History Literature / Spellsinger

** The [[GiantSpider spider folk]] of Gossameringue and the owl/lemur mountainfolk of Ironcloud. [[spoiler:Rather like the elves and Rohirrim in the Film/LordOfTheRings, both send late war parties to help defend the Jo-Troom Gate, and combined prove decisive.]]

** A huge one to LordOfTheRings in ''The Hour of the Gate.'' [[spoiler:The Plated Folk blow up the Jo-Troom Gate exactly like the Uruk-Hai blew up the outer wall in Helm's Deep - with high explosives. More generally, they had acquired a military computer, and were using it to vastly improve their tactics, much as Saruman gave the Uruk-Hai new tactics to breach the wall mere Orcs never had managed to breach.]]

* AmazonianBeauty: Subverted with Roseroar. Jon Tom and Mudge both tell her how attractive they think she is because she's twice the size of both of them put together and they're terrified of making her angry. Though she isn't explicitly unattractive.

** Book three has Roseroar on the cover. Only instead of the [[BrawnHilda 500 lb block of muscle]] the book describes her as, she's noticably smaller than Jon Tom (when it was mentioned that she's one of the few individuals who's taller than he is) and appears to be nothing more than a human wearing a costume from {{Theatre/Cats}}--she's even got breasts and a human nose.

* InTheDoldrums: The Muddletup Moors in ''The Day of the Dissonance''. It's overcast all the time, food is tasteless and anyone traveling through it gets so bored and depressed that they just lie down and die. It turns out that the depression is caused by the telepathic broadcasts of the intelligent giant fungi who live there. But of course, [[TheHero Jon Tom]] provided some magical entertainment (and a cross between pop-culture psychology and nihilistic philosophy) to the fungi and passed through the moors safely.

* TokenHuman: Although minor human characters appear (such as Folly in book three), the series sports only two (three, if you count the ''Son of Spellsinger'') major human characters, including TheHero Jon Tom. All others are anthropomorphic animals.

* WanderingMinstrel: Jon Tom becomes this after the Plated Folk are defeated.

** Though put to the ultimate test in Chorus Skating. [[spoiler: He had sworn off all other women in Book Six. A young beautiful flirtatious otter princess, reverts him back to his old ways. Which tears him apart two-fold, as he has feelings for her, but feels massively guilty about the possibility of cheating on Weegee. Which in turn, made him realize he has a conscience. (His worst fear)]]

* AesopAmnesia[=/=]IgnoredEpiphany: Invariably, whenever something bad happens to Mudge, he will either forget the lesson he learned from it the next time a similar situation shows up, or he'll have an epiphany and swear to change his ways which he ends up dismissing/abandoning a short time later. Or it will be PlayedForLaughs and the aesop will be subverted or broken by Mudge ComicallyMissingThePoint about what he was supposed to learn. Example: after having been inflicted with a venereal disease by the perambulator, he swears off bedding a different lady every night: "I guess I'll 'ave to restrict meself to a different lady every ''other'' night."

** Also in "Time of the Transference" Mudge [[spoiler: once he found true love, was friendlier and mature than usual (Mainly because Weegee was keeping him in line and he was terrified of alienating her) but notably his emotional speech to Jon-Tom really hammered it in that he had changed. But in Chorus Skating he resets to his default Jerkass persona]]

** Though put to the ultimate test in Chorus Skating. [[spoiler: As despite he had swore off all other women in Book Six. A young beautiful flirtatious otter princess, reverts him back to his old ways. Which tears him apart two-fold, as he has feelings for her, but feels massively guilty about the possibility of cheating on Weegee. Which in turn, made him realize he has a conscience. (His worst fear)]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: Mudge is not normally one to voluntarily stick his neck out for anyone, but when he sees what the [[OrphanageOfFear Friends of the Street]] are really up to, Jon-Tom asks if they can risk rescuing all the children. Mudge's reply is that [[CrowningMomentOfAwesome they're going to rescue the children regardless of risk]].

* FantasticRacism: Rats and mice are treated as inferior and have to cope with jobs like janitor, though they get a CrowningMomentOfAwesome during the Battle of the Jo-Troom Gate when Falameezar rallies them to drive back the Plated Folk, which boosts them into near-respectability from then on. In general in fact there seems to be suspicion and distrust between a number of species (see Mudge's view of ferrets), not to mention the view of some humans toward the furries, and of course that of the Plated Folk toward the warmbloods.

----> I'll tell you what bleedin' kind 'e is! 'E's the spellsinger who just saved all your 'igh 'an mighty backsides, that's who! Instead o' gripin' at 'im because 'e can't post you 'ome directly, you might consider thanking 'im for savin' you from a lifetime o' servitude an' captivity!'

* TalkingIsAFreeAction: Apparently. It's the only explanation that really makes sense for how Jon-Tom can pull out his duar and sing a several-minute-long song in the middle of a fight without the fight ending through more mundane menas before the spell actually gets cast.

* InfantImmortality: Averted ''[[{{HSQ}} right in the very first pages of the prologue]]''.
--> After some thought, the General gave his assent to a general butchering of the young. His soldiers deserved some reward for their patience.

* FlyingPostman: A bird postman (postbird?) is the second animal (Mudge is the first) Jon-Tom meets.

* CoolHat: Mudge's green cap with a feather. Which brings to mind RobinHood or [[KingsQuest King Graham]]. Squill wears a similar cap.

* NiceHat: In the same style as RobinHood and [[KingsQuest King Graham]] Mudge wears a peaked green hat with a feather sticking out. His love for this hat has even been passed down to his son Squill who wears a similar one. And it's implied he has several, as his original was put on display in his house.

** Flores Quintera is an even stronger example, since the chance to escape misogyny and assumptions about her intellect and goals in life, plus live out her secret fantasies, causes her to prefer the Wizard's World to home and to [[LikeADuckTakesToWater fit in immediately]]. Though it would have been nice closure to see (or just mention) her saying a final goodbye to her parents and eleven siblings who no doubt assume she's dead.

* MuggingTheMonster: Zancresta not only [[TrashTalk dismisses Snooth as being of any consequence]], he actually insults and threatens her with bodily harm when she won't give him the medicine and dares to interrupt his MotiveRant by demanding payment for the damages to her shop. Big mistake, since [[spoiler:she's got an all-powerful and fairly wicked genie [[KangarooPouchRide in her pouch]]]]. [[DeaderThanDead He regrets it]].

* BestialityIsDepraved: Played with throughout the series, but especially in the first book. These animals walk upright and are sentient, but Jon-Tom just cannot bring himself to a liaison with them.

In the first book, ''Spellsinger'', the hero Jonathan Thomas Meriweather, also known as Jon-Tom, is a prelaw student with pretentions to rock stardom, who is innocently smoking pot when he's abruptly transported from the University of California at Los Angeles to a weird world in which [[LionsAndTigersAndHumansOhMy animals talk, wear clothing, and live alongside humans]] by the turtle wizard Clothahump, who was searching for a great wizardly "En'geeniar" (meaning an engineer, as he was under the impression that this is the name our world gives to wizards). Unfortunately, he caught Jon-Tom, who works part-time as a janitor and on his pay stubs is called a "sanitation engineer"[[note]]and his mind was "the most receptive" at the moment, which might have had to do with that joint he smoked[[/note]].

* AccidentallyBrokeTheMacGuffin[=/=]WreckedWeapon: Jon-Tom ends up falling on his duar and breaking it after saving Clothahump from thieves, and has to go get it repaired.

* BugWar: The periodic wars against the Plated Folk, much more difficult in that unlike most Bug Wars, the bugs in question are ''sentient.''

* FunetikAksent: For a number of TalkingAnimal characters, including Mudge's rural-British speech and Roseroar's Southern drawl. Colin's accent is described in a way that brings to mind Creator/JohnWayne.

** Book five is probably the worst contender. As the cover shows the heroes surrounded by 4 multicoloured punk imps playing electric guitars. First, they did not dress like punks in the book, they were all red generic looking imps, and they had unique instruments each, none of which were electric guitars. As well as Clothahump on the cover is wearing a ridiculous looking wizard's hat, he is never shown wearing any hats ever and if he did, it wouldn't be one that goofy looking. (And he wasn't even in that scene anyway, since he never went to Strelakat Mews!)

** Book five is probably the worst contender. As the cover shows the heroes surrounded by 4 multicoloured punk imps playing electric guitars. First, they did not dress like punks in the book, they were all red generic looking imps, and they had unique instruments each, none of which were electric guitars. As well as Clothahump on the cover is wearing a ridiculous looking wizard's hat, he is never shown wearing any hats ever and if he did, it wouldn't be one that goofy looking.
** Book three has Roseroar on the cover. Only instead of the [[BrawnHilda 500 lb block of muscle]] the book describes her as, she's noticably smaller than Jon Tom (when it was mentioned that she's one of the few individuals who's taller than he is) and appears to be nothing more than a human wearing a costume from {{Theatre/Cats}}- she's even got breasts and a human nose.

** The way Clothahump distracts the Polastrindu guards is very reminiscent of how Gandalf in ''TheHobbit'' fooled the trolls into quarreling. The same applies to the scene where the cage of insults appears: it initially fools the heroes the same way.

** Book three has Roseroar on the cover. Only instead of the [[BrawnHilda 500 lb block of muscle]] the book describes her as, she's noticably smaller than Jon Tom (when it was mentioned that she's one of the few individuals who's taller than he is) and appears to be nothing more than a human wearing a costume from {{Theater/Cats}}- she's even got breasts and a human nose.

** Clothahump says in the first book that only mammals and turtles talk, but talking frogs are introduced soon after.

* AmazingTechnicolorWildlife: Accidentally applied to a village full of wading birds in ''Chorus Skating'', when Jon-Tom magically re-grows their lost feathers by revising the lyrics of songs about custom auto paint jobs. Luckily, the altered birds get a real kick out of their new makeovers.

* [[spoiler: ShaggyDogStory]]: ''The Day Of The Dissonance''. Not only is Clothahump not actually dying from the illness he claims he needs the medicine for, said medicine is [[spoiler:only aspirin. [[ItWasWithYouAllAlong And Jon-Tom had a bottle in his jeans pocket the whole time]]]]. So the whole trip and all of its deadly dangers really was for nothing.

* {{Expy}}: The Muddletup Moors seem to be this series' equivalent to the [[TheNeverEndingStory Swamp of Sadness]], though here it's more "The moors of 'I stopped giving a crap to the point of dying from utter depression and boredom'".

* WhosOnFirst: Sorbl's fear of "[[NothingIsScarier nothing]]" in the basement.[[note]]It was nearly a case of PoorCommunicationKills; all anyone would have had to do was say "The Nothing" ala TheNeverendingStory.[[/note]]

** One of the last exchanges of insults between Mudge and the cage trapping them in book five calls to mind a certain WinstonChurchill quote:

* GhostLights: The gneechees which appear whenever Jon-Tom's spellsinging is on track and particularly powerful; they don't cause magic, exactly, but their presence facilitates or enhances it. They normally cannot be seen, not because the characters have NoPeripheralVision but because they actively dodge away whenever you try to look at them directly. They also turn out to be more true to the trope than they first seem, since when Jon-Tom is in M'nemaxa's plane he discovers [[spoiler:each is actually the soul of a deceased person]]. Because of this, gneechees have different interests and affinities, and so Couvier Coulb must summon particular musically-inclined ones when retuning the broken duar in ''Time of the Transference''.

* TheGrotesque: The ogres in book six are all this--various species of animals as well as humans, all of great size and with some awful deformity.
** The mutants in book seven, horrifying mish-mashes of various creatures. Not only are they two or more people/species fused together, but their minds/souls as well as bodies were fused. The first sentient one the heroes meet, is a Human/Kangaroo hybrid. All he wishes is to be put out of his misery. Though thankfully [[spoiler: the local town accepts the mutants and treats them like their own]].

*** Although eventually the trope is played somewhat straight when a lesser guard is fooled into entering their cell by a collection of bones from dead prisoners and a rather convincing performance from Jon-Tom that the ex-wizard of the city had killed them all by "melting off their flesh".

* DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything: In the fourth book, Markus has some similarities to the Wizard from TheWizardOfOz. [[spoiler: Both he and the Wizard are magicians who dress in a smart suit and top hat, both end up in a fantasy world where they take the throne and call themselves the ruler, and can use real magic in the fantasy world. (In the later Oz novels. the Wizard takes magic lessons from Glinda and learns "real magic" instead of just illusions.) The main difference is, Markus is a tyrant, while Oz is benevolent, though the second Oz novel states that he stole the throne from Princess Ozma which was immediately retconned in every book after.]]