The trilogy narrates the adventures of American teenager Alexander Cold and his Brazilian friend Nadia Santos. They travel around the world with Alexander's hippie grandmother Kate, a journalist for the fictional International Geographic magazine, and face multiple perils while discovering both the beauty of nature and the ugliness of mankind's greed.
It is composed of three installments:
- City of Beasts (2002).
- Kingdom of the Golden Dragon (2004).
- Forest of the Pygmies (2005).
The entire trilogy provides examples of:
- Age-Gap Romance: Relatively. Alexander has three years on Nadia, which isn't much by itself by the point they hook up, but means more in their adventures given that they meet as children.
- The Alcoholic: Kate, though she insistently claims it to be therapeutic.
- Bland-Name Product: The magazine Kate works for is named International Geographic. Now that's subtle.
- Loyal Animal Companion: Borobá, Nadia's monkey, is fiercely loyal to her (later to Alexander too).
- Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Kate and his antropologist frenemy Ludovic Leblanc have a troubled relationship, but they still trust each other just enough for her to ask him to join her foundation.
- Those Two Guys: Joel González and Timothy Bruce, Kate's usual photographers, are always together and forming a semi-routine.
- Tsundere: Kate is a type A. Bonus points because she was a redhead back when she was younger.
- Women Are Wiser: Present through all the books, with various grades of subtlely or lack thereof. Most female characters, like Nadia and Kate, are of the sensitive type in contrast to the impulsive Joel, Timothy and Alexander; most of the primitive tribes visited in the story have female chieftainesses who are described as good and wise (Iyomi, Grr-ympr, Nana-Asante), and whenever they have a male leader instead, he's either evil or Dumb Muscle, unless too old for engaging in macho things; also, out of the trilogy's three Big Bads, the most sympathetic one is the only female. The last book underlines it even more, with the group at one point fantasizing with humanity being a matriarchy like certain species of monkeys, and Nana-Asante openly stating women are inherently more moral than men.
The first book provides the examples of:
- Adults Are Useless: Played straight at the end, where the kids have to save the day given that even the secret agent tasked with doing so, Karakawe, was literally Too Dumb to Live.
- Big Bad: Mauro Carías, an Obviously Evil rich man interested in butchering natives to exploit the jungle's riches.
- Earthy Barefoot Character: Nadia wears light, native-style sandals through the journey, boasting of being adapted to the Brazilian jungle, and Alexander is forced to adopt them as well after being biten by leeches inside his boots and socks. They both later lose their sandals and are forced to follow into the jungle barefoot, to Alexander's chagrin, which symbolizes their travel to the deepest of nature.
- Psychic Powers: The mist people have, among other abilities, the power of invisibility, although this seems to be actually a mental glamour rather than truly turning invisible.
The second book provides the examples of:
- Advanced Ancient Humans: Or yetis in this case. They apparently used to be almost as advanced as we are today, but their civilization was destroyed in several wars and conflicts.
- Artistic License – Gun Safety: In the story, characters grab barrels of rifles (implied to be AK-47, whose metal barrels are exposed) right after firing. In real life, they would get their hands burned.
- Artistic License – Martial Arts: Among Tensing's traditional weapons there are nunchakus and shuriken, which are South Asian and Japanese respectively, not Chinese or Tibetan.note It might be justified by the statemente that tao-shu practitioners researched martial arts through many Asian countries, which has no reason not to include Japan and its islands, but they are still treated as if they were ancestral to mainland Asia (also, the fact that Allende describes those weapons crudely and doesn't even give their names implies she simply doesn't know a lot about the topic and cannot tell their procedence).
- Big Bad: The Collector, with the Specialist, also known as Judit Kinski, as The Dragon.
- Black Comedy Burst: To his horror, Alexander accidentally shoots a dignatary with a bow and arrow. The dude looks dead until he reveals the arrow only hit his hat, after which everybody and their dog proceed to laugh at Alexander's clumsiness.
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Armadillo. His disguise is so ridiculous and flimsy that two teenagers can see through it at first glance, but he's a true badass with a lot of guts and skill, and it could be charitably said he doesn't really need the cover. Later subverted when he betrays the Specialist; he remains competent, but it turns out he's not so good of an employee as he looked.
- Creepy Blue Eyes: Armadillo has those. The narration repeatedly compares them to the eyes of a hypnotized person or even a corpse.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Subverted, albeit still as a Pet the Dog moment. The Collector desires to get rid of his elderly mother, but he prefers to pay a heck of a luxury travel life for her instead of throwing her to an asylum.
- Evil Is Petty: The Collector is described as such. For starters, he resents being the world's second richest man and wants to dominate the world just in order to be the first.
- Fantastic Fighting Style: Tao-shu, which is described as basically the ancient kung fu equivalent of Mixed Martial Arts mixed with Pressure Point abilities.
- Honey Trap: By Judith Kinski, also known as the Specialist, although in this case it backfires and affects her as well.
- Hypocrite: The king believes the West to be materialistic and decadent, yet he keeps a lot of spectacular riches around, is attracted to a western woman pretty much because she's hot and stylish, and plans to send his son to study in Europe. He does note the second point himself, though, and is a source of angst for him.
- Lightning Bruiser: Tensing is a giant by western standards and an absolute monster by Asian ones, but is described to be as nimble as a ballerina.
- New-Age Retro Hippie: Tex Armadillo dresses and behaves like one. Subverted in that it is just a disguise, and such an obvious one than it is not even a spoiler that the kids realize it.
- Noble Demon: Armadillo explicitly disapproves pointless violence and once saves Alexander's life, risking his already unbelievable cover, even although he had no reasons to do so. The Specialist also seems to have considered to become The Atoner at some point.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: Judging by his physical description, backstory, fortune and business sector, the Collector is basically Steve Jobs, with some elements from Bill Gates thrown in. Amusingly, while the Collector is a stark materialist that disdains Buddhism and religion, the real Jobs was a deeply spiritual person who was a Buddhist himself.
- Psychic Powers: Tensing and Dil Bahadurm have very limited forms of Telepathy and Telekinesis thanks to their training. They can also use Astral Projection, with Tensing having even visited the Moon with it.
- Samus Is a Girl: The Specialist is a woman. More surprising in the original Spanish, however, given that Spanish language has gendered words; the Specialist receives masculine treatment through all the novel and is still referred as such even after "he" is revealed to be Kinski.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Subverted and possibly invoked. Armadillo brings up the topic of drugs to claim that not all hippies like him go to the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon solely to get ganja, which, needlessly to say, doesn't sound very credible. However, the statement is technically true in Armadillo's case, it being implied that he purposefully invoked this trope in order to try to pass even more as a stoner.
The third book provides the examples of:
- Bazaar of the Bizarre: Nairobi's magic market, which has plenty of African witchcraft.
- Big Bad: Kosongo and Maurice Membelé seem to be a Big Bad Duumvirate. Which at the end amounts to Mbembelé, as they are all the same person.
- Big Beautiful Woman: Angie, combined with Sassy Black Woman and Amazonian Beauty. In fact, both Mbembelé and a Masai from her backstory, infinitely more attractive men by masculine standards, are attracted to her and want her as a wife.
- Dashing Hispanic: Father Fernando shows his torero side when the party is attacked by a boar, moment in which he improvises a capote and utterly trolls it.
- Hollywood Voodoo: A toned down version is performed by Ma Bangesé.
- This Is Reality: Alexander suggests to build a raft to get to Ngoubé through the river, but Father Fernando retors that he has read too many adventure novels. Ironically, the idea gets eventually approved and it's only due to the arrival of some natives in their own boats that it never realizes.
- Toros y Flamenco: The only Spaniard in the party, Father Fernando, was an aspiring bullfighter in his youth and still has neat pases.
- Unreliable Narrator: Leblanc has a treatise claiming that Pygmies are an egalitarian society compared to the sexist, classist Bantu. Kate suspects it might be all a load of bullcrap, but she cannot prove it because she doesn't know about it either.
