The author, Rob Thurman, is an example of Moustache de Plume. She has also written the novels Trick of the Light,Grimrose Path,Chimera, and Basilisk. The first two are set in the same universe as the Cal Leandros stories.Contains examples of:
Anti-Hero: Cal moves from Type III to Type IV over the course of the books and is fighting not to become a Type V, but temporarily goes back to Type III when his Auphe side is suppressed by Nepenthe spider venom. Delilah is a Type V.
Batman Gambit: Delilah's solution to her pack demanding the death of Cal. Her Alpha is dumb enough to believe that a girl can't handle killing a guy. Then she sics Cal on them, knowing that Cal is more badass than her pack.
Berserk Button: Cal and Niko are each other's. Mess with one brother, and the other will come after you. Also, don't hit on Niko in front of Promise.
Black Speech: The Auphe language. Cal learned it during his two-year stay in the Tumulus but the ability to speak it is buried in his suppressed memories and only comes out very rarely and only in very bad situations.
Bus Crash: George in Deathwish. Though since she seems to have developed Mind Manipulation skills in the meantime, it's possible that she somehow faked her death in Grimm's memory.
Technically, the bus crashed in Doubletake.
Cannibal Clan: Well, Sawney Beane returns in Madhouse.
Can't Have Sex, Ever: Cal won't have sex with anyone who can have children, which rules out the girl he actually loves.
Disappeared Dad: Sorta...whoever Cal's dad is, he and his race have been keeping tabs on Cal forever. Also, Niko's dad took off before he was born. And Cherish's isn't even mentioned.
Bonus points for first, Cal, for killing his "dad" during his escape from Tumulus, and then for Niko, for killing most of the rest of the Auphe and all of the males, thereby deadending that genetic lineage of evil in the climax of Nightlife.
Domino Revelation: If the Auphe weren't bad enough all of the other weird monsters like the Goat Sucker show up or are often mentioned.
First-Person Smartass: Cal. All the time. He can't open his mouth without snark coming out of it. Catcher is this in Roadkill, though since he can't talk, he types out his comments on a laptop.
Gold Digger / Black Widow: Promise has had five rich, elderly, now-dead husbands. Black Widow is most likely a subversion since (a) she's a vampire and would outlive them anyway, and (b) given that she's a generally nice person, she probably made their last few years enjoyable.
Niko's father, Kalakos, remarks that their bloodline is said to be descended from Achilles, an idea that Robin reaffirms by saying that Niko and Kalakos look like Achilles.
It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Cal to George and Delilah. Justified in that the Auphe have promised to slaughter his loved ones first.
Ladykiller In Love: Robin after getting involved with Ishiah...* gasp* considers monogamy.
Considers it? He puts the word "monogamite" on his business card—along with the number for the suicide hot-line, which Robin figures everyone will need when they learn he is no longer available.
Laser-Guided Amnesia: The plot of Blackout involves Cal getting a case of this from repeated! Nepenthe spider venom.
Our Angels Are Different: Cal believes that the peris and the Greek gods with wings are probably the origin of stories about angels. Given that peris are winged humanoids and that Cal's peri boss, Ishiah, can not only seemingly appear out of nowhere but owns an actual flaming sword, he might have a point.
After all, the Auphe were where the elf myth had started and if you took away the hundreds of needle-fine metal teeth, the scarlet eyes, the black talons, shredding jaws, nearly transparent skin, and a raging desire to destroy humanity, then I guess you were close enough. The pointed ears were the same, right?
Our Werewolves Are Different: Particularly the ones who got bred to be more werewolf-y. And Catcher, who lost the "were" part of that entirely.
Also, according to one of the Wolf characters, they aren't humans who can turn into wolves. It's the other way around:
"We were wolves first. We started that way. We evolved as wolves and along the way a mutation did occur. We did split from the primary race...but that primary race was wolf."
Our Zombies Are Different: They're called revenants and they're actually alive, for all that they resemble rotted corpses of adult humans.
Power Limiter: As of Roadkill, thanks to Rafferty, Cal can only open two gates within a period of a few days before he dies. In Blackout, however, Cal implies that he believes his Auphe genetics will eventually override the block. In Doubletake, he turns out to be right.
Precision F-Strike: Cal may love the "F-bomb," but when Niko drops it in Deathwish, you know it's serious.
Psychic Powers: George, who's a fatalist on the subject of whether or not anything she sees can be changed.
Roma: Sophia, Abelia-Roo and the Sarzo Clan. Cal and Niko are half-Roma, not that that counts.
Actually, it's been stated that Niko is full Roma. However, neither brother is accepted by their mother's clan, the Vayash, because Sophia accepted money not only to have the child of an abomination, but to have a child who would—inevitably—be half-gadje (half-non-Roma). Cal is an insult to Roma tradition by his very existence.
Confirmed as of Doubletake, when Niko's Rom father makes an appearance.
Shout Out: Despite the fact that Cal's universe has a few differences with our own—a werewolf Mafia, scientists who have developed a treatment for vampirism, and so on, it also shares a lot of similarities. For example:
On recovering from amnesia, he says that Nik needs his real brother back—"not a Stepford version."
In Roadkill, he refers to Spock: "Thank God I hadn't gotten the pointed ears. Who wants to look like a Star Trek or Lord of the Rings fan boy for the rest of their natural-born lives?"
When speaking of an immortal and extremely angry entity who can destroy all life on earth, Cal, referring to the entity's habit of singing Roma dirges, says, "Maybe he'll hit American Idol and that asshole Brit will humiliate him to death."
When Cal sees a female revenant giving birth, he refers to her as "the size of Jabba, times two."
He also refers to Catcher, a werewolf who is stuck in Wolf form as "Chewbacca."
Cal read Stephen King's The Stand when he was sixteen and his brother, who was homeschooling him, demanded a book report. According to him, the book scared him nearly as badly as the Auphe do.
Cal says of Catcher, "He was the happiest damn Wolf I'd ever run across. Lassie had nothing on him."
And he describes Robin offering cologne "like a professional assassin from a James Bond movie."
Cal calls being on the run and being in very large wide-open spaces "a Where's Waldo freebie."
Sibling Yin-Yang: Cal is lazy, foul-mouthed, sulky, not an intellectual, and loves junk food. Niko is a hard-working, rarely swearing, noble, intellectual guy who is a health food snob. The brothers rag on each other for these traits all the time.
Son of a Whore: The Leandros boys are well aware of being this. Cherish throws it out as an insult to Cal at one point; he assumes she just "knew" from looking at him.
Star-Crossed Lovers: Cal and Georgina. As of Doubletake she peeks into their future and confirms that any relationship they would have is indeed doomed.
Urban Fantasy: Really speaks for itself in some regards.
What Measure Is a Non-Human?: After getting amnesia in Blackout, Cal assumes everything nonhuman is a monster. This is really awkward when he's being introduced to his nonhuman friends.
Will Not Tell a Lie: Niko, mostly, as a reaction to growing up with a Consummate Liar mother. He considers his decision to lie to Cal and dose him with Nepenthe spider venom, even to let him stay happy, to be a Moral Event Horizon.
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