The Caretaker Trilogy is a sci-fi/fantasy book series by David Klass, which has the interesting distinction of being the first piece of fiction ever to be endorsed by Greenpeace, due to its Anvilicious environmentalism message. The books focus around one Jack Danielson, who gets caught up in a war from the future and battles the forces of evil to save the Earth from being ruined, first by saving the oceans (Firestorm), then the Amazon rainforest (Whirlwind), and the third book (Timelock), had tackled global warming.
As silly and unoriginal as that makes the series sound, the story is very well-written and imaginative. Not least because of its unusual writing structure. It's written almost entirely in sentence fragments. Like this. All the time. Author claims they generate pace. Good pace. Sentence fragments make for fast-paced reading, particularly during the numerous action sequences.
This series contains examples of:
- Animorphism: The Dark Lord can turn into a gigantic tarantula.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Both Dargon and Colonel Aranha are more powerful by far than any of the Mooks they employ.
- Big Bad: Dargon in the first book, Colonel Aranha in the second.
- Cassandra Truth:Police Chief: "Your ma was a nice lady. Who cut her up and torched her house?"Jack: "The Dark Army."Police Chief: "What?"Jack: "Mutants, cyborgs, and chimeras from the future." (They don't believe him.)
- Changeling Fantasy: Subverted: Jack, it turns out, is actually Jair, prince of the Dannites. However, he wants absolutely no part of that, harboring resentment towards his true parents for sending him back in time as a baby, and "living a lie" all his life. He'd much prefer his foster parents to still be alive, and himself to be ignorant of his true identity.
- The Chosen One: Jack is the only person, for no adequately explained reason, who can find and use Firestorm. He is often refered to as the "Beacon of Hope" by Eko and Gisco, much to his irritation.
- Cool Old Guy: When he isn't being a badass, Kidah definitely fits this trope.
- Dark Lord: A literal example.
- Deadpan Snarker: Gisco, a telepathic snarker.
- Empathic Weapon: A lot of the future tech seen is telepathically controlled, and quite intelligent as well.
- Friend to All Living Things: In keeping with the environmentalism, the Dannites. Some can even communicate on a near-telepathic level with animals.
- Full-Frontal Assault: Jack fights Reilly while naked, as he had taken a shower in her house and she was actually seducing him.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The Dark Army is made up of genetically engineered mutants, cyborgs, and chimeras ("chimera" here referring to anyone with more than one type of DNA in them).
- Honey Trap: Reilly does one to catch Jack, and for the matter, it works predictably.
- Idiot Hero: Even Jack sees himself as somewhat of it, though he is soon forced to smart up.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Jack. He recognizes the importance of the war being fought, but would, all things considered, much rather leave it to the Dannites. Combined with Screw Destiny, since the Dannites have quite a few prophecies concerning him.
- Instant Expert: Jack learns martial arts, telepathy, how to sense his environment in the dark, and various other skills pretty quick. Justified in that it's implied that he had these abilities all along, and just needed to learn to tap into them.
- Large Ham: Gisco. Seriously, if there was ever an Animated Adaptation of the books, he'd be a huge telepathic ham.
- Long-Lost Relative: Dargon claims to be Jack's cousin. A distant one, but nonetheless...
- MacGuffin: Firestorm from the first book.
- Motor Mouth: Or rather Motor Mind, in Gisco's case. He telpathically talks a lot and very fastly.
- No Name Given: The Dark Lord. When dealing with people from this era, he goes by the pseudonym "Colonel Aranha".
- Obviously Evil: The Dark Army.
- Psychic Powers: Common enough in the future. Telepathy seems to be something that everyone has, and with lots of training telekinesis is possible as well.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Dannites' plan. The Dark Army copies them, trying to Set Wrong What Had Been Going Right.
- Sexophone: Reilly plays jazz in her bedroom during her advances on Jack.
- Shark Pool: In the first book, but the second contains a candiru pool, which is arguably much, much worse.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Eko knows perfectly the nudity taboos found in Jack's world, but doesn't care for them as much as for avoiding going nude aroud him. She also commends him to do the same while training, but he chooses to keep his underwear.
- Talking Animal: Gisco. Although only telepathically.
- Time Travel: The Dark Army and the Dannites (including the protagonist) are both from the future. They've witnessed the end result of the ecosystem collapsing. One likes the result. The other does not.
- Took A Level In Bad Ass: Jack partway through the first book, thanks to Eko's Training from Hell.
- The Vamp: Reilly, though not as smart as she thinks.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: For some reason, only women are capable of this. Eko is the most blatant example, but Reilly also uses it.
- We Can Rule Together: Dargon attempts this although it's really just a ploy to gain Jack's cooperation long enough to find Firestorm. Jack sees right through it.
