History Literature / WizardOfThePigeons

* DumpsterDive: How wizard scavenges a lot of his stuff and some of his meals.

* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: The novel is based on a radical re-interpretation of this trope. Magic usually comes hand in hand with [[LossOfIdentity letting go of your previous life, memories, and basic perception of reality]]. Usually, the mage is so divorced from the outside world that he or she cannot hold down a job or personal relationship, and usually ends up living on the street. They also have to follow [[SuperOCD their own set of arbitrary rules and rituals]], implicitly for the PlacebotinumEffect. Cassie has been doing this since the Trojan War.

* BlueCollarWarlock: Wizard lives on the fringes of society amongst the street people, and was soldier (implicitly serving in Vietnam) before becoming a wizard.

* * KickTheDog: The first thing Mir does to make its presence known to Wizard is to attack his cat and take its foot as a trophy.

* HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: Wizard. He took that name when he became a wizard, and no longer recalls what he might have been called before.

* LethalHarmlessPowers: Summoning pigeons for feeding time seems harmless enough, right? [[spoiler:Wizard calls them and commands them to feed on the villain.]]

* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: The novel is based on a radical re-interpretation of this trope. Magic usually comes hand in hand with [[LossOfIdentity letting go of your previous life, memories, and basic perception of reality]]. Usually, the mage is so divorced from the outside world that he or she cannot hold down a job or personal relationship, and usually ends up living on the street. They also have to follow [[SuperOCD their own set of arbitrary rules and rituals]], implicitly for the PlacebotinumEffect. Cassie has been doing this since the Trojan War, and [[CrazyAwesome is so uninhibited by her environment that she can bend reality to her whim.]]

* ShellShockedVeteran: It's heavily implied that Wizard is a veteran (likely of Vietnam). At one point, he recalls how being in a homeless shelter for a night brought back nightmares from his old life (implied to be due to its similarity to a barracks), upsetting him so much that he refused to go back, even though it meant nearly dying of hypothermia in the Seattle winter.

* BlueCollarWarlock: Wizard lives on the fringes of society amongst the street people, and was soldier (implictly serving in Vietnam) before becoming a wizard.

* AndThatLittleGirlWasMe: One of Wizard's colleagues has a tendency to convey information like this. At one point, she tells him a story about a group of boys, and at the end it turns out he was one of the characters in the story (although not the one he was expecting). Later, she tells him a story about a little girl, and he sarcastically predicts the "And That Little Girl Was Me" ending (and is so busy being a smartass that he neglects to actually think about why he's been told the story, and fails to learn anything from it). There's also a point where she tells him an anecdote in ''first'' person, but ends by saying that it didn't actually happen to her; she just told it that way because that's how the story is traditionally told.

* HisNameReallyIsBarkeep: Wizard.

[[quoteright:180:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pigeonwizard_202.jpg]] ->''On the far western shore of a northern continent, there was once a harbour city called Seattle. It did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of rain, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it 'the Emerald City' for the greenness of its foliage. And the other thing it boasted was a great friendliness that fell upon strangers like its rain, but with more warmth. And in that city, there dwelt a wizard.''

->''On the far western shore of a northern continent, there was once a harbour city called Seattle. It did not have much of a reputation for sunshine and beaches, but it did have plenty of rain, and the folk who lived there were wont to call it 'the Emerald City' for the greenness of its foliage. And the other thing it boasted was a great friendliness that fell upon strangers like its rain, but with more warmth. And in that city, there dwelt a wizard.''