History Literature / Fablehaven

* TheAtoner:[[spoiler:The astrids. They were elite guards in the Fairy Queen's realm until their negligence led to the fall of the Fairy King. The Fairy Queen stripped them of their power as punishment, leaving them in the forms of owls with androgynous faces]]. Though a few turned away and went dark, the vast majority retain the hope of one day earning forgiveness and continue to help in whatever way they can, up to and including giving their lives to protect Kendra. [[spoiler:They finally earn the Fairy Queen's forgiveness in the fifth book, when she gives Kendra the ability to restore them to their former glory.]]

** The Fairy Queen sometimes qualifies, at least in her benevolent moods.

* AffablyEvil: Nero may be a greedy brute, but he's always polite, in his own oily way, and he never takes action against the heroes. When Seth fails his climbing challenge, Nero makes it a point to save him from a great fall, rationalizing that having come as far as he did in the challenge Seth earned a victory.

* AllTrollsAreDifferent: Nero the cliff troll, from the first book, is an oversized, humanoid reptile.

* BagOfHolding[=/=]{{Hammerspace}}: The transdimensional knapsack. Its opening leads to a room that can be used for storage, hiding, carrying around wounded party members, and more.

* CombatTentacles: The strips hanging off of Ephira's torn dress serve as this.

* CruelAndUnusualDeath: All of them. In ''Rise of the Evening Star'' it's [[spoiler: Errol getting mauled to death by the Guardian for the 'sands of sancity'. Vanessa drops him on purpose when he gets too heavy. In ''Grip of the Shadow Plague'' (which is significantly darker) it's several violent deaths in search of the artifact in the Lost Mesa, and then Lena's crushing death at the end]]. That's only a few examples! All the deaths are gory or sad.
** It's never specified how [[spoiler: Rosa]] died, but considering it involved a few hundred zombies an a dragon's skeleton it couldn't have been pretty.
* CurbStompBattle: At the end of book 5: [[spoiler:Seth to Graulas and Kendra to Gorgrog.]]

* HarpingOnAboutHarpies: A few appear in the fifth book.
* [[HaveYouTriedNotBeingAMonster Have You Tried Not Being A Fairy Dragon]]: Raxtus. Poor guy.

* HeelFaceTurn: After being TheMole, [[spoiler: Vanessa decides to join up with the good guys.]] It's also a MistreatmentInducedBetrayal, because [[spoiler: she feels as if the Sphinx abandoned her when he left her in the Quiet Box.]]

* HeroicSacrifice: [[spoiler: Lena in ''Shadow Plague.'']]

* MayflyDecemberRomance: Patton Burgess married a naiad; even after becoming "human," she still lived on for a long time without really aging. [[spoiler: Kendra and Bracken also fall hard for each other, but as they openly acknowledge, there's a lot against them. During the GrandFinale's denouement, they both acknowledge that they need some time to get to know each other--and Kendra needs time to mature--before they can really solidify anything.]]
** [[spoiler: Kendra's considering becoming an Eternal in part to avert this trope.]]

* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: Raxtus, the self-proclaimed "lamest of the dragons."
* MysticalWhiteHair: Bracken has this.

* OminousOwl: The owl-like astrids in Book 4 are pretty dang creepy, at first.

* WellIntentionedExtremist: [[spoiler: The Sphinx...sort of. Maybe. At the very least he started out as this; born a slave on the Living Mirage preserve, he led a revolution against his cruel masters and vowed to create a world without slavery or prisons. He also believes that the fall of Zzyzx is an inevitability, and claims that he wishes to open it in the right way in order to minimize the destruction. However, the Fairy Queen also mentioned that he has been corrupted by a desire for power, so it's hard to say how much of his self-proclaimed motives are true.]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/FableHaven1Cover.PNG]]

* WhoWantsToLiveForever: [[spoiler: Some of the Eternals haven't dealt with immortality well at all.]]

* KickTheSonOfABitch: Society member Christopher Vogel finds a bar of gold lying about and takes it with him. It was Nero's gold, which the satyrs had stolen earlier, and an incredibly pissed Nero beats the crap out of him to take it back.

* {{Bishonen}}: In book 5, ''Bracken.'' Tall, willowy, and with tons of beautiful silvery-white hair.

* SurpriseCreepy: [[CoversAlwaysLie Damn kid-friendly covers.]]

The [[WomenAreWiser intelligent and cautious Kendra Sorenson]] and her [[SiblingYinYang curious and brave younger brother Seth]] are shipped off to spend the summer with their paternal grandparents after their mother's parents are killed in an accident. (Part of their grandparents' will stipulated that a portion of their money be used to send their children on a cruise as a "parting gift.") Reeling from the loss, they don't expect to enjoy the trip much, but are pleasantly surprised to discover that their other grandparents live in a spacious mansion. They've also got a garden filled with more birds, insects, and flowers than anyone they've ever met. But after sipping some of the milk left out for the "birds," they learn the truth: The "birds and insects" are actually ''fairies!'' The milk enables them to see them in their true forms. Their grandfather reveals that they are actually caretakers of a wildlife preserve for magical creatures named Fablehaven. It's filled to the brim with colorful fairies, witty and [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] fauns, GentleGiant golems, and a couple of dangerous giants and trolls. Grandpa, along with his assistants Dale and Lena, offers to show the two siblings around the preserve, and begin to teach them the strange and exiciting ways of the magical reserves.

The [[WomenAreWiser intelligent and measured Kendra Sorenson]] and her [[SiblingYinYang knuckleheaded younger brother Seth]] are shipped off to spend the summer with their paternal grandparents after their mother's parents are killed in an accident. (Part of their grandparents' will stipulated that a portion of their money be used to send their children on a cruise as a "parting gift.") Reeling from the loss, they don't expect to enjoy the trip much, but are pleasantly surprised to discover that their other grandparents live in a spacious mansion. They've also got a garden filled with more birds, insects, and flowers than anyone they've ever met. But after sipping some of the milk left out for the "birds," they learn the truth: The "birds and insects" are actually ''fairies!'' The milk enables them to see them in their true forms. Their grandfather reveals that they are actually caretakers of a wildlife preserve for magical creatures named Fablehaven. It's filled to the brim with colorful fairies, witty and [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] fauns, GentleGiant golems, and a couple of dangerous giants and trolls. Grandpa, along with his assistants Dale and Lena, offers to show the two siblings around the preserve, and begin to teach them the strange and exiciting ways of the magical reserves.

* PinocchioSyndrome: Wizards are dragons that took permanent human form in order to greatly increase their magical powers. Comes at the cost of their ability to radiate fear, everything they could do physically in dragon form (like flying), and their [[WhoWantsToLiveForever immortality]]. They still age really slowly though.

* BalefulPolymorph: Fairies kept indoors at night turn into imps, which are sort of reverse fairies; both are quite vain, but where fairies are aware of how pretty they are and therefore good-natured in a shallow sort of way, imps are just as aware of how ugly they are, which makes them incredibly nasty.
** This also occasionally happens to the humans in the series--[[spoiler:the best example is Grandma's chicken transformation.]]

* LivingForeverIsAwesome: [[spoiler: Of the three eternals, Marcus is clearly WhoWantsToLiveForever, and Civia is ProperlyParanoid and regards her immortality as a duty, Roon, though never met while he was alive, seemed to be this, getting together a group of people to hunt and fight all sorts of monsters, and to continue these hunts because he was immortal.]]

* AllMythsAreTrue: Kendra and Seth have a very interesting discussion with Lena on this possibility in the first book. [[spoiler: By book 5, it seems there are few mythic creatures and beings that don't have real counterparts in the world of "whimsical" beings.]]

%%* AncientConspiracy: The Society of the Evening Star

* BagOfHolding[=/=]{{Hammerspace}}: The transdimensional knapsack.

* BreathWeapon: Dragons. While we see a few breathing fire, most have a more unique breath weapon. [[spoiler:Navarog]] breathes molten metal, Siletta breathes poison, and dragon king Celebrant is described as having at least five separate breath weapons [[spoiler:(one made of pure energy is used on Brogo in the fifth book).]] Subverted with Raxtus, whose breath makes plants grow.

* ButtMonkey: [[spoiler: Warren]] and Dale experience this at different levels. Dale is often harmed or rendered incapable of helping the team, e.g. [[spoiler: turned to lead, turned into a shadow, holed up in the barn when Graulas destroys the treaty, ''"Dale, I'm sorry you're in a net".'']] And if one of the Knights gets hurt on a mission, it's probably [[spoiler:Warren.]] He's been [[spoiler:stabbed, clawed with harpy venom, trapped in an extradimensional space, turned into a mute albino]]--you name it. The number of injuries he sustains throughout the series--and the fact that [[spoiler:he ''survives all of them'']] is downright incredible.

%%* TheChessmaster: [[spoiler: The Sphinx.]]

* DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu: [[spoiler: The end of Book 5. Three demons? Seriously?]]
** [[spoiler:Earlier, in book 2, we have the scene with the revenant, which may be viewed as even more awesome than the demon-killing in Book 5, considering that Seth had no special powers at the time, far less experience with the magical world, and was armed with only a pair of pliers.]]

* EasilyForgiven: Averted like ''woah.'' The only reason [[spoiler: Vanessa]] is accepted "back" is desperation; they still don't wholly trust [[spoiler: her]]. Not to mention all the skepticism Seth deals with whenever he suggests a risky course of action, usually accompanied by references to his reckless mistakes from Book 1.

%%* TheFairFolk

* FantasticFragility: It's evidently a rule of magic that everything which has a beginning must also have an end. This is why Zzyzx was made with keys: By leaving one specific and extremely complex way to open the prison, its builders were able to ensure that it couldn't fail in any other way.

* FantasyKitchenSink

** [[spoiler:When the fairies reprogrammed Mendigo to serve the heroes.]]

* MauveShirt: Several Knights are named and accompany them on missions, like Dougan, Vincent, Aaron and Mara. Some Society troops also have minor importance, like the Kobold [[spoiler:and Errol]].

%%** [[spoiler:Gavin's dragon form.]]

* ParentalObliviousness: In spite of all attempts to avert this by the grandparents, since birth Kendra's mother and father have been blissfully unaware of the magical world the rest of the family is deeply ingrained in.
** It should be noted that in cases where family members do not strike them as being Caretaker material, they deliberately make sure the clues will be hidden. Ignorance of the existence of magical creatures is (almost) a 100% foolproof way of being protected from them.

* SealedRoomInTheMiddleOfNowhere: [[spoiler:The transdimensional backpack serves as this for Warren at the end of the fourth book and the beginning of the fifth book.]]
* SequelEscalation: WordOfGod states Mull wrote the series so the books would "build on each other in fun ways". Book 1 is pretty tame compared to the rest, with everything but the first few pages taking place at the titular preserve. By the fifth book, maybe 50% of the story happens at Fablehaven, and the characters see [[spoiler:Obsidian Waste and Living Mirage, two more of the five secret preserves.]]''Dragonwatch'' also manages to be this to ''Fablehaven'' as a whole, since it starts where the previous series left off and somehow manages to ''keep building'' on the potentially apocalyptic crisis of Book 5.

* WoundThatWillNotHeal: Taken UpToEleven with things damaged by the Unforgiving Blade. Shortly after getting it, Seth cuts through an enemy sorceress's shield with the Blade, and as a result the sorceress ''will never be able to cast that spell again''. Similarly, [[spoiler: since Seth cut the strings of the Harp of Ages with the Blade, it can never be restrung.]]

The [[WomenAreWiser intelligent and measured Kendra Sorenson]] and her [[SiblingYinYang knuckleheaded younger brother Seth]] are shipped off to spend the summer with their paternal grandparents after their mother's parents are killed in an accident. (Part of their grandparent's will stipulated that a portion of their money be used to send their children on a cruise as a "parting gift.") Reeling from the loss, they don't expect to enjoy the trip much, but are pleasantly surprised to discover that their other grandparents live in a spacious mansion. They've also got a garden filled with more birds, insects, and flowers than anyone they've ever met. But after sipping some of the milk left out for the "birds," they learn the truth: The "birds and insects" are actually ''fairies!'' The milk enables them to see them in their true forms. Their grandfather reveals that they are actually caretakers of a wildlife preserve for magical creatures named Fablehaven. It's filled to the brim with colorful fairies, witty and [[DeadpanSnarker snarky]] fauns, GentleGiant golems, and a couple of dangerous giants and trolls. Grandpa, along with his assistants Dale and Lena, offers to show the two siblings around the preserve, and begin to teach them the strange and exiciting ways of the magical reserves.

Death and the Society await around every corner. Will Kendra and Seth be able to work with their friends and prevent demons from destroying the world? Even moreso -- will they ''survive?''

* BigDamnHeroes: [[spoiler: Albino!Tanu and Coulter]] at the climax of ''Rise of the Evening Star.'' In [[spoiler: Tanu]]'s case, it's literal.

The fifth and final book in the series, ''Dragonwatch: Return of the Dragon Slayers'', is set to release on October 26th, 2021.

* NotSoDifferent: [[spoiler: Seth and the Sphinx: Both shadow charmers. The Sphinx, however, has a bad case of hubris.]]

* CrazyAwesome: Patton Burgess is acknowledged as this in-universe. Seth's aiming for it, but he's not there yet.

* TheMole: Great gravy! [[spoiler: The Sphinx]] is the most prominent example, but the first major one is [[spoiler: Vanessa]], and [[spoiler: Gavin (a. k. a. Navarog)]] shows his TrueColors at either the worst or best possible time.

An unnamed fifth and final ''Dragonwatch'' book is set to release later in 2021.