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1[[quoteright:319:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Destroyermen-Book-1-Into-the-Storm-Taylor-Anderson-unabridged-Tantor-audiobooks_3104.jpg]]
2[[caption-width-right:319:''"Wherever we are, we're still Americans."'']]
3
4->Oh, it's roll, and toss, and pound and pitch\
5And creak and groan\
6You son of a bitch\
7Oh, Boy\
8It's a Hell of a life on a destroyer!
9
10''Destroyermen'' is a [[LongRunningBookSeries long-running]] AlternateHistory series by Taylor Anderson. The series centers around the crew of USS ''Walker'', a UsefulNotes/WorldWarII destroyer, who end up catapulted to an alternate world after [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Java_Sea a disastrous Allied defeat]] at Java. The new world is right out of prehistory: dinosaurs roam the lands, and the oceans are home to swarms of man-eating fish and giant reptiles. They've also gone from one war to another, for here two very different species have just started up a fight for survival again after several thousand years. On the one side are the [[CatFolk Lemurians]] (or 'Cats, as the Americans call them), lemur-like sea-goers who have lived a rather peaceful existence until now. On the other side are the [[ReptilesAreAbhorrent Grik]], savage raptor-like creatures hell-bent on hunting the 'Cats to extinction.
11
12''Walker'' and her crew side with the Lemurians and join the struggle against the Grik. They're outnumbered and outgunned--[[BadassCrew but that part hasn't stopped them yet.]]
13
14The main series consists of 15 books.
15
16[[folder:Books in the series]]
17* ''Into The Storm''
18* ''Crusade''
19* ''Maelstrom''
20* ''Distant Thunders''
21* ''Rising Tides''
22* ''Firestorm''
23* ''Iron Gray Sea''
24* ''Storm Surge''
25* ''Deadly Shores''
26* ''Straits of Hell''
27* ''Blood in the Water''
28* ''Devil's Due''
29* ''River of Bones''
30* ''Pass of Fire''
31* ''Winds of Wrath''
32[[/folder]]
33
34A spin-off series called ''Literature/{{Artillerymen}}'' was later announced and will cover the formation of [[spoiler:the New United States]] with the first book, ''Purgatory's Shore'', released on September 21, 2021, and the second book, ''Hell's March'', released on September 27, 2022.
35
36----
37!! The ''Destroyermen'' series provides examples of the following tropes:
38
39* ActionPrologue: The first book opens with the [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Battle_of_the_Java_Sea Second Battle of the Java Sea]], which details ''Walker'''s escape from the pursuing Japanese fleet into the Squall.
40* AdiposeRex: Several.
41** The Grik Celestial Mother is so fat she physically cannot leave her throne (or her throne room, for that matter).
42** King Fet-Alcas of Aryaal.
43** Nakja-Mur is fairly obese as well, though he's one of the good guys.
44* AFatherToHisMen: Many, ''many'' examples. Captain Reddy is the most obvious one, but Keje and Nakja-Mur also qualify, as do a solid majority of the Alliance heroes.
45* AlienNonInterferenceClause: Invoked. Reddy is initially reluctant to involve his crew in the Grik-Lemurian conflict but eventually decides it's the right thing to do (and that ''Walker'' realistically won't be able to survive in the alternate world without help). While modern technology does give them an edge in the war against the Grik, some Lemurians express disappointment that they can probably never return to their old way of life due to the heavy industrialization required.
46* AliensSpeakingEnglish:
47** The Grik use written English as their "scientific tongue", having copied it from the East Indiamen they captured centuries ago. They don't actually speak it, mostly because they don't have the lips necessary to pronounce a lot of the sounds (though the [[spoiler:Sa'aarans and Khonashi]] manage a passable imitation).
48** Once Baalkpan begins to ramp up its war production, Nakja-Mur orders all of its citizens to learn English. Not out of favoritism for the Americans, as some accuse, but because the Lemurians don't ''have'' words for a lot of the technology they have to use and construct.
49* TheAlliance: The Grand Alliance of all Allied powers united beneath (or beside) the Banner of the Trees. Originally formed out of necessity by the Lemurian Homes (floating nation-states) and the "American Clan" (i.e. the destroyermen), it is later joined by land-based nations such as Baalkpan, the Fil-Pin Isles, and B'mbaado. After some time, new allies are found such as the Empire of New Britain, the Shogunate of Yokohama, the Republic of Real People, and a number of Grik-like peoples.
50** In ''Deadly Shores'', delegates from Alliance members lay the foundation for a single united nation, called the [[TheFederation United Homes]]. Not all member nations join, but most of the Lemurian ones do.
51* AlwaysChaoticEvil: The Grik initially come off this way, being a [[TheHorde Horde]] that attacks in swarms with seemingly no regard for self-preservation. Gradually subverted as many of their Hij begin to grow into characters in their own right, some of them even defecting to the Alliance or at least becoming {{Worthy Opponent}}s.
52* AllYourBaseAreBelongToUs:
53** "Maelstrom" features [[spoiler:''Amagi'' and the Grik attacking Baalkpan in by far the most epic battle in the entire series]].
54** [[spoiler:The Dominion invades the New Britain Isles]] in "Rising Tides".
55** And in "Deadly Shores", [[spoiler:''Walker'' herself is boarded by the Grik after getting stuck on a sandbar, and only a desperate defense combined with [[GunshipRescue timely air support]] prevents her from being overrun]].
56* AlternateHistory:
57** The Lemurian world is an alternate ''pre''history. The K-T extinction event that killed the dinosaurs in our universe didn't happen there, and the dinosaurs and their contemporaries have continued to evolve as a result. Indigenous humans don't seem to exist, but the Grik and Lemurians evolved independently in Africa and on Madagascar, respectively.
58** A number of other alternate histories have begun to bleed into the series via other Squalls; see TheMultiverse below.
59* AmbitionIsEvil: Lord Koratin treats his addiction to power in a way somewhat analogous to alcoholism, believing that being given any real power will only see him try for more and destroy all in his path getting it. Thus he refuses to accept any official rank beyond Sergeant Major, though ironically, since he's Sister Audrey's primary advisor/bodyguard, in practical terms he really does hold quite a lot of power.
60* UsefulNotes/AmericanAccents: The destroyermen tend to be from all over the US, including California, Oklahoma, Chicago, Brooklyn, and various parts of the South. The audiobook's reader tries to do them justice, such as Matthew Reddy's Texas drawl. This becomes a plot point in ''Storm Surge'' when [[spoiler:Fred Reynolds is convinced that the man who rescued him is an Imperial spy based on his British-like accent; later, the man reveals that he is descended from other Americans who crossed over during the Mexican-American War and, thus, has an accent closer to the modern British one]].
61* AmericaSavesTheDay: Yup, it happens... [[OnceAnEpisode in every single book]]...sort of. The Americans are no stranger to being BigDamnHeroes, but the 'Cats aren't exactly helpless, either. Most of the "saving" is done indirectly, too: the Americans ''cannot'' do the lion's share themselves, so they work ''with'' the 'Cats as much as lead the effort. It's also made ''very'' clear Matt and his crew wouldn't stand a chance if the 'Cats weren't helping ''them'' out, too.
62** An interesting case in ''Storm Surge'', when a spy gives Fred Reynolds crucial intelligence about Dominion forces. The spy turns out to be [[spoiler:an American who is descended from the crew of three US ships who crossed over in the 19th century and formed a new United States in this world]].
63* AndThatsTerrible: Any time the Dominion is brought up, either a character or the text will make a point of saying how it's a "dark perversion" of actual Catholicism.
64* AndTheAdventureContinues: In the final chapter of "Winds of Wrath", [[spoiler:Silva has no idea what to do with himself now that the war is over, but Lawrence and Pam Cross assure him that there's still plenty of world to explore and that there'll always be something that needs killing. On a more somber note, several characters opine that the Alliance and League of Tripoli will likely come into conflict again someday, and the war isn't over so much as on pause]].
65* AnyoneCanDie:
66** So far, we've seen a lot of characters get buried at sea. [[spoiler: [[TheLancer Dowden]] proved that Anderson isn't messing around. Same with Nakja-Mur.]]
67** However, Taylor Anderson already confirmed certain primary characters can ''not'' be killed off due to plot reasons, such as [[spoiler:Chack Sab-At or Captain Reddy]]. Whether or not this information is accurate remains to be seen, but it is unlikely some characters will be biting the dust.
68** Subverted with [[spoiler: Tony Scott, whom everyone presumes dead for about 2 years until he turns up in ''Storm Surge'']].
69** Played straight with [[spoiler:Fitzhugh Gray, who throws Matthew clear when a tide of Grik is about to overrun ''Walker'''s top deck in ''Deadly Shores'']]. Also [[spoiler:Irwin Laumer, who leads a strike force to take out the Celestial Mother only to be ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice by one of her bodyguards]].
70** Also played straight with [[spoiler:Simon Herring in ''Straits of Hell'', who is stabbed by a spear when helping to defend the captured Grik City from a horde of "old-style" Grik. He has time to tell Reddy how much he has grown to admire the man and reveals most of a deadly secret before expiring]].
71** ''Also'' played straight in ''Devil's Due'' with [[spoiler:Adar, who is killed during the prisoner escape attempt on Zanzibar (if only Silva attacked ten minutes sooner!), and Stuart Brassy, who is shot by ''Contre-Amiral'' Laborde during the raid on ''Savoie''[='s=] bridge. And then there's Kurokawa himself, shot by Sandra and infected with the [[AlienKudzu Yap island kudzu]] by Silva]].
72** ''Winds of Wrath'', the final book in the series, gleefully drops the PlotArmor and kills off quite a few major characters -- [[spoiler:Alan Letts, Bolton Forester, Mark Leedom, Muriname, General Ign, Orrin Reddy, Spook, Perry Brister, Paul Stites, Sister Audrey, Sean Bates, Earl Lanier, Chief Bosun Jeek, Gilbert Yeager, General Kim, Paddy Rosen, Sonny Campeti, Bernie Sandison, and Ed Palmer]] all bite the dust before it settles. [[spoiler:Tamatsu Shinya, Pete Alden, Spanky, and Matthew Reddy]] are seemingly killed, but are [[DisneyDeath revealed to have survived]] in the final chapter. [[spoiler:Capitano di Fregata Ciano is implied to have died, but [[UncertainDoom it isn't confirmed]]]].
73* ArtisticLicenseBiology: Downplayed. Taylor Anderson goes to [[ShownTheirWork great lengths]] to make the altEarth ecology plausible. There are some (not too many) convenient plot devices, but even these don't seem unrealistic, and none of them are [[invoked]]''[[OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow too]]'' convenient.
74* ArtisticLicenseShips: None of the ships that cross to the alternate Earth actually fought in UsefulNotes/WorldWarII. This was intentional: Anderson didn't want to disrespect any actual sailors who did.
75** As explained in the afterword to the first book, the HIMS ''Amagi'' depicted was badly damaged by an earthquake while under construction and scrapped in 1922. (There ''was'' an ''Amagi'' that served in WWII, but [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aircraft_carrier_Amagi she was a carrier]].) The real USS ''Walker'' was scuttled seventeen days after Pearl Harbor, while USS ''Mahan'' was scrapped in 1931.
76*** Many ''Wickes'' class destroyers saw action throughout WWII. USS ''Ward'', the ship that fired the first shots at Pearl Harbor, was a sister ship of ''Mahan'' and ''Walker''.
77*** In-universe, HIMS ''Amagi'' was completed as planned, except with her main battery being downgraded to 10-inch guns, likely to exploit some loophole in the Washington Naval Treaty. This armament is not quite up to battleship standards, but still much more powerful than any contemporary cruiser.
78** This continues when a more modern Japanese destroyer crosses over, HIMS ''Hidoiame'' described as the 20th of the ''Kagerō'' class. In RealLife, there were only 19 destroyers of that class, although three ships were also listed on the roster but served as the dummy budget for ''Yamato''-class battleships. Possibly, in this 'verse, one of these really was built as a destroyer.
79** Ditto for USS ''S-19''. In our history, the submarine was decommissioned in 1934 and sunk in 1938. In the novel 'verse, it continues its service into UsefulNotes/WorldWarII before being transported to the Lemurian/Grik world. Acceptable, as dozens of the old S-Boats were in service with the Asiatic Fleet at the start of the war, and some were still fighting as late as 1944.
80** In all other areas, [[ShownTheirWork studiously averted]]: Anderson is a historian by trade and does the research, and apologizes in the afterword of ''Into the Storm'' for any mistakes that may have slipped through.
81** This can be initially assumed about SS ''Amerika'', a German passenger liner converted into an armed troop transport during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI. However, according to its crew, they fought a battle against an Entente converted transport before being swept up by a storm in the night. The RealLife ''Amerika'' was seized by American forces and converted into a troop transport as part of the US Navy (being renamed ''America''). It never fought a battle in the war and served well after the war's end. This is confirmed by Captain Reddy and serves as proof that ''Amerika'' didn't come from the same world as the destroyermen. Additionally, according to the ship's crew, the United States remained neutral during the war.
82** A strange case with the [[spoiler: [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Surcouf French submarine Surcouf]]]] that briefly shows up in ''Deadly Shores''. It fought in World War II, but this version appears to be from a world where [[spoiler: the sub's crew [[LesCollaborateurs "turned Vichy"]] instead of remaining on the side of Free France]]. In fact, the sub comes from a different reality, where [[spoiler:France turned fascist and joined the Axis Powers, or the Confédération États Souverains, as they're known in that world, along with Spain. WordOfGod is that she's ''not'' the ''Surcouf'' but a ''Surcouf''-type submarine.]].
83** A Nazi French battleship from the same universe as the above-mentioned sub appears in ''Deadly Shores'' to threaten the Republic in breaking off their ties with the Alliance. It's called ''Savoie'', and Garrett even recognizes the name. However, there is no RealLife ship matching the name and the time period. The closest match would be ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_battleship_Lorraine Lorraine]]'' or the fourth unfinished ''Bretagne''-class battleship, which was originally ordered by the Greek Navy and was to be christened ''Vasilefs Konstantinos''. After UsefulNotes/WorldWarI, the French considered finishing her under the name ''Savoie'' but ultimately scrapped her. ''Savoie''[='s=] description in the book matches the post-refit design of the ''Lorraine''.
84** The Nazi submarine ''U-112'' is stated to be a Type XIB. In our world, a single Type XI was laid down but subsequently scrapped. In that world, 4 such subs were built.
85*** In our world interestingly enough, according to this: [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncompleted_U-boat_projects Uncompleted U-boat Projects]], there actually were only 4 Type XI U-boats originally planned in which one of them was to be christened ''U-112'', showing that Anderson truly did the actual research on it.
86** Same can be said for the Italian [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leone-class_destroyer Leone-class destroyer]] ''Leopardo'', introduced in ''Blood in the Water'' and playing a larger role in ''River of Bones''. In the real world, 5 ships of the class were originally planned while only 3 were built with the other 2 being canceled (of the two that were canceled, one of them was to be christened ''Leopardo'' with the most likely candidate being the fifth and final ship of the class). Of course, Anderson's ''Leopardo'' is from the Confédération États Souverains's universe, so the real-world history of the class need not apply. However, this once again shows that Anderson actually does the research rather than just shoehorning it in for convenience.
87** Ditto for ''Ramb V'', introduced in ''Winds of Wrath''. Only four RAMB refrigerator ships were produced in our world (they ended up being converted into troopships, auxiliary cruisers, and hospital ships when the war came). Presumably, the fascist Italy of that world builds at least one more.
88** Same for the Lyon-class battleship ''Tourville''. The Lyon-class battleship was never built in real life. Four were planned but all were canceled once World War I broke out. It's even mentioned in the book the Lyon-class was never built in the real world. Of course, this one is from a very different world.
89* AttackAttackAttack: At the start of the series, ZergRush is basically the only tactic the Grik are capable of. [[spoiler: With the influence of ''Amagi's'' crew, they're starting to innovate.]] At the end of ''River of Bones'', [[spoiler:First General Esshk finally realizes that his "Final Swarm" has failed and that the Grik must now switch from attack to defense, something he doesn't know how to do. He's smart enough to know that his subordinate and the new cadre of officers he's been training ''are'' trained in the new way of fighting and will be instrumental in keeping the Alliance from simply rolling over Grik Africa]].
90* AxeCrazy: Kurokawa gets more and more unhinged as the series progresses. [[spoiler: When Madras gets flattened by Alliance forces in ''Storm Surge'', Kurokawa (who's suffering a nasty VillainousBreakdown) ends up ordering every Grik he encounters to kill themselves on the spot just because [[ItAmusedMe doing so amused him]]]].
91* BadassBoast: As ''Walker'' charges toward ''[[TheJuggernaut Amagi]]'' in "Into the Storm", Matt is reminded that the rest of the Japanese fleet is still pursuing them. His response? "Good, let `em watch."
92* BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil: This is standard practice for the Doms called Cleansing, which involves using torture to force non-believers to turn to their "one true faith", which praises pain and suffering. Of course, the Doms themselves believe that Cleansing makes a person good. This appears to work on [[spoiler: Ensign Fred Reynolds, captured by Dominion forces after his scout plane crashes, to the point where he doesn't care of his Lemurian co-pilot Kari-Faask lives or dies. He is even taken in by Don Hernan as the blood cardinal's protégé and is brought before their Messiah/Emperor. This turns out to be a ruse, as Fred manages to successfully keep his wits through the Cleansing while convincing everyone he has converted, while making plans to rescue Kari and run away.]]
93* BetterToDieThanBeKilled: Countless examples of Alliance personnel either TakingYouWithMe or charging into certain death when cornered, all justified since being captured by the [[ToServeMan Grik]] or the [[ColdBloodedTorture Dominion]] both count as a FateWorseThanDeath.
94* BewareTheNiceOnes: While it's a stretch to call Isak Reuben "nice", he's definitely a quiet one. Which makes his behavior in ''Deadly Shores'' all the more surprising when he goes utterly berserk on some Grik and even [[spoiler: hacks the Celestial Mother to pieces before [[DecapitationPresentation presenting her dead head to the Grik]]]].
95* {{BFG}}: In ''Distant Thunders'' Silva {{MacGyver|ing}}s a "Super Lizard Gun" (also called the Doom Whomper) out of a salvaged antiaircraft gun from [[spoiler: ''Amagi'']]. It's a flintlock rifle that shoots a ''quarter-pound, 1-inch-diameter'' (that's '' 100-caliber'') minie ball, which he built to kill the allosaur variant that is Borneo's top predator. The recoil is enough to knock him over the first (and only) time he fires it in any posture other than prone. While hunting, he makes a game of seeing how many "rhino-pigs" he can kill with one shot. It's surprisingly precise, and Silva even manages to use it as a sniper rifle a few times, despite the gun lacking a scope. The author, being a dedicated man to say the least, has built a lifesize model of the Doomwhomper and it shows just how LARGE a man Silva actually is, with the gun being almost 6 feet long.
96* BigBad:
97** [[TheChessmaster First General Esshk]] and [[LargeHamTitle General of the Sea]] [[TheCaligula Kurokawa]] are the primary antagonists of the Western Front. Sometimes they work together, sometimes not.
98** On the Eastern Front is [[SinisterMinister Don Hernan De Divino Dicha]] of the [[ReligionOfEvil Dominion]], who initially directs the war effort against the Alliance before [[OrcusOnHisThrone falling back to the capital city]].
99** And then there's the looming threat of the [[spoiler:[[GratuitousNazis League Of Tripoli]], the primary antagonist of whom appears to be [[FrenchJerk Capitaine de Fregate Victor Gravois]]]].
100* BigGood: Captain Matthew P. Reddy, CINCAF -- "Commander in Chief of All Allied Forces". In practical terms, he leads his own "Navy Clan" and the combined Allied military forces (despite having turned down pretty much every title anyone can think of below "God"), but also serves as a vital symbol that the Grik, and other enemies, really can be defeated.
101* BigBadassBattleSequence: At least one per book. Some highlights include:
102** In ''Maelstrom'', the Grik "[[ZergRush Invincible Swarm]]" invades the Alliance's capital on Borneo while ''Walker'' slugs it out with ''Amagi'' in the bay.
103** In ''Rising Tides'', the Dominion make their presence known by launching a DawnAttack on the New Britain Isles, landing a sizable number of troops and [[spoiler:taking over the island of New Ireland (which is re-taken in the following book, "Firestorm")]].
104** In ''Deadly Shores'', Alliance forces mount a daring raid on the Grik capital of Madagascar, which unexpectedly turns into [[spoiler:an actual invasion, one they hadn't planned for at all, thanks to PoorCommunicationKills combined with SuicidalOverconfidence]]. Notably, [[spoiler:''Walker'' herself is boarded and very nearly overrun by the Grik after getting stuck on a sandbar]].
105** In ''Devil's Due'', [[spoiler:the Alliance finally takes down Kurokawa's forces on Zanzibar with a massive land, sea, and air campaign]].
106** ''Pass Of Fire'' has two extended sequences so long that they take up ''the entire latter two thirds of the book'' - the Battle of the Pass of Fire in the East, and the battle in/near Soffesk in the West. Both take place on land, air and sea, and are shown from a combined dozen or so perspectives.
107** ''Winds of Wrath'', the final book, has multiple big battles in Grik Africa, the Dom capital, and at and nearby League-held Martinique. [[spoiler:The massive naval battle between the Alliance and the League guts both fleets, but the Alliance wins by virtue of being the only side with ships still afloat and not surrendered. The culmination of the battle is a massive torpedo launch by both sides that accounts for most of the losses that night. While League torpedoes are faster, more powerful, and better overall, the Alliance fleet compensates by launching nearly 70 of them at once. The Republic battlecruiser task force is late to the party but helps by forcing a League battleship to surrender]]. And, of course, there's the final engagement between [[spoiler:three Alliance destroyers and a converted Grik dreadnought against two League destroyers and an auxiliary cruiser, with ''Walker'' facing off against ''Leopardo'']].
108* BigNo: Captain Kurokawa in ''Maelstrom'', and again in ''Iron Gray Sea''. Sandra in ''Blood in the Water'', right before [[spoiler:SMS ''Amerika'' is destroyed by the League of Tripoli]].
109* BoardingParty: Since the Grik initially lack any ship-to-ship weapons except for primitive catapult-launched firebombs, and the Lemurian ship-to-ship weapons are limited to ballistae, it's very common for the Grik to try to board the Lemurian Homes with warriors. In the first novel, Captain Reddy decides to capture a Grik ship in order to find out more about their enemy. ''Walker'''s guns destroy the masts, and a boarding party made up of Reddy himself, a few Destroyermen, and a group of Lemurian marines (trained by an actual US Marine) drop a corvus (a boarding bridge of Roman design) that Reddy had the Lemurians make in order to secure the Grik ship. Unfortunately, the corvus is made from [[BambooTechnology bamboo]] and breaks when the second party tries to follow.
110* BoisterousBruiser: Silva to the nth degree.
111* BreakTheHaughty:
112** The best example is Captain Kauffman, a US Army Air Corps P-40 pilot who was among the passengers picked up by ''Walker'' in Surabaya before they cross over into the alternate world in ''Into the Storm''. Kauffman is insufferably arrogant and thinks he should be in charge, despite the fact that he knows as much about seamanship and naval combat as he does about brain surgery. He tries throwing his weight around on the ship and is insulted when the Navy men aren't impressed. He even tries to intimidate Captain Reddy, addressing him by his rank (Lieutenant Commander) rather than his official title of "Captain," despite the fact that Matt outranks him either way. Matt simply points out that a destroyer crew has no use for a fighter pilot if that pilot is not actually flying a plane, and assigns both pilots to carry ammo for the four-inch guns, to Kauffman's chagrin. [[spoiler: After the squall, Kauffman is transferred to ''Mahan'', where he incites a mutiny against Acting Captain Ellis, accidentally shooting him in the process. When they encounter the Grik, Kauffman abandons fellow pilot 1st Lt. Mallory, Lt. Brister, and Petty Officer Palmer in a derelict PBY found on the beach (they escape with the plane and find ''Walker''). He runs the ship into deep water, where they narrowly escape being sunk by a Mountain Fish, then turns them around, increasingly aware of how far in over his head he is. He and some of his co-mutineers are soon captured by the Grik on a small island west of Java, allowing Ellis to regain control of ''Mahan''. Kauffman is made to watch while the Grik [[IAmAHumanitarian eat the men with him]]. The Grik decide to keep him as an exotic trophy, and eventually hand him over to the Japanese]]. Kauffman is reduced to a whimpering shell of a man long before it's over. [[spoiler:He gets a HeroicSecondWind during the Battle of Balkpaan when he realizes that Kurokawa and the Grik are screwed, and dies trying to kill the Japanese captain]].
113** Commander Simon Herring. After being recovered by the Alliance, he immediately tries to usurp power from Reddy, since he, technically, outranks him (Reddy's official rank is Lieutenant Commander, below a full Commander). However, Herring is hardly commanding officer material, having been a Naval Intelligence officer in our world. Plus, no one even considers replacing Reddy with Herring. Eventually, he mellows out, after realizing that Reddy is definitely much more suited for command, and is made the Chief of Strategic Intelligence, which is his preferred field anyway. Eventually, he grows to admire Reddy almost to the point of hero worship. [[spoiler:He is mortally wounded during a battle on Madagascar and fails to tell Reddy some critical information before expiring]].
114* BunnyEarsLawyer:
115** The "Mice", whose oddities are offset by their competence both as boiler-room operators and as former oilrig workers.
116** Later, Tabby, a Lemurian female, starts working in the boiler room and not only learns fast from the original two Mice but also adopts their odd mannerisms and Southern drawl (although her Lemurian-accented English returns when excited), to the point where she's considered a full-fledged Mouse.
117* CampCook: Ship's cook, actually, but Lanier still fits the trope in every other way. It's noted repeatedly that his "station" during combat operations is hiding in the toilet... until he calmly, without flair [[TookALevelInBadass turns into a badass]] in ''Firestorm'' by emerging from belowdecks and hosing down a Grikbird with a tommygun at face-to-face range.
118** One of his traditions is eating fried fish once a week. He continues that on this world, except the fish here tend to have big teeth and a nasty temper. It doesn't stop him from going fishing late at night, although the crew is none too happy once they find out.
119* TheCaptain: Captain Reddy. Overlaps with MajorlyAwesome, given that Lieutenant Commander[[note]]his original rank; he's addressed as Captain due to being ''Walker's'' CO[[/note]] is the Navy equivalent.
120* CargoCult: To a small degree. The Lemurian Sky Priests guide their giant ships using the ancient scrolls, which they don't show to anyone else. Those scrolls? They're [[spoiler: charts given to them by a man who came over on an East Indiaman centuries ago]]. The sacred tongue in which the scrolls are written is [[spoiler: Latin]]. For a while, every time a Sky Priest sees a [[spoiler: chart]], he bristles that it is shown so freely.
121** Exaggerated when they find out that [[spoiler: the Grik have charts of their own, in English this time]].
122* CatFolk: The Lemurians, although it borders the scale to FunnyAnimal since they evolved from lemurs.
123* TheChainsOfCommanding: A common theme amongst the various Allied commanders, from Captain Reddy to captains of individual ships to infantry company commanders on the ground. WarIsHell, victory costs lives, defeat means extinction, and the costs weigh heavily on those who have to make the decisions.
124* CharacterDevelopment: The Grik as a race get this. At first, they are treated as a HordeOfAlienLocusts whose only tactic is the ZergRush and who go into full panic mode if it doesn't work. Now under competitive pressure from the Alliance and with help from the Japanese, they have developed an officer class capable of thinking tactically, even strategically. Also, some have learned to surrender and others seem to be developing a capacity for loyalty as opposed to instinctive blind obedience. One, a Hij general, has even developed an OddFriendship with a Japanese general, an emotion supposedly alien to his race.
125* CheeseEatingSurrenderMonkeys: Discussed in ''Straits of Hell'', only to be shut down by Greg Garrett, who points out that there's nothing wrong with the French fighters from their own world, whose main problem was stupid leaders.
126** [[ShownTheirWork Taylor Anderson is right about this]]. The French Army of WWI held off the Germans for almost three years, despite Field Marshals Joffre, Nivelle, and Mangin refusing to recognize that [[ZergRush Napoleonic infantry tactics]] don't work so well against entrenched machine guns and artillery with real-time fire control. By 1918, the French Army was in a well-justified state of mutiny against the incompetence and [[WeHaveReserves callousness]] of their high command, with the arrival of the American Expeditionary Force being the only thing that prevented total collapse. In WWII, Field Marshal Petaín had repeated the mistakes of his predecessors by focusing France's entire defense on the Maginot Line, then becoming a collaborator when that failed, leaving France's large and capable field army paralyzed in front of the advancing Germans.
127* AChildShallLeadThem:
128** Saan-Kakja, the queen of the Fil-pin Islands.
129** Safir Maraan, the Orphan Queen of B'mbaado, became a ruler at a pretty young age.
130** In ''Iron Gray Sea'', [[spoiler: Princess Rebecca Ann [=McDonald=] of the Empire of New Britain, who becomes Governor-Empress after her parents are killed in a bombing]].
131* ColdSniper: By ''Storm Surge'', a PTSD-stricken Bekia Saab-At at least claims herself to have become this, spending her days on the front-lines in the trenches, sniping anyone, particularly officers, she can. She's largely able to snap out of it once she leaves India, however.
132* ColonelBadass: [[UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan Tamatsu]] [[GoodIsNotSoft Shinya]].
133* CombatPragmatist:
134** Silva has no problem FakingTheDead or headbutting a WorthyOpponent in order to win.
135** Captain Reddy has also won the duel with Reed’s assassin using "unsportsmanlike" means, although still technically legal.
136* CoolBoat: USS ''S-19''. Against all odds, it survives [[spoiler: a tidal wave created by an erupting volcano]], although it's determined that it can never dive (voluntarily, that is) again. It's rebuilt as a torpedo boat and ends up dealing some damage to Grik [[spoiler: ironclad]] ships [[spoiler: before being [[RammingAlwaysWorks rammed]] and sunk]].
137** The [[spoiler: League submarine ''Surcouf'']] also qualifies, despite being a villainous variant. On the other hand, [[spoiler: it is fairly easily sunk by ''Walker'' after being forced to surface]].
138* CoolShip:
139** USS ''Walker'', although the coolness [[NormalFishInATinyPond is largely circumstantial]]. She's a "Four-Stacker" (so called because of the distinctive four funnels) ''Wickes''-class destroyer built in 1917. By 1942, she's woefully obsolete, worn-out, held together with duct tape, and completely outclassed by anything and everything in the Japanese Navy. But to the Lemurians, she's a near-magical marvel capable of slaughtering the once-unstoppable Grik without breaking a sweat. Despite her age, she's a tough, dependable ship that doesn't let her crew down.
140** On the villain's side, there's [[spoiler: the ''Amagi'', which is newer, larger, and more heavily armed than ''Walker'']].
141* CoolAndUnusualPunishment: Both the Grik and the Dominion are experts on this.
142** Grik who are perceived to have endangered the Empire, directly or indirectly, suffer the Traitor's Death: they are tied down, teeth and claws torn out, and EatenAlive by dozens of hatchlings. [[spoiler:[[ObstructiveBureaucrat Tsalka]] goes out this way following the events of "Firestorm"]].
143** The Dominion embrace these as a means of ensuring battlefield discipline: soldiers who retreat in battle are crucified, and officers who do the same are BuriedAlive. [=POWs=] are horribly tortured as a conversion technique (see BeingTorturedMakesYouEvil above for more) and skinned alive once no longer useful.
144* CoolVersusAwesome: WWII-era military versus dinosaurs and sea monsters.
145* CorruptCorporateExecutive: Every high-up member of the New Britain Company.
146* CurbStompBattle: Most of ''Walker'''s battles against the Grik are fairly one-sided, especially in the early books where the Grik don't have any significant ship-to-ship weapons. [[spoiler: Even Kurokawa's ironclad dreadnoughts are fairly easy for the destroyer to wipe out once Baalkpan starts producing torpedoes.]]
147* DawnAttack:
148** As part of the standard operating procedure in dangerous waters, Captain Reddy requires that every morning the crew of USS ''Walker'' go to battle stations for two hours until sunrise. In our world, this is because this time is perfect for submarine sneak attacks (the subs' lower profile makes them nigh-invisible in pre-dawn darkness). Reddy maintains the procedure in the new world, as the Grik and any other enemy can pull the same stunt (minus subs).
149** The [[spoiler: Holy Dominion]] stages a surprise attack at dawn on the capital of [[spoiler: the Empire of New Britain]], timed with a public duel and a simultaneous sneak attack on [[spoiler: the Governor-Emperor]]. Naturally, both Matthew Reddy and [[spoiler: Harvey Jenks]] are smart enough to know something like this is coming and take precautions (like sending out a plane to scout out the surrounding area).
150* DeathByIrony: In ''Pass of Fire'', [[spoiler:Lord Koratin is forced to kill a number of brainwashed Dom children who simply won't back down. He does it himself with artillery so his friends don't have to, then suicidally charges into a melee against the Blood Drinkers the children were protecting. Children were his great love in life, and he'd devoted himself to helping them, even in his days as an EvilAristocrat.]]
151* DeathSeeker: The Lemurian Saak-Fas, recovered from the holds of a Grik ship, becomes this by ''Maelstrom''. [[spoiler:He gets his wish, and takes a big chunk of ''Amagi'''s hull with him.]]
152* DeathWorld:
153** The alternate Earth, but this is zig-zagged somewhat: it's sure as hell dangerous, with dinosaurs alive and well and of course the Grik, but it's not ''so'' horrible as to prevent organized societies.
154** The seas are even more dangerous than the land. In addition to its normal dangers from our world, the continental shelf is infested with "flashies" (basically piranhas [-[[RecycledInSpace IN SALTWATER!]]-]), and the deep water has "mountain fish" that can eat ships.
155** As if that wasn't enough for you, they're in the Pacific Rim so there's a risk of volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. Finally, the relative lack of humans burning fossil fuels means global warming hasn't happened so the weather patterns are very different, which results in hurricanes, called ''strakkas'', that can be worse than those on our Earth.
156** A more localized example is Yap/Shikarrak Island, which is home to [[AlienKudzu carnivorous kudzu]] and amphibious sea monsters that migrate there once a year. [[spoiler:Silva, Rebecca, Lawrence, Sandra Tucker, and several others are marooned there for much of ''Rising Tides''.]]
157* DecapitationPresentation: [[spoiler: Isak Reuben and Lawrence do this to the Celestial Mother after Isak, of all people, kills her. However, it has the opposite effect, throwing the remaining Grik in the capital into a frenzy]].
158* DefectorFromDecadence: Increasingly common as the series progresses and word of the benevolence (particularly with regard to the treatment of prisoners) and power of the Allied Forces spreads. By the end of ''Pass of Fire'' the list of defectors includes [[spoiler:''the Grik Celestial Mother''.]]
159** While Okada refuses to join the fight at first, he later returns to formally ask for membership in the Grand Alliance after [[spoiler:a modern Japanese destroyer arrives and his new people are slaughtered by them. Okada sees how low his beloved Japanese navy has sunk, as the tide of UsefulNotes/WorldWarII is turning]].
160* DeliberateValuesDissonance: Where characters display their [=1940s=] views on racism and religion. One character in particular, Sister Audrey, a Catholic nun, initially looks down upon Courtney Bradford for being an "evolutionist", especially when he reveals that he's also Catholic (in her mind, the two are incompatible). Whereas nowadays the Catholic Church accepts "theistic evolution" (the idea that Christianity and the Theory of Evolution are compatible), this was not the case in [=1940s=], when the Church had no official position on the issue.
161* DisproportionateRetribution:
162** Reddy threatens this against Aryaal should they ever desecrate or tamper with the graves of his men in front of their city. To make it clear he's serious, he assures them that if they ever deface the graves, he will return and ''level the city to the ground''.
163** Silva has a habit of dealing out a ridiculously appropriate (and often over the top) lesson and/or punishment to anyone he thinks needs one. For example: Machinist's Mate Dean Laney is mocking Coxswain Tony Scott, who has become terrified of the sea since arriving in the new world (for very good reason, and Scott continues to do his job despite being humiliated by his own fear). Silva's response? To pull the pin on the chain Laney was leaning against, leaving him to go tumbling over the side and only save himself by grabbing the chain. Afterward, ''he's'' afraid of the water.
164* DescriptivelyNamedSpecies: The Lemurians, because they're descended from lemurs. Perhaps fittingly, it's a name that [[OmniDisciplinaryScientist Courtney Bradford]] coined. Likewise the more colloquial "monkey-cats" and "cat-monkeys" (eventually shortened to just 'Cats).
165** The Lemurians refer to themselves as "Mi-Anaaka" which roughly translates to "the people", which is suitable seeing that they are deemed people by the humans ''very'' quickly.
166** At the same time, they do ''not'' like to be called "ape-folk", even though they've never seen an ape. However, the first time the term was used, they picked up from the tone that the term was derogatory. The Imperials quickly learn to refer to them as Lemurians, especially after seeing them in battle.
167* DisneyDeath: [[spoiler:''Walker'' is sunk in ''Maelstrom'', but re-floated and repaired in ''Distant Thunders''.]]
168* DoNotGoGentle: [[spoiler:The crew of ''Revenge'']] certainly doesn't. Neither do [[spoiler:Flynn's Rangers]] in ''Iron Gray Sea''. Hell, just about ''any'' character death counts as this, since nobody wants to be [[FateWorseThanDeath taken alive by the Grik or Doms]].
169* TheDreadedDreadnought:
170** Under Kurokawa's guidance, the Grik start building a fleet of ironclad battleships called the "''[=ArataAmagi=]''-class" (named after Kurokawa's lost ''Amagi'') which the Allies often refer to as "dreadnoughts". Armed with 100lb cannons and some smaller secondaries, the dreadnoughts are far more powerful than the Allies' WoodenShipsAndIronMen, but due to their size and CripplingOverspecialization towards surface actions, they're extremely slow and so top-heavy that any significant damage below the waterline (i.e. a torpedo attack) will cause them to capsize.
171** By "River of Bones", many of the surviving ''[=ArataAmagi=]''-class ships have been converted into ''true'' dreadnoughts with all of their guns replaced with 400lb cannons. Upon realizing this, Captain Russ Chappelle notes with some alarm that if the Grik have improved their fire control, and especially if they figure out how to rifle their cannons, these new dreadnoughts might be too dangerous for Alliance ships to engage at ''any'' range.
172** [[spoiler:A literal dreadnought appears in the form of the League superdreadnought ''Savoie''.]]
173** The Dominion is moving in this direction, too -- in "Pass of Fire", Admiral Hibbs' battle line is mauled by Dom liners that are sheathed in iron and have removed most of their smaller guns to keep their weight down. Luckily, their smaller frigates are not yet armored.
174* DuelToTheDeath: Part of Sir Harrison Reed's BatmanGambit in "Rising Tides" involves Reddy and Jenks dueling separate opponents at the same time in the immediate prelude to [[spoiler:the Dominion's invasion of New Britain]].
175* DyingMomentOfAwesome:
176** During the climactic battle in "Maelstrom", [[spoiler:''Mahan'' rams ''Amagi'', then Saak-Fas ignites a bunch of depth charges in ''Mahan'''s bow; the explosion cripples the battlecruiser. A well-placed HE shell from ''Walker'' coupled with [[ChekhovsGun a lucky break]] is enough to finish the thing off]].
177** There are other examples across the series, usually involving a character destroying as much of the enemy as possible before finally being overwhelmed.
178* {{Eagleland}}: Could be called "Eagleland: The Series". While both sides are represented (often at the same time), it leans ''far'' in favor of the heroic variant.
179* EatsBabies:
180** The second book opens with Grik Regent Tsalka sitting with a Grik infant on his lap, idly stroking the child. So is this a PetTheDog moment for the Grik, earlier billed as AlwaysChaoticEvil? Nope, because before the scene is over, Tsalka casually pops the infant into his mouth and chews. For extra {{Squick}}, it's mentioned that the baby's struggles tickle the roof of Tsalka's mouth.
181** The Celestial Mother is also shown doing this. The Squick factor is even more evident here, as those are rejects from her own litter. The practice is stopped when it's discovered that the "rejects" are, in fact, [[spoiler:the Grik Empire's best chance of survival as they lack the AttackAttackAttack mentality]].
182* TheEmperor:
183** Governor-Emperor Gerald [=McDonald=] of the Empire of New Britain is, actually, a ReasonableAuthorityFigure. In fact, New Britain is more like the kingdom than TheEmpire, although it does have colonies in far-away lands.
184** The Celestial Mother is definitely this to the Grik. She rules with an iron claw, orders bloody executions left and right, and happily eats her own young who don't share the Grik AttackAttackAttack mentality.
185** [[LargeHamTitle His Supreme Holiness, the Messiah of Mexico, and, by the Grace of God, Emperor of the World]], is the religious and political ruler of the Holy Dominion. Like all the other Dominion Popes, he is kept in perpetual bliss by alcohol, drugs, food, and sex. Most Dom pops spend their reign completely out of it and are unable to make any decisions. The current Pope is actually able to keep his wits about him while in this state.
186** The Caesar is the ruler of the Republic of Real People, an ancient (dating back at least 1000 years) human/Lemurian nation based in South Africa and periodically "infused" by new arrivals from our world who wash up at the cape. However, the Caesar is more like a benevolent despot than this trope. He's also a Lemurian.
187* TheEmpire: The Grik Empire, [[spoiler:especially with UsefulNotes/ImperialJapan helping them]]. Also the Holy Dominion, a theocracy in the Americas derived from Spanish conquistadors having mixed Catholicism with {{Mayincatec}} religious beliefs. Subverted with the Empire of New Britain, which is really the kingdom with a little OneNationUnderCopyright for flavor. The League of Tripoli also applies in the sense that they have conquered much of the Mediterranean region using the sizable task force that was transported to this world along with pieces of their city of Tripoli.
188* ETGaveUsWifi: Inverted. Grik warships are based on the design of an East Indiaman they captured centuries ago.
189* EvenEvilHasStandards:
190** The crew of ''Amagi'' are out to kill the Americans, and are working with the Grik. They still ''hate'' the lizards, though; even the AxeCrazy captain admits this. However, while much of the crew hates the Grik for being despicable and evil, the captain seems to hate them for the same reason he hates Americans... they're not Japanese.
191** Tsalka and General Esshk both agree that Kurokawa is an asshole.
192* EverythingIsTryingToKillYou: On land, you've got carnivorous dinosaurs and other reptiles with too many teeth, as well as Grik-like aborigines. One island has a sapient amphibian race that doesn't take kindly to intruders. Another has a kudzu-like plant that sprouts roots inside critters that get scratched by it. You're also in the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Ring_of_Fire Ring of Fire]], so there's occasional earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. At sea, there are any number of voracious predatory fish species, mountain fish that can ''eat ships'', and hurricanes that can be worse than those on Earth. And we haven't even gotten to the [[TheHorde Grik]] and [[ReligionOfEvil Holy Dominion]] yet.
193* {{Expy}}: Silva, with his short-cropped hair, scraggly beard, bulging muscles, and violent streak could easily be a whole character ShoutOut to [[Franchise/{{Popeye}} Bluto]]. [[SubvertedTrope Only as a good guy.]]
194* FantasticCasteSystem:
195** The basic Grik {{mook}}s are the barely sapient Uul. If they live long enough to become intelligent they may be elevated to Hij, various castes of which do pretty much everything that requires more than a dozen brain cells.
196** The Lemurians had a guild system before the onset of the war with the Grik. It was thrown out the window by necessity.
197* FantasticRacism: While mostly averted with the destroyermen and the Lemurians, who quickly learn to respect each other (with one [[RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil glaring exception]]), the Imperials, at first, treat them as sub-humans and refer to them as "ape-folk". The Dominion is even worse in this respect, calling them "creatures" or "animals". The [[spoiler:Republic]] treats humans and Lemurians as equals but frowns upon HalfHumanHybrids.
198* FeedItABomb: In ''Deadly Shores'', Isak Reuben of all people does this to a triceratops-like creature by first getting the beast's attention and then tossing a grenade down its throat and diving away as the lizard is going after him. Mountain Fish can also be dealt with this way if you have depth charges.
199* FieldPromotion: A lot of that has been going around in the series.
200* FinaglesLaw: In ''Maelstrom'', the Baalkpan Lemurians note that the American philosophy in this regard is to "hope for the best, but plan for the worst". During the same conversation, the Queen of B'mbaado quotes Marshal Helmuth von Moltke's maxim that "no battle plan survives contact with the enemy" almost to the letter.
201* FlatWorld: Subverted. The seafaring Lemurians know the Earth isn't actually flat, but since gravity pulls down they naturally assume that it's possible to fall off by straying too far from the "top" of the globe. ''Walker'''s voyage to Hawaii in book five neatly disproves this theory.
202* ForegoneConclusion: The fifth book, ''Rising Tides'', opens with a quote from [[spoiler:a book Courtney Bradford will evidently publish in 1956. His survival for the next twelve years]] is therefore guaranteed, unless it gets published posthumously.
203* {{Foreshadowing}}: Early in book two, it's mentioned that many Lemurians wanted to torch the [[VehicularTurnabout captured]] Grik ship ''Revenge'' so that the souls of the `Cats EatenAlive inside might find rest (cremation being their usual custom after death). [[spoiler:Captain Rick Tolson ends up [[SelfDestructMechanism blowing up the ship]] to keep it out of Grik hands halfway through the book, taking a ''lot'' of lizards with him]].
204* FourStarBadass: General Alden, Rolak, General Esshk.
205* FowlMouthedParrot: Petey, the flying lizard (the alt!Earth equivalent of a parrot) that takes a liking to Silva during his wanderings in the islands of southeast Asia. He calls it a "stupid shit" and things go downhill from there.
206* FrenchJerk: Pretty much any Frenchman in later books, since [[spoiler:they're all fascists from an alternate world]].
207* FriendToAllChildren:
208** Lord Koratin believes this to be his only genuine redeeming feature, and clings to it as part of his concerted efforts to become a better person. While it was certainly true during his days as an aristocrat, as the series progresses it's increasingly clear that it was merely proof of the good person he genuinely is. [[spoiler:Cruelly subverted in "Pass of Fire", when the Blood Drinkers use a bunch of children as {{Human Shield}}s -- Koratin, seeing that [[KnightInSourArmor Blas]] and [[BadassPacifist Sister Audry]] can't bring themselves to shoot them, [[BadGuysDoTheDirtyWork fires the cannons himself]] before making a [[DrivenToSuicide suicidal]] SelfDestructiveCharge into the Dom lines]].
209** Dennis Silva, of all people, discovers this to be the case for him during his time marooned with the young Governor Empress.
210* FrontLineGeneral: The ''entire high command of the Alliance'' is guilty of this. In some cases, like Alden, it's because they were low-level troops who still act that way, despite being given commands. In others (Jenks, Reddy, etc) it's because they take AFatherToHisMen just that seriously. Others have always been that way (Rolak, Safir, etc). A few take it to LeeroyJenkins levels, with ordinary troops literally ''begging'' their superiors to return to the rear so they don't have to worry about protecting them.
211* GenericanEmpire:
212** The Republic of Real People.
213** The Grik Empire is known internally as the Celestial Realm.
214** The Holy Dominion.
215** The United Homes, the Lemurian nation that grows out of the Alliance.
216** The New United States (this one doesn't even have the "of America" clarification).
217* GenocideDilemma: Averted. It's made clear that the ''only'' real way to win is to [[GuiltFreeExterminationWar exterminate the Grik]]. [[spoiler:Though this is zig-zagged in later books; particularly when a contingent of Grik warriors surrender to the Allies.]]
218* GiantFlyer:
219** Dragon-like flying lizards ("Grikbirds") are found on an island not far from Hawaii. They frequently harass passing ships, swooping down and grabbing crewmembers or dropping rocks on decks. Captain Reddy speculates that some of them may have crossed into our world in the past, resulting in myths about dragons. Ditto for other creatures such as Mountain Fish. It's later revealed that [[spoiler:the Dominion has tamed a good number of them and use them as an air force of sorts]].
220** More are found in ''Deadly Shores'' on an island near Africa. These smaller Grikbirds are the local aerial version of the flasher-fish, swarming in and tearing apart anything that gets close to the island, while the large flying lizards near the center of the island nest on mountains and begin to chase the PBY Nancy sent to scout the island. However, they don't attack the Nancy, as the plane happens to match the blue-and-white coloring of the lizards, initially appearing to the lizards as another of their number, albeit large and loud. Two of them begin to race the plane before spotting the Lemurian pilot and gunner.
221* GiantWallOfWateryDoom:
222** Two of them in book five. ''Walker'' encounters a rogue wave that nearly capsizes her during her voyage to New Britain, and [[spoiler:the Talaud volcano's two eruptions also cause tsunamis that wipe out Tagran and several other islands in the Pacific ocean]].
223** In ''Winds of Wrath'', an enormous [[spoiler:Grik]]-made one is created when [[spoiler:General Esshk blows up the ancient locks holding in Lake Galk. The result is an obscenely large tidal wave almost big enough to wipe out a city as large as Sofesshk, and does kill thousands at a minimum of forces on all sides for miles around.]]
224* GivingRadioToTheRomans: The destroyermen give the Lemurians pretty much any piece of advanced technology they can figure out how to make, including radio. It helps that the Lemurians get to watch and participate in the destroyermen building things from memory (or technical manuals). In fact, many humans observe that, unlike many primitive human tribes, the Lemurians don't fear the unknown and don't instinctively associate it with magic or evil spirits. For example, when the radio from the PBY is destroyed by [[spoiler:a Japanese air raid]], a few primitive spark-gap transmitters and crystal receivers (the latter don't even require power) are hastily constructed with the help of the locals. Later, batteries are built to allow for more powerful radios [[spoiler:aboard Lemurian airplanes]].
225* GoodColorsEvilColors: Grik ships are painted red, while Dominion ships have red sails. ''Walker'' being the exception, Allied ships are painted black with a white stripe along the gunnery deck(s), as was the standard for the US Navy in the Age of Sail. Also, the Grik are black or brown while their more pleasant cousins the Tagranesi are orange and brown striped.
226* GreaterScopeParagon: Who exactly Colonel Svec is getting his orders from is unclear, but ''Pass of Fire'' finally sees him admit, in vague terms, that the Czechs in this world have leadership who at least militarily supports the Allied Forces. As of the end of that book, they have yet to directly appear and may be keeping a low political profile to avoid attracting the attention of the League of Tripoli, to whom they're probably geographically close. [[spoiler:While one of the League officers mentioned there were British, Russians and Turks living around the Black Sea, it is not clear if that is where the Czechs came from.]]
227* GreaterScopeVillain: "Deadly Shores" teases (and "Straits of Hell" introduces) the [[spoiler:League of Tripoli, a [[TheEmpire fascist empire]] that grew out of a French/German/Italian/Spanish fleet from yet another AlternateUniverse. Their goal at the moment is to ensure that the conflict between the Alliance, the Grik, and the Dominion is mutually destructive enough to ensure no faction becomes powerful enough to challenge them]].
228* GreenRocks: Polta fruit is starting to have some shades of this, though nothing really outlandish. You can eat it straight, and you can make seep (the Lemurians' alcoholic drink of choice) with it. The paste leftover from making seep is used as an antiseptic and analgesic. Later on, the humans discover that the partially-fermented polta paste has properties similar to battery acid, allowing for portable power sources to be constructed.
229* GuiltFreeExterminationWar: The conflict between the Lemurians and Grik fully qualities, at first. The latter see the former as nothing more than prey to be hunted and consumed, and the `Cats have never had any opportunity - or desire - to take any Grik alive. Sandra speculates that this may be the result of their evolving on a DeathWorld:
230-->"Like everything else we've observed in this world, there's no compromise between total victory and total defeat. You win or you die. [...] In spite of the Grik being the Ancient Enemy, the Lemurians don't know a lot about them. They just know that when the Grik come, the Grik attack. It's the way of things. They fight like maniacs and they don't take prisoners, so neither do the Lemurians. I'm not sure they even understand the concept of surrender."
231** Later in the series, when it becomes clear that [[spoiler: some Grik are willing to surrender, the Grand Alliance starts to make efforts to avoid extermination of the Grik.]]
232* GunshipRescue: In ''Firestorm'', the crews of a beached Allied task force are being constantly assaulted by Grik forces and are taking steady losses. They manage to retreat in a square formation to a new fortification on the beach and are preparing for a final Grik rush. Then several Lemurian air wings show up and firebomb the hell out of the Grik horde, causing the typical "Grik rout". Specifically, the survivors knew the fleet was coming but thought it was days away.
233* GuttedLikeAFish: [[spoiler:Rasik-Alcas]] suffers this fate in "Distant Thunders". [[NobleDemon Colonel Jask]] later does this to an incompetant Grik general who squandered most of his troops and then tried to pull rank on him.
234* HalfHumanHybrids: The Gentaa in the Republic are supposedly descended from Chinese explorers who hooked up with Lemurian females in the ancient past, although Bradford suspects (and Meek all but confirms) that they're actually a separate species that used their resemblance to both species to pose as hybrids, using their "parent" races' collective guilt to improve their status in the Republic.
235* HandicappedBadass:
236** Sean "O'Casey" Bates. He loses a hand when their ship is destroyed by a Mountain Fish but is still able to kick plenty of ass from Baalkpan to Scapa Flow.
237** Silva loses an eye to a piece of shrapnel during the Battle of Baalkpan Bay, which barely slows him down other than messing up his depth perception a bit.
238** In "River of Bones", [[spoiler:Risa Sab-At loses a leg during the siege of U.S.S. ''Santa Catalina'', and goes right back into battle after having it amputated and patched up. Subverted however as she's rather quickly overwhelmed and killed by the Grik, albeit after killing a good number of them]].
239** ''Pass of Fire'' ends with [[spoiler:Safir Maraan losing an eye, along with her (and Chack's) unborn child. While this does remove her as an ActionGirl for the rest of the series, she still maintains her fiery spirit and even becomes Chairwoman of the Grand Alliance after Alan Letts is assassinated in "Winds of Wrath"]].
240* HardTruthAesop:
241** Russ Chappelle opines in "River of Bones" that war is always going to be a part of human nature, and that trying to end it forever is futile.
242--->''"I'll settle for licking our current enemies and staying strong enough to fend off any more we run into."''
243** Overall, the series' answer to WhatMeasureIsAMook boils down to "They might not deserve to die, but they'll still kill us if they get the chance, so we can't give them that chance."
244* HereThereBeDragons: Grik charts mark deep bodies of water with similar glyphs. Garrett even lampshades it.
245* HeroicBSOD: Reddy completely freezes up as he watches [[spoiler:''Amagi'' destroy ''Neracca'' Home with seven thousand people aboard]] in "Crusade". Luckily he recovers before too much damage is done to ''Walker''.
246* HeroicSacrifice: Quite a few.
247** The first one occurs at the beginning of ''Into The Storm'', during the Battle of the Java Sea. With the entire Japanese Navy pursuing them, and ''Amagi'' blocking their escape ahead, the surviving crew of USS ''Mahan'' make a suicidal charge at the battlecruiser while signaling ''Walker'' to sneak past while they have the chance. [[EstablishingCharacterMoment Reddy ultimately chooses to join the charge instead]], and in the ensuing chaos, both destroyers manage to slip into the squall.
248** When he discovers an attempt to sink ''Walker'' with an improvised bomb in a rowboat, CPO Donaghey climbs into the boat and rows it away, ignoring the calls of his shipmates to come back. Instead of a fuse, the saboteurs set the whole boat on fire, so he's ''burning alive'' as he does this.
249--->All he knew, as the flesh on his face and hands began to sear and his vision became a red, shimmering fog, was that he had to row. Nothing else in the entire world mattered anymore except for getting that crazy, stupid bomb the hell away from his ship.\
250He made it almost forty yards.
251** In "Crusade", [[spoiler:''Mahan'' rams ''Amagi'', then detonates a shitload of depth charges and blows a huge hole in the battle cruiser's side]].
252** There are also a number of other, albeit brief, instances during the battles. One notable example is a lone Lemurian gunner at Aryaal killing herself by spiking a cannon full in order to buy her comrades time and to prevent the Grik from getting their hands on artillery.
253* HistoricalInJoke:
254** It's speculated a couple of times that if ''Walker'' and ''Mahan'' hadn't been swept into the alternate world, they would have eventually been scrapped by the US Navy and used as target practice. That's exactly what happened to those ships in the real world, although neither of them actually fought in World War II.
255** When ''Walker'' faces off against ''Hidoiame'', the former tries to bluff the latter by identifying herself as a cruiser (which fails). At pretty much the same time as ''Walker''. ''Mahan'', ''Pope'', and the two Royal Navy vessels were battling ''Amagi'' during the Battle of the Java Sea, one of their Clemson-class cousins, [=USS=] ''Edsall'', was taking on multiple [=IJN=] surface vessels south of the island of Java, having been misidentified as an ''Omaha''-class light cruiser ([=USS=] ''Marblehead'' was one of the few ships larger than a destroyer in the Asiatic Fleet at the start of the war). From a distance, ''Omaha''-class cruisers really did resemble four-stacker destroyers at first glance.
256* HistoryRepeats: In the first chapter of "Into the Storm", ''Mahan'' makes a suicide run against ''Amagi'' to give ''Walker'' time to escape. Reddy chooses to join the charge instead, and in the ensuing chaos both destroyers manage to escape. [[spoiler: When facing the battle cruiser again in "Maelstrom", and the torpedoes are depleted, ''Walker'' attempts to ram ''Amagi'' ... only for ''Mahan'' to beat them to the punch]].
257* HoistByHisOwnPetard: When Kurokawa brings out his new [[spoiler:ironclad]] fleet, he is able to easily blow through TheAlliance's wooden ships but takes a pounding from the refitted ''Salissa'' using the guns taken from his own ''Amagi''.
258* HonorBeforeReason:
259** The unnamed Japanese crewman who saves Shinya's life, and refuses to surrender even in the middle of an ocean while clinging to the underside of an overturned boat, having just watched the rest of his crew being eaten by what can best be described as ''tuna-piranha hybrids''. He gets eaten by a plesiosaur, but only cries out in pain, not terror.
260** After Okada surrenders to the Grand Alliance, he gives them valuable intel about the Grik (whom he hates) but refuses to join the war outright because [[MyCountryRightOrWrong America and Japan are technically still enemies]]. Shinya lampshades it after failing to convince him to reconsider:
261--->"I fear for you, Commander Okada. I fear that someday your misjudgement will fade and the honor I still see in you will rise within your heart and demand a reckoning. Because of the blood we spill on behalf of you and uncountable others, you will die a tortured old man, who missed his opportunity to ''be'' honorable by mistakenly trying to do the honorable thing."
262** Lieutentant of the Sky Ando in "River of Bones" plays it completely straight: he ''knows'' the Grik will eat him and his men once they've [[YouHaveOutlivedYourUsefulness oulived their usefullness]], but continues to help them anyway because [[IGaveMyWord he promised them he would]].
263* HopelessWar: Captain Reddy points out that the war with the Grik must not be allowed to drag on for much longer, as the Grik are rapidly closing the technological gap and are learning better tactics. If they manage to close the gap, then it becomes a war of numbers, which the Alliance simply can't win. The only way to prevent this trope is to decisively crush the Grik in the shortest amount of time possible.
264* HumansAreSpecial: Only the arrival of ''Walker'' breaks the Grik and Lemurians out of MedievalStasis. However, a few books later it's Lemurians who are doing most of the innovations, having taken the Americans' lessons to heart.
265* HumansAreWhite: First {{justified|Trope}} with Shinya and Juan (''Walker's'' Filipino steward) as the [[TokenMinority Token Minorities]], then averted later. Initially the only humans known on the alternate Earth are ''Walker's'' crew, who are white because the US military wasn't desegregated until 1947 and it's only 1942. Averted after ''Amagi'' shows up, and averted again when they meet up with the Empire, and Holy Dominion, who are mixed-race peoples of Caucasian and Central American descent and all AmbiguouslyBrown. Then there's the Republic, which averts it even further with people being descended from Koreans, Romans, various Africans... it's a long list. Also justified with [[spoiler:the League of Tripoli, since it's made up of European fascists from an alternate UsefulNotes/WorldWarII]].
266* IAmAHumanitarian:
267** The Grik kill and eat one another all the time. They don't make exceptions for other races either. In fact, they like to make their captives watch their comrades cooked and eaten before doing it to them.
268** In "Firestorm", we're introduced to [[spoiler:the crew of a Japanese destroyer, who are more than willing to kill and eat their Allied prisoners]]. Naturally, this makes not only the Americans sick, but also Shinya and Okada ([[spoiler:who has a personal score to settle with them, as they killed his newly-adopted tribe of Lemurian samurai]]).
269*** Even worse? It's based on a true story from World War II.
270* InNameOnly: [[spoiler: Grik-built ''[=ArataAmagi=]''-class battleships have nothing to do with the original ''Amagi'' and are instead derived from the basic design of the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS_Virginia CSS Virginia]], only much larger, with four stacks, and with the casemate covering only 3/4 of the ship]]. Ditto for the [[spoiler: ''Azuma''-class cruisers, whose design is modeled on [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_ironclad_K%C5%8Dtetsu Japan's first ironclad]], and has nothing in common with the RealLife cruiser ''Azuma'']].
271* InSpiteOfANail: There's a discrepancy as to exactly when the East India Company ships came to the alternate world, but it was at least two hundred years before the 1940s -- meaning more than twenty years before, in ''our'' world, there was a settlement in California named "San Francisco." Still, the New British build a city at the same good harbor ... and name it "St. Francis." The region we'd call San Jose is also known as the St. Joseph Plain.
272* InappropriatelyCloseComrades: Matt Reddy and Sandra Tucker become attracted to one another in the early books, which leads to ShipperOnDeck from some ''Walker'' crew members, but they initially refuse to act on it on grounds that it could cause discipline problems to see TheCaptain getting some when the crew largely can't (there being only about five human women, all of them Sandra's fellow nurses, for a hundred-plus men). [[spoiler:After they make contact with the Empire of New Britain, one of the early deals leads to formerly-indentured women being invited to live in Baalkpan, effectively ending the "dame famine".]]
273* InterspeciesRomance:
274** This may or may not be happening with Silva and Risa. It's halfway to MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch when everyone on both sides keep assuring themselves that Risa and Silva are most definitely ''just friends'', '''honest'''. [[spoiler:Silva eventually hooks up with Pam Cross by the latter half of the series]].
275** Tabby is hopelessly in love with Spanky [=McFarlene=], though it's one-sided in this case: he sees her as more of a surrogate daughter than a romantic partner.
276** There's a brief ShipTease between [[LikeAnOldMarriedCouple Fred Reynolds and Kari-Faask]] in "Pass of Fire", when he wonders if she's jealous of him for going on a date.
277* InsistentTerminology: The Empire of the New Britain Isles doesn't enslave women. Instead, the women are under ''obligations'' that must be paid off with work.
278* KangarooCourt: Billingsly plans to have 70 men, including the captain of HIMS ''Ajax'', executed for following orders he gave them by claiming they acted on their own. It's heavily implied that these are commonplace in the Empire of New Britain thanks to the Company running things.
279* KillHimAlready: With Reddy and [[spoiler: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Sir Harrison Reed]], where Reddy shoots him after he puts his gun down.]]
280* KrakenAndLeviathan: Among the sea creatures in this world is the "mountain fish" (apparently actually a kind of enormous whale), so big it can wreck a steamship -- by '''biting''' it. At one point, it's stated that the locals' massive city-ships known as "Homes" are '''almost''' as big as mountain fish -- and a Home is the size of an [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essex_class_aircraft_carrier Essex-class aircraft carrier]]. And that's the ''average'' sized mountain fish... they do come in bigger sizes. The Imperials actually call them Leviathans.
281** From the way they're described as moving (basking, gradually picking up speed, able to move very fast for short periods of time), mountain fish may be the descendants of "[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predator_X Predator X]]".
282** In ''Firestorm'', Captain Reddy suggests that some of these creatures may have crossed over to our Earth in the past, creating myths of said creatures. He comes up with the idea after finding out from Jenks about the existence of clever dragon-like creatures. This completely kills Bradford's theory about metal content being a requirement for crossing over.
283** ''Deadly Shores'' reveals that the Dominion’s (relatively) tamed man-eating grikbirds are "lesser dragons," and drops a teasing hint about the Dominion army having a "greater" breed in captivity. [[spoiler: These beasties make their appearance in ''Straits of Hell'' during the assault on Fort Defiance: enormous Allosaurian creatures wrangled by “dragon monks” (a few of whom become appetizers when the things are released into battle) able to shrug off anything short of field artillery. Even the elephant guns used by the Imperial St. Francis Volunteers are ineffectual against them. As Captain Blas-Ma-Ar observes, “We just pissin’ it off!”]]
284* LikeRealityUnlessNoted: The "real world" the destroyermen left behind is treated this way. A lot of the ships depicted in the series either never existed or had very different histories; see ArtisticLicenseShips above for more detail.
285* LongRunningBookSeries: Fifteen novels in all with Winds of Wrath being the final novel.
286* LovesTheSoundOfScreaming:
287** Kurokawa is very much a sadist, so much that it unnerves ''[[EvenEvilHasStandards the Grik]]''. He actually had to refrain from laughing as he watched [[spoiler:Tsalka]]'s execution via [[EatenAlive the traitor's death]].
288** The Dominion practices blood sacrifice on a truly ludicrous scale, believing that torture and pain are the best way to be blessed by God.
289* LowCultureHighTech: The Grik rarely innovate, preferring to capture and reverse-engineer technology from others. [[spoiler:This changes with the influence of the Japanese and, after the Grik-Japanese alliance is broken, General Esshk ensures that the Grik continue to innovate, having realized the importance of innovation in war]].
290* MedievalStasis: The Grik and Lemurians were in stasis for centuries. Due to a stratified guild system, the last time the Lemurians advanced much technologically was to escape the Grik by developing sea travel. The Grik meanwhile are technological locusts that don't innovate on their own, but are very good at reverse-engineering stuff. Somewhat less so with the island Lemurians who were entering the Iron Age when ''Walker'' appeared, while the seagoing Lemurians were still in the Bronze. [[HumansAreSpecial It's only the arrival of humans that enables either side to break the stasis.]] However, just 2 years after the arrival of ''Walker'', [[spoiler: the Lemurians are making near-identical copies of the ship, as well as cannons, airplanes, radios, and automatic weapons]]. That's a huge leap.
291** Zigzagged with The Empire of New Britain, which is improving but at a very slow rate. This is lampshaded in ''Maelstrom'' when it's observed that they still use muskets. Their ancestors crossed over in the 1740s, and have advanced to a roughly 1840s-level on their own, having independently developed steam engines.
292* [[MisguidedMissile Misguided Torpedo]]: Subverted. In ''Storm Surge'', ''Walker'' and ''Mahan'' make a full-speed torpedo run at [[spoiler: Kurokawa's Grik-built battleships]] despite Sandison warning Reddy that they tend to be unpredictable at high speeds. The run is successful... until a torpedo, assumed to be one of ''Walker'''s that went off course, blows ''Mahan'''s bow off, nearly destroying the ship. However, it turns out that it was actually [[spoiler:one of the League of Tripoli's submarines]] that torpedoed ''Mahan'', in order to make the Allies' recent victory at Madras less one-sided.
293* MistreatmentInducedBetrayal: At the end of ''River of Bones'', [[spoiler:the entire crew of the ''U-112'' surrenders to ''Walker'', after being written off by the League and left to fend for themselves. Apparently, the French- and Italian-dominated League is gradually marginalizing the German contingent, with the Spanish being next]]. Also a case of BecauseYouWereNiceToMe, as [[spoiler:Oberleutnant Walbert Fiedler convinces the sub's crew to mutiny, after being treated with respect by Captain Reddy, unlike his League superiors. He knows Reddy to be a man of honor]]. For a bit of humor, they've been trying to surrender for quite a while now, but [[spoiler:Alliance ships]] kept shooting at them.
294* MonstrousCannibalism: The Grik eat each other ''all the time''. They prefer eating other species to preserve their numbers, but they won't hesitate to send a handful of [[{{Mooks}} Uul]] (or [[YouHaveFailedMe incompetant Hij]]) to the cookpots if nothing better is available.
295* {{Mooks}}:
296** The Uul, the barely sapient Grik foot soldiers. %% Please don't add a pothole to Redshirt: that's specifically a good-guy trope.
297** Standard Dominion soldiers, who (unlike the Grik) rarely rout or retreat. Being religious fanatics, and having the very real fear of painful punishment hanging over them, keeps them in line.
298* MoralMyopia: Kurokawa frequently saves his own skin by sailing separately from his fleet, thus escaping its destruction. He knows that anyone else doing that would be a DirtyCoward, but since DespotismJustifiesTheMeans, he's merely living to fight another day.
299* MuggingTheMonster: Halfway through ''Into the Storm'', a Grik warship makes the mistake of launching firebombs at ''Walker''. Not only does the destroyer effortlessly blow it apart in retaliation, but the attack is what finally convinces Reddy to help the Lemurians.
300-->'''Captain Reddy:''' "...Did they just throw those balls of fire at ''us''?"
301* TheMultiverse: In ''Deadly Shores'', Courtney Bradford reveals his theory on the nature of the mysterious squalls coupled with the existence of the Republic of Real People, composed of descendants of various arrivals whose histories differ from both ours and each other’s. He proposes that the Lemurian/Grik world acts as a sort of "dumping ground" for a multitude of other parallel worlds. The most recent arrivals, the German crew and British prisoners of the SS ''Amerika'' (a German transport converted into a warship during UsefulNotes/WorldWarI) claim to have fought a battle with another converted transport before being swept up by a storm. Reddy explains that, according to the history he studied, the SS ''Amerika'' didn't fight during that war and was converted into a troop transport under an American flag (and it didn't disappear). Most of Courtney's audience leaves halfway through his presentation, being utterly confused. Others who understand are still having trouble grasping the idea of an infinite number of universes, despite the fact that there are clearly at least two parallel worlds.
302** The attack on the fleet by [[spoiler: the French submarine ''Surcouf'']], which was in our history controlled by the [[spoiler: Free French]] but appears to be under the control of the [[spoiler: Vichy France]] further supports Courtney's theory. This is confirmed in ''Straits of Hell'', which reveals that [[spoiler:''Surcouf'' comes from a universe where much of Europe became fascist as a reaction to Bolshevism (which was quickly wiped out) and where Germany, France, Italy, and Spain united to conquer the Americans, the British, the Russians, and the Chinese. A large fleet sent to conquer British Egypt in 1939 crossed over into the other universe and has since established a new faction, the League of Tripoli, in the Mediterranean region.]]
303* MySpeciesDothProtestTooMuch: "Maelstrom" reveals that there's a Grik offshoot race called the Tagranesi that acts nothing like them. The [[spoiler:Khonashi on Borneo]] also qualify.
304* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: The Grik call the Indian Ocean "the Terrible Sea". Given the presence of humongous mountain-fish (which itself fits this trope), they dare not go through it, preferring to navigate closer to the African coast. The stated statistic is that no more than 1 in 20 ships make it through the ocean.
305* NegativeSpaceWedgie: The Squall. As of ''Distant Thunders'', Courtney Bradford's latest theory on it is that frequency of passage to the alternate Earth is directly proportional to ships' metal content. By ''Deadly Shores'', his theory has evolved into believing in the existence of TheMultiverse, where their current world acts as a sort-of radio receiver for others. In ''Pass of Fire'’, it's revealed that the anomaly also operates close to shore, as the fleet that became the League of Tripoli was transported while moored at the city of Tripoli along with a sizable chunk of the city. All they then got dumped on another city that already stood in the same spot on the Lemurian world.
306* NeverFoundTheBody: [[spoiler:Tony Scott]] turns out to be alive and (sort of) well in ''Storm Surge'' as the king of the Khonashi, a tribe of Grik-like lizards [[spoiler: and humans]]. [[spoiler:Apparently, the Khonashi saved him from the allosaur that was presumed to have eaten him in ''Crusade''.]]
307* NeverGiveTheCaptainAStraightAnswer:
308** Used from time to time, and almost always [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]]. In one instance Reddy assumes it's because the person summoning him wants him to see the situation from the same perspective, which a simple report might not do justice.
309** An inversion occurs in "Storm Surge", when [[{{Jerkass}} Laney]] (by now ''Santa Catalina'''s engineering officer) goes all the way up the bridge to give a damage report... and Captain Russ Chappelle angrily chews him out for leaving his post mid-combat instead of just using the radio.
310--->'''Chappelle''': What ''are'' you doin' here, Laney?
311--->'''Laney''': Why, uh, there's water comin' in.
312--->'''Chappelle''': We sinkin'?
313--->'''Laney''': Not when I headed up here, but it was gettin' worse, and who knows now...
314--->'''Chappelle''': ''[[RageBreakingPoint You]]'' should know, you puffed-up, self-centered boar's tit!
315* NobleDemon:
316** Commander Sato of ''Amagi'', and later [[spoiler:Lieutenant of the Sky Muriname]] as well. They despise the Grik, and believe negotiating with the Americans is a viable option...but this is more due to ''Amagi'''s captain being [[AxeCrazy a complete lunatic]] than anything else.
317** General Ghanan Nerino [[CharacterDevelopment grows]] into this, after his [[GeneralFailure rather unimpressive]] initial performance. [[spoiler:Unfortunately for him, he suffers a HeelFaceDoorSlam courtesy of Don Hernan after failing to take Fort Defiance]].
318* ObfuscatingStupidity:
319** Dennis Silva may be a drinking, swearing, pranking, fighting giant of a man, but he's smarter than he lets on. He quickly realizes that [[spoiler:Becky]] isn't who she claims to be about the same time as TheCaptain.
320** Billingsley's NumberTwo, Linus Truelove, is the same way. Both Silva and Truelove know the other is hiding his true nature.
321* OceanPunk: Pretty much the entire setting. It's a sailor's wet dream. You have vessels from both world wars, 19th-century vessels of the New British Empire, as well as a few for the Alliance, and 17th-century warships used by the Grik -- armed with catapults. Two of the weirder examples are Spanish galleons with paddle wheels strapped to the sides of their ships and giant wooden aircraft carriers powered by steam that are also home to Cats.
322* OhCrap: An exceptionally well-deserved one from [[{{JerkAss}} Billingsly]], when he realizes that [[spoiler:Silva has rigged his ship, ''Ajax'', to blow up]].
323* OmnidisciplinaryScientist: Courtney Bradford, though he's a far more realistic instance of this trope: originally working for Royal Dutch Shell as a geologist, Bradford (who calls himself a "naturalist") has a wealth of knowledge of prehistoric flora and fauna, as well as the sites of oil reserves in the East Indies. He's not really an expert in anything, though; as he puts it, "I know a little about a lot."
324* OnceDoneNeverForgotten:
325** [=EM1=] Rodriguez's hair caught fire when ''Walker'' took a hit during an engagement with ''Amagi''. His new nickname: Ronson, after a popular cigarette lighter brand.
326** Ensign Fred Reynolds attacked an enemy ship in his unarmed PB-1B Nancy seaplane, firing his .45 out of the cockpit in the absence of better options. His first six rounds at least hit the enemy ship. The seventh punched a hole in the nose of his own plane. His Lemurian deck crew patched the hole, but instead of painting over it, they circled it and wrote a big "NO" where he can see it from the cockpit.
327* OneFederationLimit: Mostly played straight. The major factions thus far are: the United Homes, the Grik Celestial Realm, the Empire of the New Britain Isles, the Holy Dominion, the Regency of India, the Republic of Real People, and the [[spoiler:League of Tripoli]]. Inverted in the case of the [[spoiler:New United States, which is usually abbreviated to NUS to avoid confusion with Reddy's United States Navy]].
328* {{Patricide}}: In book two Prince Rasik-Alcas murders his father and becomes king of Aryaal.
329* PeaceAndLoveIncorporated: The Honorable New Britain Company. Not only are they entirely run by {{Corrupt Corporate Executive}}s, but [[spoiler: in ''Rising Tides'' they turn out to be in league with the Dominion, outright helping the Doms launch a sneak attack on the Empire of New Britain]].
330* PersonAsVerb: More like "Place as Verb": A salvage operation in "Distant Thunders" and "Rising Tides" is overlooked by a volcano on a nearby island that's starting to act up. The people worry that it might be about to "pull a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Krakatoa Krakatoa]]". [[spoiler:[[ChekhovsVolcano It does]]]]. It's also pointed out that the statement is invalid in this world, as this world's Krakatoa has never blown its top.
331* PiranhaProblem: Falling into the sea is pretty much a death sentence thanks to the ubiquitous presence of flasher fish, or "flashies", which are essentially tuna-sized saltwater piranhas. [[spoiler:[[MauveShirt Danny Porter]]]] gets a rather brutal death by flashy in ''Storm Surge'' after pulling a HeroicSacrifice:
332-->''He hated not knowing how it would all turn out, but his certainty was growing that, of all [[spoiler:S-19]]'s surviving crew, he was going to get off the easiest. At least that's what he thought until the first flasher fish tore a baseball-size hunk out of his side. Another hit his left leg. Even as he flailed, screaming in the water, the hits became continuous and the water frothed around him. Oddly, he never really felt any pain; the attack was too fast, too traumatic. Flasher fish are greedy things, and very good at what they do.''
333* PointsOfLightSetting: ''Destroyermen'' is set in an [[AlternateHistory alternate 1940s]] in which the K-T extinction never happened, and the dinosaurs and their contemporary species have continued to evolve.
334** The seas are teeming with predators (including "flashies", essentially [[PiranhaProblem tuna-sized saltwater pirannhas]]; and "mountain fish", carnivorous whales large enough to swallow ships whole), which have largely prevented plants and animals from migrating to different landmasses, allowing for a wide variety of evolutionary paths to take hold.
335** Living among this DeathWorld are the Grik (an [[TheEmpire empire]] of LizardFolk, heavily implied to be descended from [[RaptorAttack raptors]]), scattered populations of Lemurians (CatFolk who evolved on Madagascar but had to pull an [[HomeworldEvacuation Homeland Evacuation]] when the Grik invaded), and the occasional community of humans who got stranded in this world after getting pulled through a [[NegativeSpaceWedgie Squall]]. Not all of those humans are [[TheMultiverse from the same universe]], either.
336** Over the course of the books, TheAlliance started by the crew of USS ''Walker'' to fight the Grik explores this alternate world and gradually becomes a SpaceFillingEmpire; however, much of its territory consist of islands or coastlines, and as late as ''Devil's Due'' (the eleventh book out of fifteen) Greg Garrett doubts more than 5% of the globe has actually been explored yet.
337* PoliticallyCorrectHistory:
338** Averted. The entire crew of USS ''Walker'' is shown to be at least mildly racist, from an incidental ValuesDissonance standpoint if not actively. Many of them are very [[FairForItsDay open-minded for the forties]], but terms like "Jappo," "Jap," and "Nip" fly freely.
339** One character is described as an openly "Kard-Karrying Klansman" who would do impersonations of Al Jolson (and reacted to the common knowledge that Jolson was openly Jewish with shocked denial) and perform little shows in blackface, which greatly amused everybody. Silva (who is from Alabama) notes that while he enjoyed the shows immensely himself, [[EveryoneHasStandards he disliked how the local Filipino workers would be treated after them]]. [[spoiler: This guy later dives across the MoralEventHorizon and gets his [[KarmicDeath comeuppance]] at the hands of Silva and fellow Alabaman Bosun Gray]].
340* PoliticalOfficer: [[spoiler: The Empire of New Britain]]'s warships have officers whose main loyalties are to [[spoiler: the Honourable New British East India Company]] instead of [[spoiler: TheEmperor]].
341* {{Precursors}}: There are ruins scattered across Africa and India that point to the existence of a civilization that fell a long time ago. It's hinted that they might be the "Vanished Gods" the Grik worship.
342* PuppetKing: Governor-Emperor Gerald [=McDonald=] was one to the Honourable New Britain Isles Company until the intervention of ''Walker'' and her crew. Entirely averted by [[spoiler:his daughter Governor-Empress Rebecca Ann [=McDonald=], despite her young age]]. Kurokawa speculates that [[spoiler:the new Celestial Mother is likely to be one, with General Esshk and the Chooser running the Grik Empire in her stead, in stark contrast with the previous Celestial Mother]].
343* PuttingOnTheReich: The [[spoiler:Confédération États Souverains from a parallel world, where France and Spain became fascist after UsefulNotes/WorldWarI and joined with Italy (as well as Germany as a minor ally), declaring war on the UK, US, and Russia (which never became communist). A large fleet sent by the fascists to take British Egypt was swept up by a squall and taken to the Lemurian/Grik world, where they established the League of Tripoli. As expected, they treat Lemurians as little more than animals]].
344* PyrrhicVictory / WasItReallyWorthIt: [[spoiler: The end of ''Deadly Shores''. Most of Madagascar is in the hands of the Alliance, but the losses they suffered - and the fact that it was originally supposed to be nothing more than a raid - cause Reddy to lament that they probably didn't deserve to win. After the battle, Reddy rightly puts the blame for this squarely on Adar's shoulders for publicly supporting the raid plan while giving obvious hints to everyone that he wanted the island taken, resulting in underprepared troops doing what they weren't supposed to be doing.]]
345* RagtagBunchOfMisfits:
346** USS ''Walker's'' crew is portrayed as this. Captain Reddy notes at the beginning of "Into the Storm" that the entirety of the Asiatic fleet had this reputation.
347** The end of "Iron Gray Sea" reveals a whole ''nation'' of these, made up of Lemurian refugees from the time of the Exodus and various humans who have crossed over in the Atlantic since then. It's not clear how old the Republic is, but Romans arrived there in the 10th century to join others who settled South Africa. The latest arrivals are a UsefulNotes/WorldWarI-era German ship full of British [=PoWs=].
348* RammingAlwaysWorks: [[spoiler:''Mahan'' does this to ''Amagi'' during the Battle of Baalkpan]] in "Maelstrom", [[spoiler:detonating a load of depth charges for maximum effect. ''Amagi'' survives, but suffers heavy damage]].
349** [[spoiler:A Grik dreadnought accidentally sinks ''S-19'' this way]] in "Storm Surge".
350** In "River of Bones", [[spoiler:''Aracca'''s fate is sealed when a Grik cruiser plows into her side in the Zambezi river. Then a doomed airplane crashes into her, starting a fire that her crew don't even bother trying to fight]].
351* RapeIsASpecialKindOfEvil: ''Brutally'' invoked in "Crusade" with [[spoiler:Blas-Ma-Ar]] at Aryaal. She ''never'' fully recovers, as evidenced by her attitudes to Chack Sab-At (a figure she respects a lot and who helped her out after the incident). [[spoiler:[[KarmicDeath The perpetrator is executed for this action]]]].
352* ReasonableAuthorityFigure: Many Lemurian chiefs, as well as Governor-Emperor Gerald [=McDonald=] of the Empire of New Britain. The end of Book 7 also introduces a Lemurian with the title of Caesar, the benevolent despot of the Republic of Real People.
353* RecycledInSpace: The Lemurians' backstory is basically ''Series/{{Battlestar Galactica|1978}}'' [[RecycledInSpace ON THE SEA]] and in an alternate prehistory.
354** The [[RealLife experience]] of the US Asiatic Fleet in the opening months of [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII the war]] can be compared to both the Lemurians and BSG, as they started the war outnumbered and outgunned on worn-out ships, constantly hunted by an implacable and overwhelming enemy force as they retreated from the Phillipines to Borneo to Java to Australia.
355* RedShirt: Unnamed Lemurians are often killed while accompanying the main characters on missions. One example is during the aerial battle in "Crusade", where the Catalina's unnamed side gunners are both killed while Mallory, Palmer, and Tikker all survive.
356%% RedShirtArmy specifically refers to easily killed good guys.
357* RedShirtArmy: Averted. The Lemurian forces do take serious losses in the books' various battles, but they inflict far worse losses on the Grik.
358* ReligionOfEvil: The perverted version of Christianity mixed with {{Mayincatec}} blood sacrifices as practiced by the Holy Dominion.
359* ReptilesAreAbhorrent: Zigzagged. The Grik, who are described as fuzzy raptors, play this straight. Then in "Firestorm" some other Grik-like races have been found that prove to be valuable allies. They're still somewhat distrusted for their appearance, but they're still good friends to have. And then, thanks to the Grik promoting intelligence in the ranks out of necessity, some of them turn into {{Worthy Opponent}}s while for others, DefeatMeansFriendship.
360* TheRepublic: The Republic of Real People is discovered in South Africa at the end of "Iron Gray Sea" by a Japanese officer. It's a Roman-style republic ruled by a benevolent despot (a Lemurian to boot) known as the Caesar. It is also quite advanced, up to UsefulNotes/WorldWarI standards.
361* RewardedAsATraitorDeserves: How do General Pete Alden and Lord Muln-Rolak respond to the offer of a Grik general to join the Grand Alliance in their "hunt" and then casually mentioning eating another tribe of Grik? By slaughtering every Grik in sight [[spoiler:except for a civilian Grik who is taken prisoner]].
362* RousingSpeech: Despite his protestations to the contrary, Reddy is actually very good at these, as well as pretty much any other kind of rousing/threatening/comforting speech you could ask for.
363* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething:
364** The Orphan Queen of B'mbaado. Not only a fierce and capable warrior in her own right, but when she says something like "I will be the last of my people to leave" or "I will not stop until I've brought everyone home," she ''means it''. She has ended up behind enemy lines and has personally lead her army to battle on a number of occasions.
365*** On one occasion, Chairman Adar (the leader of the Grand Alliance) orders her to evacuate aboard a plane. Her reply is brilliant in its refusal: while ''General'' Safir Maraan would happily follow Chairman Adar's ''suggestion'', ''Queen'' Safir Maraan will not abandon her forces.
366** Lord Rolak, while not technically a king, qualifies as he is very much the last remaining royalty "figure" for Aryaal itself and, is a ColonelBadass, despite technically being a general.
367** Lord Koratin counts as well. At first, he's just a scheming Aryaal courtier. Later, he joins the Alliance marines and proves himself extremely capable. In fact, when later offered command over his own regiment, he refuses claiming that his place is on the front lines. He's also one of the first Lemurians to adopt Catholicism.
368* SchizoTech:
369** Hoo boy. You've got UsefulNotes/WorldWarI- and [[UsefulNotes/WorldWarII II]]-era tech with the destroyers [[spoiler: and a Japanese battle-cruiser]], 18th-century tech with the Grik's ships, and roughly Bronze Age (leavened with some Iron) tech with the Lemurians...who the Americans train to fight in a Roman shield wall. Supported by bronze cannons. And this is just the first two books...
370** The Empire and Dominion have roughly Civil War-era tech: wooden ships powered by sail and coal-fired steam.
371** The ultimate expression is the conversion of the carrier-sized wooden Home ships (sail-powered) of the Lemurians into actual steam-powered carriers for their new planes.
372** The Grik respond (with Japanese help) by adding [[spoiler: iron cannons]] to their ships, as well as use [[spoiler: field artillery]] to support their mindless horde. Shortly after, they unveil their [[spoiler: zeppelin bombers]] and [[spoiler: ironclad warships based on early American (CSS ''Virginia'') and French-built (''Kotetsu'') ironclads]].
373*** Those [[spoiler:zeppelin bombers]] later sport anti-air defenses and drop [[spoiler: glider bombs piloted by kamikaze Grik]].
374*** Those [[spoiler:battleships]] are later converted into carriers, and [[spoiler:General of the Sky Muriname succeeds in creating Kurokawa's own air force with Grik-piloted fighters and bombers]].
375* ScienceMarchesOn:
376** Used in-universe - the human characters are stuck with a mid-20th-century understanding of dinosaurs and evolution whilst interacting with dinosaurs and lemurs written with an early 21st-century understanding of dinosaurs.
377** One of the more subtle examples is the fact that the Grik have feathers, despite supposedly being lizards. We now know that raptors, from whom the Grik are likely descended, had feathers and may have been the ancestors to modern birds. Bradford also keeps insisting that Grik are birds and not lizards based on their internal structure (e.g. hollow bones).
378* SequelHook: "Winds of Wrath" ends the series, but leaves a few plot threads hanging for future books to potentially pick up:
379** [[spoiler:The League of Tripoli and its fascist Triumvirate are still intact, and several characters expect hostilities to resume within a generation or so]].
380** [[spoiler:Don Hernan and Gravois escape the fall of New Granada, and venture south to reform the Dominion and strengthen its ties with the League. Although Reddy doesn't expect them to have much success at that, Don Hernan is not someone to be underestimated...]]
381** [[spoiler:[[UsefulNotes/AtomicBombingsOfHiroshimaAndNagasaki Two large explosions]] are sighted at Japan, hinting at further crossovers with alternate worlds]].
382** [[spoiler:Silva, Lawrence, and Courtney Bradford plan to reform the Corps of Discovery and continue to explore the still-mostly-uncharted world]].
383* ShownTheirWork:
384** Anderson neglects ''nothing'' when it comes to keeping a ''Wickes''-class tin can running. Food, fuel, ammunition, lubricants, spare parts, glass, uniforms, paper, and the infrastructure to supply them are all addressed. Chief Gray's first concern after they cross over, which is both well-justified and fully explained, is a lack of ''paint''.
385** The [[NegativeSpaceWedgie strange]] [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds void-place-thing]] within the squall is described as a strange vacuum in which water droplets are suspended in place. When ''Walker'' reaches it, Reddy briefly hears/feels the engines screaming as the screws (which are no longer submerged) run away. Spanky also catches it and quickly stops the engines, preventing catastrophic damage.
386* SlidingScaleOfAlternateHistoryPlausibility: Type II. While some creative liberties are taken (justified, considering the point of divergence was apparently millions of years ago) the story is generally well-researched. The author discusses the reasoning behind some of the changes in the afterword of ''Into the Storm''.
387* SociopathicHero: Silva - my god, Silva. If no other passage seals it, one paragraph in ''Into the Storm'' defines the entire character of Dennis Silva and is possibly the most clear-cut example ever of the entire trope of a Heroic Sociopath.
388-->He'd killed a lot in his life, before the War even started. Bar fights and back alleys in China, mostly - although there'd been that pool shark down in Mobile too. Most had it coming, by his definition, though he might have been hasty a time or two. The Japs had it coming, and he guessed he'd killed some of them with his number one gun. But that was a team sport. He'd never killed anybody because he was "good" and they were "bad". They'd just been "badder" than he was. And sometimes Dennis Silva could be a bad man. But now he ''felt'' good because the creatures he killed were indisputably bad. [...] He felt like the big mean dragon in the story that everyone was scared of, who swooped down and ate the evil king. Sometimes it felt good to be "good".
389** If that's not enough for you, originally Silva described himself as having only four moods (happy, hungry, horny, and mad, albeit this changes over time somewhat), considers war to be the best fun he's ever had, and by the time of "Firestorm" has been described (by Sandra no less) as being valuable to the fleet specifically because when put in a bad situation he will take the utmost pragmatic and effective course with no regard for morals or ethics. His mission on Earth seems to be to kill as many of his enemies as is humanly possible, and boy does he love his mission.
390** However, Silva does have a tender side that he rarely reveals. He's also extremely loyal. If somebody threatens the people he cares about, ''[[RoaringRampageOfRevenge well...]]''
391* SomebodySetUpUsTheBomb: In "Distant Thunders" Silva inflicts this fate on [[spoiler:Billingsley by setting ''Ajax's'' powder magazines up to explode]]. Good riddance.
392* SssssnakeTalk:
393** As expected, the Grik speak in this manner. It's not clear if their cousins the Tagranesi do the same.
394** A Tagrenesi named Lawrence speaks English fairly well, except for his inability to form any sounds requiring lips.
395* SpaceFillingEmpire:
396** The Grik Empire controls at least (the exact extent is unknown) India, southern Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the Persian Gulf, and most of the eastern coast of Africa.
397** Meanwhile, the Dominion controls Mexico, Central America, and South America from what's Colombia in our world down to the northern half of Chile.
398** The Alliance is heading in this direction, controlling the Philippines, parts of Indonesia and Australia, and most recently, Japan and the Hawaiian Islands (voluntarily) and India (by conquest). By the end of "Deadly Shores" they also control [[spoiler:Madagascar and are mounting an invasion of Grik Africa]]. However, as Greg Garrett notes in "Devil's Due", most of these holdings consist of islands or coastlines, and he doubts more than 5% of the globe has actually been explored yet.
399** It now looks like North America has at least two more countries, one of which (the New United States) pushed the Dominion out of Mexico for a time and their rivals on their other border.
400** And one led by some Czech guy that's north of Grik-controlled India.
401** Most of the Mediterranean region is firmly in the hands of [[spoiler:the League of Tripoli]].
402* SpoilerCover: The cover of ''Firestorm'' depicts [[spoiler:Grik zepplins bombing Alliance ships]], which doesn't happen until almost the end of the book.
403* StarsAreSouls: A core part of the Lemurian religion, at least among the "Sea Folk".
404* StormingTheCastle:
405** In "Deadly Shores" [[spoiler:the Celestial Mother's palace is stormed by a small group during the invasion of the so-called "Grik City" on Madagascar, while a battle rages on outside]].
406** The [[spoiler:Sofesshk campaign]] in "Pass of Fire" features the Allied invasion of the [[spoiler:Grik capital city]].
407* StrandedWithEdison:
408** The crew of two US naval destroyers just happens to have some engineers who have worked in oil fields so that they can drill new oil wells for fuel. Other experts are in abundance (pilots that can design planes), to the point that know-how isn't usually a problem, just materials, and facilities. Only once or twice does someone mention they don't actually know how to make something they need, but it's sort of shrugged off with "We'll figure something out."
409** Justifiable for several reasons. In the 1930's, people tended to have a broader (if less advanced) knowledge of their respective fields. As well, it is worth noting that the misfits of the Navy (aka the most ingenious, if least conventional) are the ones assigned to the Asiatic Fleet. Further amplified by the fact there have been [[JustifiedTrope logical reasons set forth early on]] as to WHY they can make the advances that they do, instead of relying on OnlyTheAuthorCanSaveThemNow.
410** One invention, in particular, is made by the Lemurians based on Captain Reddy's former fascination with ancient naval combat. When boarding a Grik ship, he has the Lemurians build him a corvus, a boarding bridge of Roman design that embeds itself in the other ship's deck, allowing boarders to cross. Unfortunately, the Lemurians build it out of bamboo, and it collapses under the weight. Of course, Reddy forgets that the corvus is not only unusable but dangerous to both ships in rough seas. That's why the Romans stopped using them.
411** By ''Storm Surge'', though, it's stated that all major improvements are being done by Lemurians with humans just shaking their heads in a "why haven't we thought about it?" way. The Lemurians just needed a push in the right direction to get things started.
412** In "Deadly Shores", the Lemurians finish building [[spoiler:two ''Walker''-type destroyers using steel salvaged from ''Amagi'']], and there are ideas being put forward for building [[spoiler:''Farragut''-class destroyers and cruisers]] next.
413** Unfortunately, the same is true for the crew of ''Amagi'', who managed to help the Grik increase their technical knowledge and tactics. Furthermore, "General of the Sky" Muriname pretty much single-handedly [[spoiler:builds Kurokawa a powerful air force that rivals that of the Alliance]], despite the fact that [[spoiler:''Amagi'' was a battlecruiser, not a carrier]]. It's hinted that, even without Kurokawa and his officers, General Esshk has realized the importance of innovation over brute force and will continue to develop the Grik technology and tactics.
414* SummonBiggerFish: In "Pass of Fire", [[spoiler:Second Fleet sics hundreds of mountain fish toward a Dominion fleet using depth charges and air-dropped bombs, literally crushing the Dom ships in the ensuing chaos]].
415* SurprisinglySuddenDeath: It happens. The most sudden and senseless has to be [[spoiler:Seaman Ray Mertz]]. In the midst of [[spoiler: the Battle of Baalkpan]], he's making sandwiches for the rest of the crew when a 10-inch shell from ''Amagi'' guts the galley. There's not enough left of him to bury. A steam frigate is later named in honor of him.
416* ThatsNoMoon: During a scout over the Java Sea, Tikker is surprised to see what looks like an island below him, one not marked on the maps. Upon taking a closer look, he [[OhCrap realizes]] those "sandy beaches" are actually [[spoiler:the white sails of hundreds of Grik ships on their way to invade Aryaal and Baalkpan]].
417* AThicketOfSpears: When the Americans start [[TrainingThePeacefulVillagers training and equipping the Lemurians]] to more effectively fight the Grik, they start out by reinventing the Greek phalanx with spear and shield for lack of resources to do anything else. This quickly evolves into shot-and-pike with the spears eventually supplanted by muskets as they're able to gradually reproduce more advanced Earth weaponry with the available resources, with the shields evolving into portable cover for musketeers.
418* ThoseWackyNazis: [[spoiler:The League of Tripoli comes from an alternate world where fascist France and Spain are members of the Axis Powers, or Confédération États Souverains (Confederation of Sovereign States), as they're called in their universe. Unfortunately for the Alliance, they have come through with a full invasion fleet. Their current goal appears to be preventing any one power from dominating the world. This includes both the Alliance and a possible Grik/Dom VillainTeamUp]].
419* TokenGoodTeammate: Sato of the ''Amagi'' crew.
420* TranquilFury: Matt slips into this when sufficiently angry. It's...unsettling. And [[BewareTheNiceOnes things usually end]] [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge very, very BADLY]] [[OhCrap for whoever made him mad.]]
421** ''Truly'' push Matt over the edge (for instance, [[spoiler: kidnap Sandra like Billingsley did]]), and Matt will go into this ''and'' UnstoppableRage at the same time.
422* VehicularTurnabout: A good percentage of the Alliance's United States Navy consists of captured Grik ships converted into troop transports, destroyer escorts, ammunition ships, and so on. As of "Pass of Fire" they've added [[spoiler:the League battleship ''Savoie'' and the [[MistreatmentInducedBetrayal defecting]] submarine ''U-112'']] to their ranks, though neither are combat-ready yet.
423* VillainousBSOD: Kurokawa experiences one witnessing his beloved [[spoiler:''[=ArataAmagi=]''-class battleships being destroyed one-by-one by P-[=40s=]]].
424* VillainTeamUp: Happens several times throughout the novels.
425** First, there is Kurokawa and the Grik, although that alliance ends in later books when Kurokawa flees to his own island base.
426** The Holy Dominion eventually discovers the existence of the Grik and their war with the Alliance. Despite their hatred for such creatures, they send a delegation across the Atlantic to Africa to contact the Grik and try to establish an EnemyMine situation. [[spoiler:The delegation is intercepted by the League of Tripoli]].
427** The [[spoiler:League of Tripoli]] makes overtures to Kurokawa following the end of his alliance with the Grik.
428* VillainsWantMercy: Played for BlackComedy in ''Maelstrom''. [[spoiler:Captain Kaufman has Kurokawa at his mercy and is about to smash his head with a broken piece of conduit, until Kurokawa cries, "Wait!" Kaufman does. Kurokawa shoots him.]]
429-->'''[[spoiler:Kaufman]]:''' Goddamn sneaky Japs. [[spoiler:*dies*]]
430* VitriolicBestBuds: Silva and his Tagranesi sidekick Lawrence.
431* VoidBetweenTheWorlds: The inside of the Squall.
432-->The sea was gone. Down as far as he could see, past the boot topping, past the growth-encrusted red paint of the hull, into the limited greenish-black nothingness below, were only uncountable billions of raindrops suspended in the air.
433* WarIsGlorious: The Aryaalans and B'mbadans are among the very few 'Cat nations that regularly fought wars prior to the Grik conflict, and are {{Proud Warrior Race Guy}}s through and through.
434* WarIsHell: So far the total of deaths is in the ''millions''. The total losses incurred by the Lemurians are implied to be around 20,000 to 25,000 by the end of "Firestorm" (not counting civilian casualties before the war officially started), and the Grik sustaining ''no fewer'' than 300,000 losses. That is just the first 3 books; the end of ''Pass Of Fire'' casually references an off-page conflict between combined forces of nearly half a million [[spoiler:Grik in Arabia, as Halik rampages towards northern Africa.]] On-page deaths are utterly uncountable.
435* WeaponOfMassDestruction: In "Storm Surge", Chairman Adar commissions the secret development of two methods of killing hordes of Grik without a lot of Alliance casualties. One is mustard gas. Captain Reddy vehemently opposes using the gas. Not because it's immoral to kill Grik that way but because the Grik (thanks to their Japanese allies) are liable to start lobbing gas shells of their own, and the furry Lemurians would not be able to make gas masks with a tight enough seal to protect themselves. Reddy is reminded that, if Kurokawa makes mustard gas first, he will use it without hesitation, as he couldn't care less about his Grik underlings. The other is ''much'' more heinous and threatens to make the Eurasian and African continents on this world completely uninhabitable if it goes out of control. Specifically, they have [[spoiler: weaponized the kudzu-like parasite plant found on Yap island]]. Courtney Bradford especially protests against the latter, as it is bound to [[spoiler: completely destroy ecologies unprepared for the plant]].
436* WeAreStrugglingTogether: Averted... [[SubvertedTrope at first]]. With the Grik practically knocking on Balkpaan's front door in the first three books, there's very little opposition to forming TheAlliance to push them back. As the war begins to move away from Balkpaan, however, political in-fighting starts to heat up on the home front as the threat grows less urgent. Alen Letts speculates that this is due to all the {{Reasonable Authority Figure}}s being deployed overseas, leaving the {{Sleazy Politician}}s to take their place for the duration of the war. It got to the point that in '"Winds of Wrath"', [[spoiler:several of them began to secretly make a separate peace with the League and threatened to compromise the war effort in the East]].
437* WeHardlyKnewYe:
438** All ''Walker'' crew members killed in the first few chapters of ''Into the Storm'', such as [[DrJerk Doctor Stevens]].
439** [[spoiler:The rebuilt ''S-19'' is sunk for good]] at the end of ''Storm Surge'', having been [[spoiler:launched only a few weeks earlier]].
440* WeirdWeather: There's a rare green storm that picks up any vessel that drives into it and deposits them in a parallel world. ''Walker'' and ''Mahan'' ran into one while trying to escape ''Amagi''. [[spoiler:Bradford hypothesizes that it's summoned by the presence of large masses of metal on the sea, but this fails to explain previous crossovers by wooden ships, or how Svec and his Czech Legion crossed over in the middle of Asia]].
441* WhatMeasureIsANonHuman:
442** Played with all over the place. In the first book's climax, Reddy finds Lemurian skulls hung up as decorations in a Grik ship, he's outraged and remarks to himself that Lemurians are ''people'' and should not be treated like trophy animals. But it's only when he sees a human skull among them that he descends into TranquilFury and makes the decision to kill them all. [[CharacterDevelopment He later realizes the hypocrisy of this reaction in the second book]]. However, he has no issues with exterminating the Grik. It helps that most of them are little more than mindless beasts with only one thing on their mind: the hunt. They don't know when or how to stop. It's the Hij, the Grik who are old enough to gain a form of intelligence, who consciously direct the others to exterminate this and that species. They particularly want to kill the Lemurians because the Lemurians are the only "prey" to have ever escaped them.
443** The fourth book has Billingsly, a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain who views Lemurians as a lesser species of "ape-men" and [[spoiler:orders the captain of HIMS ''Ajax'' to destroy two Lemurian ships because they dared to speak to him, moreso because it was a female Lemurian]].
444** The Dominion considers Lemurians to be [[ItCanThink intelligent animals]] at best, and [[AnimalisticAbomination demons]] at worst.
445* WhamEpisode:
446** "Rising Tides". [[spoiler:''Walker'' reaches the [[LostColony New Britain Isles]] (Hawaii) and helps them fight off a [[TheTheocracy Dominion]] invasion, earning a powerful new member of the Alliance but also opening up a second front in the war. Sandra, Silva, Lawrence, and Rebecca manage to survive on, and escape from, [[DeathWorld Yap Island]] before being rescued by ''S-19'', which itself had very narrowly avoided being destroyed by the [[ChekhovsVolcano eruptions]] of the Talaud volcano]].
447** "Deadly Shores". [[spoiler:''Walker'' is besieged, boarded, and very nearly overrun by the Grik; Laumer, Gray, and the Celestial Mother are all dead; and Madagascar is under Alliance control (though it's kind of a PyrrhicVictory). And there's ''another'' hostile civilization operating in the Indian ocean, one that has modern warships at its disposal and is holding the Republic of Real People hostage]].
448** "Pass of Fire". [[spoiler:Sofesshk falls to the allies, the new Celestial Mother joins the Grand Alliance, General Esshk's forces become a RenegadeSplinterFaction and retreat to the north, and a fleet of modern League warships set off to retake the Pass of Fire from a ''very'' depleted Second Fleet]].
449* WhiteMansBurden:
450** Discussed with the Lemurians and ultimately zigzagged. It's demonstrated innumerable times that the 'Cats are an intelligent race with a vibrant culture and a rich history, and Reddy and his crew are very careful not to impose on the 'Cats beyond what is needed to win the war with the Grik (which mostly amounts to sharing their modern technology and helping them reorganize their economy and industry to support the war). On the other hand, the vast majority of the Lemurians flock to join Reddy's United States Navy rather than create their own military, and gleefully embrace American culture in all its forms, giving the impression of unintentional colonialism on the part of the destroyermen.
451** Played much more straight with the Empire of the New Britain Isles, who've mostly been stuck in an early 19th-century civilization since their own arrival, with Reddy and others wasting no opportunity to point out how inferior their technology and ways of doing things is compared to theirs. To further reinforce the trope, the Imperials are AmbiguouslyBrown, as their original British crews have intermixed with {{Mayincatec}} women from the Dominion.
452* WhyDontYouJustShootHim: [[CorruptCorporateExecutive Sir Harrison Reed]] challenges Captain Reddy to a sword fight. [[spoiler:Reddy drops his rifle... and then shoots the bastard with his 1911 Colt.]]
453* WhyWontYouDie: Courtesy of Dennis Silva, to ''Amagi'' near the end of the [[spoiler:Battle of Baalkpan Bay]] in ''Maelstrom''. At this point, the battlecruiser has taken two torpedoes, a Japanese dive-bomber crashing into her third turret, a third torpedo, being rammed by ''Mahan'', who then had her remaining ammunition detonated, and every single shell that ''Walker'' had left to dish out except one.
454->Goddamn! Why won't that unholy bitch just ''sink''?
455* WoodenShipsAndIronMen: The Empire and Dominion are on their way out of the Age of Sail; their ships are steam/sail hybrids. At the same time, the Dominion still relies heavily on sail-powered "liners", large galleons with many cannons.
456* TheWorfEffect:
457** ''Amagi'' blows the crap out of ''Walker'' each time they meet, much to the surprise and horror of any Lemurians present.
458** The Dominion manages to lure ''Walker'' into a trap that nearly cripples her during their first battle in '"Rising Tides", demonstrating that this new enemy is much smarter and more versatile than the Grik.
459* WorldOfBadass: Scroll through the [[Characters/{{Destroyermen}} Characters]] tab and you'll soon notice a pattern. Captain Reddy and his people were already a BadassCrew before going through the Squall, and with the Lemurians learning from their example, combined with the pressure of fighting a GuiltFreeExterminationWar on a DeathWorld, badass exploits abound.
460* WorthlessYellowRocks: Most Lemurian societies live on a barter system. Gold is treated as a pretty but useless trinket until the destroyermen convince them to create a more stable economic system and use gold as the standard. Even then some things are treated as more valuable than gold: when Silva and "Moe" (an old Lemurian hunter) find a downed Japanese bomber, Moe rejoices, claiming that he'll be the richest Lemurian ever from all the aluminum that makes up the plane. This is justified, though, as aluminum is desperately needed to make better planes.
461* WorthyOpponent: Linus Truelove sees Silva as this, although it isn't mutual. His last words when he realizes how Silva has killed him? "Bravo!"
462* WouldHurtAChild: The Grik happily kill and eat their young, at least those who are perceived as "prey" (i.e. those who don't exhibit AttackAttackAttack qualities). When attacking Ceylon, the Grand Alliance quickly learns that the Grik young are feral beasts who can be just as dangerous as their adult versions. It's not long before all Grik young are shot on sight.
463* YouHaveNoIdeaWhoYoureDealingWith: Spanky says it almost word-for-word when [[spoiler: Billingsly and his Company goons abduct Princess Rebecca, LT Tucker, and Sister Audrey]]. The conniving bastard really should've listened.
464* YouNoTakeCandle: Some of the Lemurians like Aviation Machinist's Mate Jeek talk this way in English. Justified, as their native tongue is completely unrelated to English and some learn new languages better than others. It also becomes less common as both groups get more immersion with each other. It's also implied that the Americans sound this way at first when they start learning Lemurian.
465* YouShallNotPass: At the end of "Devil's Due", with the news that [[spoiler:the new Grik army is making their way down the Zambezi river in hundreds of galleys, far too many for the Alliance to destroy before they reach Madagascar, Russ Chappelle opts to park his ''Santa Catalina'' in the middle of the river and physically block them from progressing]]. By the end of "River of Bones", [[spoiler:the cruiser has been reduced to a shattered, irreparable hulk, but she held the line long enough for First Fleet to arrive]].
466* ZeppelinsFromAnotherWorld: The Grik answer to TheAlliance's air force, seeing as how it would be near impossible to build a cockpit that could comfortably seat a Grik or even teach one to pilot a plane.
467* ZergRush: The Grik's "strategy" revolves around this. "The Grand Swarm" is essentially a ZergRush using ''warships.''
468** Justified in that most of the Grik are little more than mindless beasts. Good luck teaching them to fight in formation. The Hij, the older Grik who are in charge, don't mind sending countless of their younger kin to die.
469*** In fact, a few Grik ''are'' taught to move and stand in formation and [[spoiler:fire muskets]]. However, this is now ''all'' they do. They don't even bother to defend themselves when attacked up close.
470*** Later, this is changing, to the horror of the humans and the Lemurians. The "new" Grik are more tactical and no longer experience the so-called "Grik routs". However, the majority are still the same mindless horde.

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