History Literature / LabyrinthsOfEcho

* TheAlcatraz: The AntiMagic prison Kholomi, designed to hold the most dangerous prisoners. The only successful attempt to penetrate the barrier involved dying and walking as a non-corporeal spirit. Another time, Juffin was called to supervise scrubbing the remnants of almost-escapee from the walls.
** The castle was built right on top of the Heart of the World, from sentient stones, by the founder of the Ancient Dynasty, Khalla Makhun the Furry, who asked every single stone where it wanted to be placed. So the place was the palace of monarchs, then buckled, set up a [[NarniaTime different time scale]] and was used as a WizardingSchool, and in the Era of Codex it chose to change again and became the ultimate prison. Oh, and there's also the [[GeniusLoci spirit of Kholomi]], which will from time to time wake up and require two extraordinarily strong mages to keep it from dancing.
* AlternateSelf: The Murakoks have several of them living in different worlds across the setting's [[TheMultiverse many worlds]]. They believe that all of their lives are equally real.

* BackgroundMagicField: the Heart of the World. Almost all citizens of Echo, built upon the Heart's location, are fairly competent at Plain Magic - babies keep their diapers clean by a grade 2 spell. Magic items from all over the world gain a significant power boost in Echo, and items and enchantments from Echo either weaken or drain other power sources if moved away.

* FantasticDrug: Psychoactive substances of another world generally are a gamble. Max is wasted and nearly killed by a weak and utterly safe relaxant, but mostly immune to side effects of a strong psychostimulant. In turn, Max accidentally acquired pot smoking which [[spoiler:temporarily disabled his friends LawfulGood personality, so that old ChaoticStupid version re-emerged]].

* OneManArmy: Most of the LSIF members, given that it is an OddlySmallOrganisation with just eight or nine officers, two of whom ([[MagicLibrarian Luukfi Pentz]] and [[TheCoroner Skalduar van Dufunbukh]]) are clearly support personnel and never work in the field, but [[AuthorAvatar Max]], [[TheAce Shurf]] and [[GodModeSue Juffin]] in particular. Kofa is no slouch himself, but he's [[RetiredBadass mostly retired from action]], while Melifaro, Melamori and Numminorikh are (usually) still [[CantCatchUp a full notch below]].

%% this is neither CultureClash nor BlueAndOrangeMorality, and not really an in-universe SocietyMarchesOn.

* GoodIsNotSoft: Looking for a way to dispatch Ugurbado and being unable to do so himself due to Ugurbado's [[PowerParasite unique relationship with those to kill him]], Max suggests using reanimated corpses, assuming that Ugurbado would take their "power" of being dead. The undead rip the fully conscious Ugurbado to shreds. Due to said corpses being Anavuayna victims, Ugurbado returns to the multiverse dying from Anavuayna and attempts to goad Loyso Pondokhva into killing him to override the effect. Loyso merely invites Max into his [[TailorMadePrison pocket world]] to share the entertainment.

** Among other abilities, Ugurbado becomes as powerful as any person who kills him.

* PreviouslyOverlookedParamour: Max's initial love interest in the series is the ActionGirl Melamori, but after a series of supernatural occurrences, they must break up under pain of one of them dying. A few novellas later, Max meets Tekhhi, a demure inn proprietor who named her establishment after Max's cats in an attempt to catch his attention, and eventually falls in love with her. The two of them remain together for most of the series until Tekhhi's tragic death. Max is then reunited with Melamori, having found a way to cheat the curse that turned them into StarcrossedLovers.

* OurElvesAreBetter: Not better, but very different from fantasy standards. In ''A Bequest for Lonli-Lokli'', Shurf takes the time needed to drive from Echo to the backwater place where his inheritance awaits to drop an InfoDump regarding various sentient species on Max. Said dump also contains a multiple level StealthPun nicely dispersed inside, building upon the established elven vulnerability to alcohol. The overall species name is keyifayi ("кейифайи"). [[spoiler:Closest Russian word is "кайф", meaning "flush" or "high".]] The foremost difference between elves, humans and krays is the formers' absence of binary logic. They do not clearly grasp dichotomies like good vs. evil, black vs. white or for that matter male vs. female. The last heavily influences their and their descendants' love lives to the dismay of non-elven populations. [[spoiler:Max is shocked to learn that King Gurig, being of elven descent, has a male and a female "favorite liaison".]]\\

* UnevenHybrid: Late in the series Max learns that most of his colleagues have non-humans down their bloodlines: Juffin, like most Kettarians, has some [[OurWerewolvesAreDifferent werefox]] blood in him; Shurf is descended from the [[OurElvesAreBetter elves]]; Melifaro has [[HeinzHybrid both]] [[OurDwarvesAreAllTheSame dwarven]] ''and'' [[OurGiantsAreBigger giant]] ancestors; Melamori has a lot of elven and [[{{Invisibility}} faff]] blood. In fact, the only pure-blooded humans in Secret Investigations are Kofa and Max himself (insofar one disregards his birth in an entirely different world).

* PortalDoor: Almost a motif. Max either tweaked his Khumgat entry or conditioned himself to leave the world only via doors opened in the darkness. Closing eyes counts -- which is good, since soon he began to see in normal darkness simply due to living in the Heart of the World long enough. Then the Labyrinth of Mönin used much the same form of travel, only directly and without darkness.

* OneManArmy: Most of the LSIF members, given that it is an OddlySmallOrganisation with just eight or nine officers, two of whom ([[{{Adorkable}} Luukfi]] [[MagicLibrarian Pentz]] and [[TheCoroner Skalduar van Dufunbukh]]) are clearly support personnel and never work in the field, but [[AuthorAvatar Max]], [[TheAce Shurf]] and [[GodModeSue Juffin]] in particular. Kofa is no slouch himself, but he's [[RetiredBadass mostly retired from action]], while Melifaro, Melamori and Numminorikh are (usually) still [[CantCatchUp a full notch below]].

'''Labyrinths of Echo''' (original title: "Лабиринты Ехо"[[note]]In the series, "Ехо" (pronounced "YEH-kho") is the name of a city. Although it is customarily transliterated as "Echo", the Russian word for "echo", as in the sound effect, is "эхо" (pronounced "EH-kho").[[/note]]) is a Russian UrbanFantasy-slash-MagicalLand series written between 1996 and 2003 by Svetlana Martynchik, better known by her pen name Max Frei. Extremely popular in Russia, it is in the process of being translated into English, with the first volume (''The Stranger'') published in 2009 by Overlook Press.

* JustBeforeTheEnd: The shadow of the apocalypse has been hanging over the world since the War of the Codex, and pretty much the entire series is, in one way or another, about preventing it from occurring. [[spoiler:It should have been already ''after'' the end, but they got an earlier [[RealityWarper Arbiter]] to enforce a more satisfying timeline, and even that is barely enough. Max, being an [[RealityWarper Arbiter]] himself, and learning that our world's population has many more Arbiters, comes up with the LiteraryAgentHypothesis solution: he publishes his adventures as a book, thus making the Arbiters among the readers wish for the stories to continue and thus for the world to persist.]]

* LiteraryAgentHypothesis: In the preface of volume one, Martynchik and the books' illustrator Igor Styopin claimed to have received the manuscripts of the book from Max himself during his visit to our world.