There's a right way and a wrong to do incest.
(In fiction, obviously. I'm pretty certain there's no good way to do it real life.)
The fantasy genre is no stranger to this particular theme, and not just since Game of Thrones. Sara Douglass is infamous for it, Terry Pratchett pulled an ambiguous did-they-or-didn't they in Pryamids, and Glenda Larke tackled it head-on in Heart of the Mirage. They approached it from different angles and different perspectives, but they did so with an awareness that it's a sensitive issue and a controversial topic.
Medalon... I'm going to be really mean here... Medalon was just weird about it.
To give some context, Medalon is based in a world where a corrupt church is in power and oppresses different races and faiths. Two of the main characters, R'shiel and Tarja, are the son and daughter of a high-standing church official. Plot happens, and they discover that R'shiel is not actually the official's daughter, she was just adopted for boring reasons I won't get into. Anyway, what with one thing and another, they run away and start a rebellion because that's how adults handle problems. And during this rebellion, they get cursed by the shittiest love goddess in the multi-verse and decide that despite being raised as siblings they are wildly attracted to one another.
To be fair, this is not entirely different to what happens in the Axis Trilogy or the Mirage Makers. Both trilogies exist in worlds where the ruling class are blessed/cursed (mostly cursed) to only find fulfilling relationships within their own bloodlines. The difference is that these trilogies addressed the inherent issues within this. Characters like Axis and Ligea, who were raised in separate cultures, were revolted by the practice and compromised by finding lovers who were distantly related enough not to freak them out. Characters like Caelum and Zenith played out the full horror of the premise, showing the logical outcome, and it's not awesome.
In comparison, while Medalon attempts to do something similar with the love goddess, it just comes off as a cheap attempt to explain why the two characters suddenly violated such a strong taboo. And don't tell me just because they're not blood-related they're not siblings - there's a lot of adopted people who'd violently disagree. If Medalon was going to go there, particularly in a culture where incest is forbidden, it needed either to show either how screwed up these two characters were that they were okay with it (think Jamie and Cersei Lannister) or the horrible implications of being entrapped into these feelings by a power outside your control (as per Zenith and StarDrifter SunSoar).
As it is, Medalon treats incest as a disposable barrier in it's will-they-or-won't-they romance, and that's not okay. I'm going to hope that the sequels address this issue with more nuance. Otherwise I'm going to be coming back here and ranting some more.
"She had long ago stopped thinking of him as her brother and was envious enough of Mandah to recognise jealousy when she felt it."
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