History Literature / DarkLordOfDerkholm

* HonorBeforeReason: Felim has a mild case of this- he often feels compelled to do things by his honor, but his friends talk him into sensible behavior when necessary.

* [[CoolVersusAwesome Pirates vs Ninjas]]: When Olga's father and his crew (pirates) encounter the Ampersandian assassins (ninjas). They team up.

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Querida, on realizing that her manipulations of Derk and Mara may have threatened their marriage, and certainly endangered their children.

* ParentExMachina: not literally; but the return of Querida and the older wizards to the University plays with this.

* CatsAreMagic: Dirk's cats, which he bred to be invisible, are also inexplicably unable to be trapped for long, they always find their way out, even from magical barriers.
* ChewToy: Derk. Oh, heavens, Derk. [[spoiler: In school, he was ridiculed and belittled by his teachers, including Querida, who goes on to make his life all kinds of hell afterward. She constantly schemes to kidnap or otherwise steal away his own children for her magical vaults, she enchants his wife so she thinks she wants to leave him, and she constantly undermines all his efforts to do the damn job she forced him into! On top of all this, in the course of the novel his house is demolished, he's almost killed by a dragon who mistakes him for the actual BigBad, his family falls apart, and his son is murdered before his eyes.]] If your heart doesn't bleed for poor Derk, you may want to get it checked.

* {{Stripperiffic}}: Some of Mara's Glamorous Enchantress costumes.

* BalefulPolymorph:
** Elda turns the pirates that came for Olga into mice, who are later caged.
** [[spoiler:Wermacht]] accidentally turns himself into a footstool when Flury says ''he'' is responsible for the furniture following Claudia.

* MixedAncestry: Claudia has such a background, and she suffers for it rather a lot.

* AmusingInjuries: Averted early in the book where Querida gets run over by Derk's animals. In what would likely be an Amusing Injuries situation in most works, they instead have her suffering multiple broken bones that lead to her being in a magical coma for a significant portion of the book. In contrast, when Reville gets trampled by horses later, he suffers nothing more than a few painful bruises.

* AutomatonHorses: Averted. Quite a lot of attention is paid to how horses need rest and Blade in particular ignores several important dignitaries to tend to Barnabas' horse after he finds the latter passed out drunk.

* GeniusBruiser: Kit

* SufficientlyAnalyzedMagic

* TheAtoner: Querida, after she realizes that she has caused actual harm to Derk and his family.
* AutomatonHorses: averted with a vengeance.

* FamilyUnfriendlyDeath: ''Barnabas''. Dear Lord, Barnabas.
* FriendToAllLivingThings: Derk.
* GeniusBruiser: Scales

* MyGodWhatHaveIDone: Querida, on realizing what she's done to Derk's family.

* OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame

* SupremeChef: Lydda is the only griffin who really likes cooked food--in fact, she's a ''master'' of it.
** Mmm... godlike snacks.
* UpliftedAnimal: Derk's specialty.
** SapientSteed / TalkingAnimal: The winged horses (although the first generation has a bit of trouble with vowels).
** AscendedToCarnivorism: The carnivorous sheep.

* AYearAndADay

* InstantAwesomeJustAddDragons: Scales.

* MedievalStasis: Subverted. While the denizens of Derk's world have to make their world ''look'' permanently medieval for the tourists, they actually have many kinds of technology. Some houses in the nearby village have electricity, to Mr. Chesney's chagrin.
** Also, modern technology is being smuggled in--Derk's children think their new UsefulNotes/{{GameBoy}}s are amazing.
* MessyPig

* OurDragonsAreDifferent: Although they, too, have to pretend to be the same for the sake of the tourists.
** Turns out, the real reason dragons hoard gold is because [[spoiler:they get "vital vitamins" from sitting on it.]]

* OurElvesAreBetter: Played with and parodied. The most prominent elf character is a ProudWarriorRaceGuy, and quite decent. The rest probably the same, but they don't get as much attention as he does. They do make you feel like you suck after they leave, but they don't actually ''say'' anything about it -- it just seems to come naturally to them.
** Dragons pick up much of the slack in the holier-and-wiser-than-thou department, an aloof attitude which Scales (who has claim to being a wiser dragon than any of them) both lampshades and criticizes.

* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: Throughout the book, the hero, Derk, attempts to figure out what to make his next project. He spends a lot of it mulling over making mermaids [[spoiler: in the hopes that collaborating to carry and raise a mermaid child will help bring him and his wife closer together.]]
* ObfuscatingStupidity: [[spoiler: Think Sukey is just a BrainlessBeauty? Think again.]]
** In fact, [[spoiler:most of Blade's tour group is working for some government agency or another.]]
* ParentsAsPeople
* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Elf Prince Talithan, and Scales. Talithan is at one point highly upset because the city [[DesignatedVillain he was going to sack]] [[spoiler: didn't have any people in it]].

* SixStudentClique: The students.
** The Head: Lukin
** The Muscle: Ruskin
** The Quirk: Felim
** The Pretty One: Olga
** The Smart One: Claudia
** The Wild One: Elda (Though Elda is TheHero, in the story)

* {{Adorkable}}: Pretty much all of Elda's male friends in the sequel are rather endearingly awkward. Lukin is probably the ''most'' confident (it's hard to say whether Ruskin's is this or bravado), but Felim is the most obviously awkward-sweet. Not to mention Derk himself.
** [=Flurian Atreck/Flury=] in spades. Elda hates it because she's used to Kit's overbearing attitude.

* FiveManBand: Derk's seven children in the original:
** TheLeader: Kit.
** TheLancer: Shona to Blade, Blade (frequently the POV character) to Kit, the two humans.
** TheBigGuy: Don and later, [[spoiler: Lydda]] (who was actually created by Derk to be surprisingly tough).
** TheSmartGuy: Callette. Shona can sometimes function in this role as well.
** TheChick: Lydda and Blade.
** TagalongKid: Elda.

** Also, modern technology is being smuggled in--Derk's children think their new GameBoys are amazing.

* TrulySingleParent: Only two of Derk's seven children [[spoiler: nine in the sequel]] were born in the natural way. The others were created by him in his magical lab. However, he ''does'' use DNA from his wife and himself in the other children, so they're still "related" to both their parents. This despite being ''griffins'' (the human DNA provides the brainpower, the body comes from the eagle and lion DNA; Elda also has cat thrown in to make her not as huge as her siblings).

* KingIncognito: [[spoiler:Scales]] is actually [[spoiler: Deucalion, king of the dragons,]] while [[spoiler: Reville is actually the hereditary head of the Thieves' Guild.]]