History Literature / BitterSeeds

* {{Intangiblity}}: Klaus' Willenskräfte. He can use it as long as he can hold his breath but doesn't have to worry about falling through the floor.

* ForWantOfANail: Happens literally in "What Doctor Gottlieb Saw" -- Gretel arranges a fatal accident and proves her abilities as a seer [[CantKillYouStillNeedYou making her indispensable to the Nazis]], all by arranging for a single nail to end up inside a generator.

* IntangibleMan: Klaus' Willenskräfte. He can use it as long as he can hold his breath but doesn't have to worry about falling through the floor.

->''"Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you"''.

->''Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you''.

-->'''Habakkuk 1:5 (KJV)'''

%%* AlternateHistory
* AwesomeButImpractical: The Nazis in charge of the psychics project are more focused on the more flashy psychics, than they do on the more subtle ones despite having a wider range of applications. Best exemplified when needing to eliminate a defector in a public area, instead of sending intangible Klaus, they send out the pyrokinetic Reinhardt to make the defector spontanously combust in the middle of a crowded hotelbar, despite it being a covert mission.
%%* BadassNormal: Raybould Marsh has his moments.
* BlackAndGrayMorality: Granted, they're fighting ''Nazis'' but still, the British do some exceedingly evil things in the name of king and country. The British atrocities get more screen time than their Nazi counterparts.

%%* BrotherSisterTeam: Subverted with Gretel and Klaus; thanks to her precognition, he's always responding to her gambits.
%%* TheChessmaster: Gretel. A sociopath with ''perfect precognition''.

* CreepyChild: All the Nazi psychic children but Gretel is creepy even to the other {{Tyke Bomb}}s. She even was one ''before'' she was taken in by Doctor von Westarp.
%%* CreepyCrows

%%* {{EMP}}:
%%** Pixies, designed by the British to knock out the batteries.
%%** In the short story "What Doctor Gottlieb Saw" Gretel creates an improvised EMP device by sabotaging a diesel generator.

* ForWantOfANail: Happens literally in "What Doctor Gottlieb Saw" -- Gretel arranges a fatal accident and proves her abilities as a seer making her indispensible to the Nazis, all by arranging for a single nail to end up inside a generator.

%%* HeroicWillpower: How supermen's powers function.
%%* InnocentFlowerGirl: Subverted; Gretel likes to gather wildflowers, but it's only a sociopathic facade.
%%* IntangibleMan: Klaus' Willenskräfte. Can only use it as long as he can hold his breath but doesn't have to worry about falling through the floor.

%%* {{Invisibility}}: Heike.

%%* KubrickStare: Gretel on the cover of the paperback.

%%* MadScientist: Doctor Von Westarp.
%%* MindOverMatter: Kammler is an extremely powerful (and extremely brain-damaged) telekinetic.
* MundaneUtility: Reinhardt comes up with a way to make roads in the desert with his pyrokinesis. It works -- barely. The group efforts are more effective when clearing a path through snowfields and the Ardennes forest.

%%* OracularUrchin : Gretel.
%%* ThePlan: Everything Gretel does.

%%* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The means by which the Enochian lexicon was derived.
* ProphecyTwist: Gretel predicts that Reinhardt will get everything he wants. He gets Heike (after she's dead), and gets to use his powers in a glorious LastStand ("Poor junkman.").

%%* SpyFiction: Of the Stale Beer variety.
%%* SummonMagic: The British Warlocks can summon the Eidolons. Then the negotiations begin.
%%* SuperSoldier: The Reichsbehörd.
%%* TeleportersAndTransporters: Marsh figures out how to get the Eidolons to do this for them.

* BlackAndGrayMorality: Granted, they're fighting ''Nazis'' but still, the British do some exceedingly evil things in the name of king and country.
** The author explicitly described the book as "a novel in which good people do bad things".
** Interestingly while the Nazis are pretty much as bad, even if you only talk about the two side's respective supernatural weapons program. The British atrocities get more screen time than their Nazi counterparts.

* BodyHorror: You get psychic powers. Great! Too bad you have to have giant WWII-era batteries wired ''directly into your brain'' to fuel them.
* BrotherSisterTeam: Subverted with Gretel and Klaus; thanks to her precognition, he's always responding to her gambits.
* TheChessmaster: Gretel. A sociopath with ''perfect precognition''.

* CreepyChild: All the Nazi psychic children but Gretel is creepy even to the other Tyke Bombs. She even was one ''before'' she was taken in by Doctor von Westarp.

* {{EMP}}:
** Pixies, designed by the British to knock out the batteries.
** In the short story "What Doctor Gottlieb Saw" Gretel creates an improvised EMP device by sabotaging a diesel generator.
* {{Fingore}}: When Will mucks up a negotiation, Marsh has to cut off one of his fingers with garden shears to appease the Eidolons.

* GentlemanWizard: Lord William Beauclerk

* HeroicWillpower: How supermen's powers function.
* InnocentFlowerGirl: Subverted; Gretel likes to gather wildflowers, but it's only a sociopathic facade.
* IntangibleMan: Klaus' Willenskräfte. Can only use it as long as he can hold his breath but doesn't have to worry about falling through the floor.

* KubrickStare: Gretel on the cover of the paperback.

* MindOverMatter: Kammler is an extremely powerful (and extremely brain-damaged) telekinetic.
* MundaneUtility: Reinhardt comes up with a way to make roads in the desert with his pyrokinesis. It works -- barely. The groups efforts are more effective when clearing a path through snowfields and the Ardennes forest.

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: The means by which the Enochian lexicon was derived.

* SpyFiction: Of the Stale Beer variety.
* SummonMagic: the British Warlocks can summon the Eidolons. Then the negotiations begin.

* TeleportersAndTransporters: Marsh figures out how to get the Eidolons to do this for them.

%%* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII

-->''Behold ye among the heathen, and regard, and wonder marvelously: for I will work a work in your days, which ye will not believe, though it be told you''.

The first book of ''Literature/TheMilkweedTriptych''. Followed by ''[[Literature/TheColdestWar The Coldest War]]''.

* BloodMagic - required to summon the Eidolons. Beyond that, it takes more and more blood to summon them each subsequent time.

The first book of ''TheMilkweedTriptych''. Followed by ''[[Literature/TheColdestWar The Coldest War]]''.

-->''There are no great men, only great challenges that ordinary men are forced by circumstances to meet''.
-->'''Admiral William Halsey'''

-->''Behold: I give you the Overman.''
-->'''Friedrich Nietzsche'''

!!Examples

* AlternateHistory

* BadassNormal: Raybould Marsh has his moments.

* CreepyCrows

* {{Ghostapo}} / StupidJetpackHitler: The Götterelektrongruppe ''started out'' as Thule Society occult hogwash, then MadScientist Doctor Von Westarp applied the scientific method to things and got his battery-operated psykers.

* {{Invisibility}}: Heike.

* MadScientist: Doctor Von Westarp.

* OracularUrchin / MadOracle: Gretel.
* ThePlan: Everything Gretel does.
* PlayingWithFire: Reinhardt is a mean bullying pyrokinetic.
* [[spoiler: PoweredByAForsakenChild]]: The means by which the Enochian lexicon was derived.

* SuperSoldier: The Reichsbehörd.

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII

''It’s 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between. Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.''

''When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities — a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present — Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.''

* UsefulNotes/WorldWarII

* AwesomeButImpractical: The Nazis in charge of the psychics project are more focused on the more flashy psychics, than they do on the more subtle ones despite having a wider range of applications. Best exemplified when needing to eliminate a defector in a public area, instead of the psychics who can turn intangible, invisible, have precognition or telekinetic powers, they send out the pyrokinetic to make the defector spontanously combust in the middle of a crowded hotelbar, despite it being a covert mission.

* EldritchAbomination: The Eidolons.