every sin every curse

1. Qebba's Hate: So, so, so obsessed with this story. Like this was what really made me understand Flat Earth has masterful, to me at least. Like the story of Bisuneh, and Qebba legitimately feels like a real story that you could find told in any place of the ancient world; like a real foundational myth that's trying to understand where suffering comes from, where hate comes from, where undying rage comes from. The organization of humans, a messianic figure. It also has my absolute favourite prose in the whole series

"The curse of Bisuneh was very strong, for everything in her, who had once been named Honey-Sweet, had turned as bitter as gall."

"'Your life." Said Qebba. His sunken eyes gleamed with his hate. "Your life and the life of the world. My powers are expanding. I will see to it. None shall be happy, for I was never happy. None shall live, for I never had a chance at life. None shall love, save in the grave, for that is where my lover couches.'"

"Only his brain worked. It gnawed inward, like a rat. His brain was all hate. Hate devoured him. It reached his heart and soul. HIs hate had nowhere to travel now, it could not escape. So, like any large force contained, it began to ferment, to seethe."

"And the works of Hate were not done. The earth itself, bearing these struggles on her back, began to writhe and groan with malice. Her beautiful places became battlefields, crows flapped on the corpse of her land among her burned woods and among the ruins of each vast metropolis that had been her jewel. Now the ground split with earthquake, mountains spewed up fire, and seas boiled over like cauldrons. By day the face of the sun was livid, and by night the moon was red."

"There is much wickedness in you." said the lips of Hate, and they silkily slavered. "I would devour you if I could. Trade with me. Give me your wickedness, and shall be a Lord of the world through all her final and tumultuous days."..."You have slain many," whispered the mouth of Hate greedily. "Slay others. I will give you a whole army to slay-they will rush at you screaming and their teeth flash in the red moonlight and you sahll stretch forth your arms and they will expire, and I shall be fed. Come, I will find you beautiful women and you shall cut their pearl flesh with a jeweled knife and find rubies under the skin. I know a vault where men have buried a beautiful boy alive. I will let you see him. His flesh is like alabaster and his hair like spilled white wine. To the north of the world a great many mountains have exploded in fire. The magma runs down like golden snakes upon the cities below. To the south, the seas are running over the land like silver dogs. Come, I will give you a sea and a mountain, come."

"Hate could not bear it. Hate fed on hate, and now perforce it fed on love, and love choked it. Even the love of Azharn, the wickedest of all the wicked, the love of the Demon for earth that has no god, gods being above such things, any longer cared for. There was an explosion of many lights and thunderings as the love of the Demon for the earth destroyed the earth's Hate."

Like it's really monumental to me, really vivid how this curse spreads and works, how it delights in atrocity and suffering and horror. Also love the end bit with the six (seven?) sisters who all give birth to pieces of Azharn in order to faciliate his rebirth. Like it's all a play on Jesus (both Azharn's sacrifice to save humanity and then being born of a virgin, well several virgins). Even the last bit about how the age of human innocence was over is a really nice punch to it.

2. Simmu, and Zhirem: I think Deaths Master is my favourite as a whole, the shift from smaller sort of contained stories kind of ends with his book, and I had trouble picking a specific bit because I find it all soo good. Like talking about Simmu, and Zhirem specifically and you miss Narasen, and Lylas, and Kassafeh, and Yolsippa, and Simmurad, and Uhlume and all of it, it's so good. That said Simmu and his relationship to Zhirem is the heart of this and it's so fraught, and melancholic, and awful, and horrifying. They're both bound as these two "heroic" figures that slowly decend into these vile versions of themselves as the apathetic and selfish king and the wicked and vengeful sorcerer. Like there's a lot going on here, their eventual ends too.

3. Jasrin and the Tower of Baybhelu: This is a very small, somewhat ontained story at the start of Delusion's Master but I really liked it all the same. I read this novel shortly after giving birth and Jasrin's horror and insanity in the wake of inadvertently killing her own child (While she was attempting to abandoned it nonetheless) really struck me. I've also always been fascinated by the Tower of Babel, and it's clearly riffing off that with Nemdur. Jasrin loving and obsessed over her husband also wishing for him to experience insanity too was probably my favourite bit here, right alongside Jasrin and Nemdur's second wife comforting each other in the wake of the Baybhelu's fall.

4. Azhriaz and Shudm of the Ghouls: In love with this horror story that appears in the middle of the Night's Daughter, because that's really what it is; Jadrid recounting, while hiding his identity, of all the calamity and misfortune visited upon his family for the crime of marrying Liliu (Also love Lee's use of names, Liliu is very obviously calling to mind the Sumerian night spirits called Lilitu). I appreciate that Liliu and her family aren't vampires but keeping with TftFE and it's 1001 Nights inspriration that they're defined as corpse eating ghouls. Flat Eath is filled constantly with horror and misery but I think there's a lot more evocative stuff here like Jadrid finding a strand of her underneath the slabs, their night feast in the catacombs, Liliu sucking the blood from Jadrid's ankle at night, her corpse after giving birth, the city after the ghouls have taken over, the giant wine tankard with the drowned woman in it... it's all really spine tingling! I also like how Lee never shys away from the grotesque, immoral, and disturbing thematic bits in these stories. Like clearly the fate of the city of Shudm and Jadrid himself seems to strongly suggest he should have killed his "born totally evil" son as soon as he laid eyes on him! And ultimately this son does kill him when Azhriaz encases them in crystal so they're forced to cannibalize each other. Love that Shudm of the Ghouls just goes out in this like violent spectacle witnessed only by Azhriaz. Also really like Liliu's spirit returning briefly to castigate Azhriaz for killing her son and all Azhriaz can think of is; even the ghoul's love their children but not my father :( lmao.