"Are we gods too?"
—Jason King, Awakenings
An ongoing series of Young Adult Urban Fantasy novels by Edward Swing. Five teenagers accidentally consume the food of the gods which grants them both immortality and magical powers. They discover that several of their teachers are also immortal, and were worshipped as gods by ancient civilizations. Fascinated and overwhelmed by their new abilities, the teens begin training under their mysterious mentors.
Then they learn they have to defend the Earth against an invasion of giants.
The New Pantheon series chronicles the adventures of the five teenagers, Mike Rhee, Jason King, Tiffany Gardner, Aliki Papadaki, and Kyle Coleman. In the course of the first three books, they fight giants, fend off a hive of faeries, wrestle with an anarchist society of immortals, and battle a ferocious chimera - all while trying to maintain their normal school life.
According to the author, the series will have five books in total. Three have been published so far:
- Awakenings (2019)
- Conundrums (2021)
- Adversaries (2023)
The New Pantheon feature the following tropes:
- Action Girl: Most obviously Tiff and MacKenzie, but Aliki comes out of her shell by the end of Awakenings to show she can be quite dangerous.
- The Ageless: The immortals of the New Pantheon don't age past maturity, but they can be killed. But they also have heightened metabolisms, so they're tougher than normal humans. The same applies to immortal giants, faeries, chimeras, etc.
- Alchemic Elementals: The teens meet sylphs and a gnome in the Primal Realm. Aleara (a sylph Tiff befriends) mentions undines as well, though they're far from the only residents of the Primal Realm.
- All Myths Are True: Or at least have elements of the truth. But most myths have been distorted by centuries of retelling and embellishment.
- Annoying Younger Sibling: Mike's two siblings, Carol and James. Jason's little sister Helen has her moments.
- Another Dimension: The New Pantheon cosmology has two types: Realms and Worlds. Realms are sources of magic and destinations for souls, while worlds are where normal beings live and die. Earth is one of eight worlds.
- Archaic Weapon for an Advanced Age: The teens learn to use melee weapons, and their mentors prefer archaic weaponry. Averted with Aliki, who uses rifles.
- Blank Book: Dr. Fathy loans Kyle a high-tech book with plastic sheets; unfortunately, when Kyle opens it, he can't understand the language. When he mentions English, the writing transforms so he can read it.
- Calacas: Another type of denizen of the Ghost Realm.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: In Awakenings, the teens fight their final battle against an immortal giant on the giants' homeworld. In Conundrums, a swarm of faeries infiltrates Earth. And in Adversaries, the teens contend with a society of human immortals, and a savage chimera with magical powers that threatens everyone.
- Conveniently Seated: Justified in-universe, at least for their homeroom. Mr. Oxinos is their homeroom teacher, and he assigns seats to allow the New Pantheon to pass information among themselves.
- Crossover Cosmology: Most mythologies originated from the deeds of immortals, though storytellers distorted the facts.
- Cruel Cheerleader: In Awakenings, Tiff's friend Rachel bullies Aliki out of jealousy, but gets better with some character development.
- Daddy DNA Test: When Ida checks Pedro's DNA to determine the source of his immortality, she learns who his father is.
- Dimensional Traveler: Immortals (including immortal giants, faeries, and chimeras) can travel from their world to its neighboring realms. With some training, they can also travel to each other's worlds.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Whenever Asta appears in Adversaries.
- Eldritch Abomination: Kuzherits. When the teens try to draw one, they don't even have enough of a mental frame of reference to describe it.
- Elemental Plane: The Primal Realm is one of the realms surrounding Earth. It is inhabited by elementals of all types - not just the classic four elements, but also elementals of glass, metal, ice, darkness, light, electricity, and even plastic.
- Elixir of Life: Several in the first book
- Extranormal Institute: Played with. Unlike most examples this trope, Jefferson Hill High School teaches normal subjects, and the students are normal (aside from the immortal protagonists). However, a node of the Fountain of Souls, the source of all souls, lies at the center of school. It's hinted that the school's construction and shape relates to the Fountain.
- Family Theme Naming: Both Jason and his little sister Helen are named from characters in Greek myth. Their mother loved mythology and Mr. Oxinos encouraged her interest in a previous identity.
- Five-Man Band: The five protagonists
- Gas Leak Cover Up: The teens arrange a fire to burn down a farmhouse to cover up the fact a chimera slaughtered the entire family and all the animals in the barn.
- Godly Sidestep: When Jason asks, Mr. Oxinos admits he doesn't know whether a supreme being exists.
- Good Armor, Evil Armor: Played with. The armor Coach Brown crafts for the teens reflects both their personality and powers; Jason's in particular looks like something an angel might wear. When MacKenzie summons her own armor (not forged by Coach Brown), Mike likens it to something worn by the evil commander of a dark fantasy army.
- Hammerspace: The teens receive a techno-magical Pocket, which opens a personal pocket dimension for them to store items in. It operates through mental command, so it functions as this. The teens also learn to manipulate it fast enough to store their clothes as they're shapeshifting to animal or elemental forms.
- Hand Signals: Jason devises a set of simple gestures and expressions that the teens can use to pass information. Initially, they keep it from their mentors, but MacKenzie reveals she knows their code in Adversaries.
- Healing Factor: Immortals heal fast, though they can't regenerate lost limbs.
- Healing Potion: When an immortal's normal rejuvenation isn't enough, they can resort to these. They're capsules that inject immortality nutrients rather than potions.
- Heaven: The Heaven Realm is one of the realms around Earth. However, it's not the typical cloud-paradise. Instead, it's a land of almost no entropy, where everything stays pristine.
- High School: The teens attend Jefferson Hill High School, and the action of each book includes many elements of high school life, from football, cheerleading, dances, and musicals, not to mention studying and schoolwork.
- Immortality Begins at Twenty: The teens will mature into adults, but never grow old.
- It Was a Gift: The teens' Pockets, weapons, and (later) armor. Coach Brown forged the weapons and armor
- Land of Faerie: Flussora, one of the other worlds in the cosmology, is home to the faeries. It's not a typical fairyland though.
- Layered World: Rather than a stack of dimensions, the cosmology of New Pantheon arranges eight magical realms around the Earth. The teens learn they correspond to vertices of a hypercube, while the Earth lies in one of the cells. Other worlds, including the giants' world of Yothrun and the faerie's world of Flussora, lie in the other cells.
- The Lifestream: The Fountain of Souls is the origin of all souls, though it has nothing to do with the afterlife.
- Magical Realism: The teens live on our Earth, in a fictional unnamed town.
- Masquerade: The teens' mentors hide the existence of immortals and their magics, and struggle to contain the occasional weirdness. In Adversaries, the teens meet the Lisakku, a group of immortals who want to expose immortals and their magic, regress human society, and return to the days when they were worshipped by mortals.
- Meaningful Name: Aliki deduces Mr. Oxinos' true identity when she puts together the elements of his (current) full name.
- Mêlée à Trois: The climax of Adversaries - a three way battle between (A) the protagonists and their mentors, (B) the Lisakku, and (C) Thyr-Shae-Dahl and two of his surviving wives.
- Mix-and-Match Critters: One world, Deigantu, is home to ravenous mix-and-match critters of all types, most multi-headed. Mr. Oxinos suggests that the world spawned not only the original chimera myth, but also creatures as diverse as Baku and Ammit.
- Omniglot: Understanding any language is a standard ability of immortals, though it takes practice. Not all immortals learn the techniques easily - Tiff in particular struggles with it.
- Our Angels Are Different: A variety of angelic variants dwell in the Heaven Realm in addition to the traditional bird-winged human.
- Our Banshees Are Louder: One of the denizens of the Ghost Realm, banshees possess their distinctive wail. In a subversion of the common myth, banshees wail because they're frustrated that no one listens to them. When the teens do listen to one, they learn she blathers without end and speaks with a grating voice.
- Our Demons Are Different: The demons of the Demon Realm have a wide variety of body shapes.
- Our Fairies Are Different: The faeries combine aspects of hive insects with the common girls-with-wings design. They hatch from eggs laid by a queen, have insectoid features like faceted eyes, antenna, and an exoskeleton, and are assigned particular roles at birth. Non-immortal faeries will undergo a metamorphosis later in their life where they grow to around 2 feet tall, lose their wings, and take on a squat, masculine appearance, resembling brownies or similar fae.
- Our Giants Are Bigger: The giants stand about 24 feet tall and have misshapen features, but are otherwise mostly just big humanoids (aside from the immortal ones). The teens' immortal mentors mention they formed the basis for tales of the titans, fomorians, and jötunns, among others.
- Our Ghouls Are Creepier: The ghouls are ravenous, eternally-hungry denizens of the Ghost Realm.
- Our Spirits Are Different: Denizens of the Spirit Realm represent the essence of an object. As such, they occur in many forms throughout the series, from traditional tree spirits to obnoxious sports cars to cantankerous appliances. Even a spirit-dog chewing on homework makes an appearance.
- Our Wights Are Different: Denizens of the Ghost Realm who died while trapped or imprisoned. They crave freedom but ghostly chains hold them in place.
- Outliving One's Offspring: Immortality might be passed on to one's offspring, but usually not. Immortals generally avoid having children to avoid the pain of watching them age and die.
- Place of Power: The node of the Fountain of Souls lying at the center of Jefferson Hill High School.
- Really 700 Years Old: The teens' mentors are each thousands of years old and were worshipped as gods by ancient civilizations.
- Reincarnation: The various realms are inhabited by denizens, many of whom are reincarnations of people on Earth. They don't remember anything about their past lives, though. Realm denizens who are slain will eventually reincarnate in their realm.
- Secret-Keeper: Julisha becomes one in Awakenings. Then Tiff reveals her abilities to her mother, so Dr. Gardner also takes on this role.
- Shapeshifting Excludes Clothing: Fortunately the teens get extradimensional Pockets to store their clothes in.
- Spirit World: The Spirit Realm is one of eight realms around Earth.
- Summon Magic: The teens (and their mentors) can summon creatures from the realms that they have befriended. So far, Tiff can summon a sylph, Jason can summon an intelligent raccoon, and Kyle learns to summon a collective of earth spirits. Mike summons a horde of ghouls at the end of Adversaries.
- Summon to Hand: The extradimensional Pockets the teens possess allow them to summon weapons or anything else they've previously stored to their hand.
- Switching P.O.V.: The five teens share the protagonist role in each book.
- Talking Animal: Some denizens of the Animal Realm can talk. Jason befriends a talking raccoon named Roscoe.
- The Undead: The denizens of the Ghost Realm mostly resemble traditional undead. Each seeks (and is denied) something they crave: ghouls hunger eternally, calacas seek something to make them happy (and the Day of the Dead evolved from efforts to help them find happiness), banshees want someone to listen to them, and so forth.
- The Underworld: The Ghost Realm resembles this. It's a gloomy realm filled with denizens traditionally thought of as undead (ghosts, vampires, calacas, ghouls, etc.)
- Thin Dimensional Barrier: In some areas, the realms around Earth can influence Earth (and presumably the other worlds). A cemetary might have a thin barrier between Earth and the Ghost Realm, for instance.
- Wake Up, Go to School & Save the World: The teens juggle battling giants, faeries, and chimeras with maintaining their schoolwork.
- We Were Rehearsing a Play: To avoid or explain the devastation and bizarre events of the Breakwater Inn battle, the teens claim a student filming project got out of hand because of the tornado-force winds.
