History Literature / Lionboy

* AnimalTalk: Charlie gains the ability to talk to felines (plus a chameleon) after accidentally getting leopard blood into his system when he was very young.

* SpeaksFluentAnimal: Charlie can speak Cat.

* LovableLizard: Ninu, a friendly little chameleon who befriends Charlie and Sergei.

* ScaryBlackMan: Maccomo, the circus' lion tamer, hails from Africa, and is one of the most dangerous, cunning, and cruel characters in the entire series. Aneba generally isn't, being more of a GentleGiant, but he does play up the image to try and freak his kidnappers out in the first book.

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: When [[ItsAllAboutMe Mabel Stark]] wants to use Charlie's Cat-talking ability to communicate with her tigers, he bluntly points out to her that [[BeCarefulWhatYouWishFor she might not want to do so]], since "did she really think they loved her, or wanted to be with her?" Unsurprisingly, she breaks into tears. This is eventually subverted however near the end of the third book, when Charlie asks everyone want they want for the future and [[SugarWiki/HeartwarmingMoments the tigers say they love Mabel, only want to stay with her, and cry at the thought of being parted from her]].

* ScaryBlackMan: Maccomo, the circus' lion tamer, hails from Africa, and is one of the most dangerous, cunning, and cruel characters in the entire series.

* BigBad: The Head Chief Executive, leader of the Corporacy.

[[quoteright:230:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lionboy.jpg]]

* AdultsAreUseless: Mostly subverted. Any adult character who isn't evil is usually very helpful.

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Averted with Ninu, a friendly little chameleon who befriends Charlie and Sergei.

* StepfordSmiler: Everyone in the Corporacy, because they put a chemical in the air that causes people to conform to their standards.
* UnexpectedCharacter: Aside from Mabel Stark (although in retrospect she makes sense, as long as you HandWave her living in the future instead of the past), of all the political figures Charlie could meet to aid him in his quest, the King of Bulgaria has to be the oddest choice.

The '''''Lionboy''''' trilogy is a young adult series by Zizou Corder, the psuedonym of Louisa Young and Isabel Adomakoh Young. Our hero is a British boy named Charlie who was born to a black father, Aneba, and a white mother, Magdalen. But Charlie is even more special than he seems. He can speak to cats because of an incident when he was a baby. Aneba, had taken him with him on an expedition in the jungle when they came across a leopard and her baby. Aneba gave them some tranquilizer, and the baby leopard playfully scratched Charlie, who ended up getting some of the baby leopard's blood in his body.

* AmericanAccents: The Head Chief Executive has a [[FunetikAksent noticeable]] Cajun accent.

* CatsAreMean: ''Thoroughly'' subverted. The only cat who comes ''close'' to this trope is Sergei, who is a JerkWithAHeartOfGold.

* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Subverted with Ninu, a friendly little chameleon who befriends Charlie and Sergei.

* PoisonAndCureGambit / WithholdingTheCure: It turns out this is the reason for the disappearance of Charlie's parents: [[spoiler:the Corporacy had engineered an allergy to cats in the population, requiring the medicine they produced to treat the fatal asthma that resulted, but they had discovered a cure to the allergy thanks to Charlie's blood-exchange with a big cat. So the Corporacy kidnapped them to either force them to work for them, making their work part of the Corporacy's cure, or to eliminate them.]]

* AdultFear: The whole conflict begins with the kidnapping of Charlie's parents. He stays seperated from them throughout most of the series, and is constantly put in life-threatening situations.

* StepfordSmiler: Everyone in the Corporacy, because they put a chemical in the air that causes people to conform to their standards.

* PoisonAndCureGambit: It turns out this is the reason for the disappearance of Charlie's parents: [[spoiler:the Corporacy had engineered an allergy to cats in the population, requiring the medicine they produced to treat the fatal asthma that resulted, but they had discovered a cure to the allergy thanks to Charlie's blood-exchange with a big cat. So the Corporacy kidnapped them to either force them to work for them, making their work part of the Corporacy's cure, or to eliminate them.]]

* TheReveal: The series uses this trope so much (whether in the BigBad's various plans, long-lost relatives turning up, other characters' origins, numerous {{Contrived Coincidence}}s, or how all the characters somehow manage to end up in the same place at the end to save the day/resolve dangling plot threads, that it has to be deliberate--and affectionate. One reviewer described the final book as Dickensian, and the comparison is apt.

** Mabel herself has one of these also thanks to the above reveal, but her 'villainy' only amounted to being willing (at first) to help Maccomo chase down Charlie and the lions, and this only because [[invoked]] [[ValuesDissonance she naturally assumed it was right for the cats to stay with the circus]] and because she had learned of Charlie's Cat-talking ability and wanted to use it to communicate with her tigers. At the same time, having her turn out to be Charle's long-lost aunt makes her a lot more integral to the plot and connected to its characters than such figures usually are.
* HistoricalDomainCharacter: An odd example (though appropriate for a book about big cats) is in Mabel Stark, who not only is part of the circus Charlie joins (and starts out as an antagonist due to being the OldFlame of Maccomo, before changing sides) but also his long-lost aunt.

** Mabel herself has one of these also thanks to the above reveal, but her 'villainy' only amounted to being willing (at first) to help Maccomo chase down Charlie and the lions, and this only because [[Invoked]][[ValuesDissonance she naturally assumed it was right for the cats to stay with the circus]] and because she had learned of Charlie's Cat-talking ability and wanted to use it to communicate with her tigers. At the same time, having her turn out to be Charle's long-lost aunt makes her a lot more integral to the plot and connected to its characters than such figures usually are.

** Mabel herself has one of these also thanks to the above reveal, but her 'villainy' only amounted to being willing (at first) to help Maccomo chase down Charlie and the lions, and this only because [[ValuesDissonance she naturally assumed it was right for the cats to stay with the circus]] and because she had learned of Charlie's Cat-talking ability and wanted to use it to communicate with her tigers. At the same time, having her turn out to be Charle's long-lost aunt makes her a lot more integral to the plot and connected to its characters than such figures usually are.

* PantheraAwesome: It's worth noting that the authors seem to go out of their way to describe the lions as graceful and beautiful at every opportunity.

# ''Lionboy''
# ''Lionboy: The Chase''
# ''Lionboy: The Truth''

* SpeaksFluentAnimal: Charlie can speak Cat.