YMMV / Whom Gods Would Destroy

• Aluminium Christmas Trees: perhaps the creepiest moments occur when you look up some of the events noted in the book and find out that they actually happened.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: the “Brief Incident in Cuba,” recounting the tale of some sort of growing white blob thing.
• Creepy Awesome: Celeste and Tom Noun are rather creepy, but among the most fascinating characters in the tale. also Tarrare, for a given value of awesome.
• Diagnosed by the Audience: Many point-of-view characters seem to be either mentally ill, neurodivergent, or physically odd, though the psychiatric and medical science of the 1910s leaves it vague.
• Genius Bonus: WGWD rewards a knowledge of both the First World War and the occult.
• Jerkass Woobie: many of the characters portray hints of cruelty, casual bigotry, and murderous intent, but it's pretty clear that they're breaking down from the horrors of war.
• Padding: Sometimes the history sections, especially the long essay on airship flaps, can drag.
• Quirky Work: an urban fantasy series masquerading as a history.
• Realism-Induced Horror: The most unsettling events of the story arise from Aluminium Christmas Trees and the very real horrors of war.
• Slow-Paced Beginning: The actual war doesn't even kick in until a fourth of the way through the first novel, while the main narrative only comes together in the last quarter.
• Spiritual Successor: the overall narrative roughly echoes Moonchild by Aleister Crowley, with Crowley, Yeats, and Samuel Mathers appearing as minor background characters (undisguised this time). Also, there are structural elements borrowed from The Lord of the Rings, including nine heroes gathering for a quest, a Divided for Publication trilogy structure, and a framing device position itself as a "true history."