I have figured out The Twist.
Okay, well, I think I have.
You know what I mean.
That Shyamalan-esque ironic surprise at the end of a novel or movie that
our culture practically requires in its entertainment choices these days. Huh.
Shakespeare never did that.
Well, in the case of the Lauren Kate Fallen books, I believe I have discerned the nature of The Twist.
For the uninitiated, I suggest you stop reading now, because
I’m about to expound on my theory of the hidden truth behind Luce and Daniel’s
eternal romance and lay some epic spoilers.
For those of you who have read the books, here’s a short refresher:
Lucinda Price, doomed
to be reincarnated every seventeen years, is in love with a fallen angel,
Daniel Grigori. The love of her
existence of course returns her regard, and, being immortal, is subjected to
crushing pain each time he watches his beloved spontaneously combust, which, if
my calculations are correct (six thousand years of existence divided by
seventeen years for each life) is roughly three hundred and fifty times. Ahem, if you happen to believe that humanity
is only six thousand years old. Moving
on. For some reason, carefully cloaked
but often alluded to by the author, the progress of Luce and Daniel’s romance
is avidly followed by the members of the immortal community, those on both
sides of the aisle. Demons and angels
alike are intensely interested in exactly how much Lucinda knows about her
past, and a posse of bipartisan immortals is there to support them every step
of the way. The reason why Cam and
Roland, demons by trade, are so very invested in Dancinda, has not yet been
explained.
It would take too many bytes to fully summarize the plot of
three good-sized books, and I don’t feel like doing it anyway. That’s what Wikipedia is for, though I have
visited the site and I believe the entries for the books were written by a
fifteen year old girl (no offense to fifteen year old girls; I was one once,
but I couldn’t write back then either).
But that’s the general gist of the stories, and if you haven’t read
them, you shouldn’t be reading this. It
will spoil all the surprises.
At the end of the third book in the series, Passion, it is revealed that there is a
curious caveat to this curse business of Luce’s periodic fiery death. If ever her soul comes into being without
being consecrated and ushered into religious life, that is, baptized or Bat
Mitzvah-ed or whatever the Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, etc., equivalents are,
then, there is a chance for the awful cycle to be ended and a happily-ever-after
for the eternally celibate pair.
Running alongside this dilemma is the threat of cosmic war
between Satan and the Almighty, their respective followers having remained
stalemated since the epic Fall. If just
one undecided immortal, assumed to be Daniel, chooses a side, then the scales
will be tipped and all out mayhem and probably End Times will ensue.
Get it? Good.
There is much that is unanswered thus far in the
series. I won’t even get into it right
now, but I have an entire bulleted list of questions I have. Why the hell did Trevor burst into flames,
for example? I only hope that all of
these burning issues (pun intended) will be answered in the fourth installment,
Rapture, due out in Spring 2012.
I don’t have answers to all of my questions, but I have a
pretty shrewd idea of their root cause.
And because I’m bored this afternoon, I have decided to write this
supremely silly post to lay them out.
In a nutshell: Luce is an angel as well.
In my next post, I will present my evidence. Which means a whole lot of speculation about
specific moments in the series. I know,
you just can’t wait, can you? :)
