History Literature / Atlan

* CampGay: In ''The Serpent'', Cija encounters Lel, an effeminate boy who describes himself as "wishing [he] had been born a girl." [[TransEqualsGay Before the reader can assume that Gaskell included an impressively early example of a transsexual character in a fantasy novel, Lel appears as the catamite to a decadent aristocrat from a court full of "woman-hating men."]]

* MisplacedWildlife: Gaskell's introduction to ''The Serpent'' states explicitly that the flightless birds ridden by the Northern Army are ''Diatryma''...which lived in North America, not South America. See also StockDinosaurs below.

* StockDinosaurs: The dinosaurs (excepting the giant reptiles that are ''not'' dinosaurs despite being labeled as such) identified in the series are the ''T. rex'' and some kind of sauropod. However, the trope is averted with the Northern Army's mounts, which are specified as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastornis Diatryma]]'' but should probably be ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae Phorusrhacidae]]''.

* ContemptibleCover: Several editions of the books have blatantly sexual or otherwise unappealing covers. The Orbit editions, the first of which is pictured above, invert the trope with lush landscape covers that present the narrative as ''more'' tasteful than it is. (The covers of the Pocket editions, though not the most dignified, portray the contents of the books more accurately than any others.)

* InfantImmortality: Possibly averted in ''Atlan'', in which Cija's son Nal wanders off in the middle of an earthquake.

* AllMenAreRapists: Not literally ''every'' man in the series is a rapist, but Cija's suspicions of the men she meets on her travels are often well-founded. In fact, ''most'' of the men in the series are sexually abusive--not because they're male, but because the nature of Cija's adventures tends to confront her with bandits, mercenaries, and other brutal, immoral men. Gaskell usually spares the reader the details, however.

* YourCheatingHeart: When Zerd isn't invading and plundering foreign lands, he's flirting with, sleeping with, and, in a few cases, marrying other women behind his wife's back. Note that Cija is his ''third'' wife, and he never got a divorce from either of the other princesses he married.

* ''The Serpent''
* ''The Dragon''
* ''Atlan''
* ''The City''
* ''Some Summer Lands''

* BittersweetEnding: The conclusion of the final novel.

* GratuitousRape: Every now and then.

* RoyalsWhoActuallyDoSomething

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These novels provide examples of:

Flawed and obscure though it is, ''Atlan'' is notable for its originality. It's also probably the only series that can be accurately described as a Gothic JungleOpera, influenced as it is by Mervyn Peake's ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'', the works of Rider Haggard, the ''Tarzan'' series, old Gothic novels, and obsolete anthropological studies. If nothing else, this series probably represents the dying days of the pre-''Literature/LordOfTheRings''-influenced fantasy genre, which would never revisit the "elder Earth" theme in quite the same way. Tanith Lee has cited this series as an influence on her work (see ''The Storm Lord''), and Gene Wolfe's ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' takes some rather obvious cues from Jane Gaskell's magnum opus.