Hero: Axis
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Kanubai as well as the One
- Squick
- The Usual Adversaries: Skraelings
- What the Hell, Hero??