History Literature / TideLords

* MagnificentBastard: [[invoked]] Cayal is an interesting subversion. For most of the first book, Arkady believes he's a conman and a trickster who has been coached and prepared beyond all reason, when in reality he's just exactly what he claims.
-->'''Cayal:''' I wish I was half as clever as you think I am.

* EverybodyDiesEnding: [[spoiler:Oh yeah. There are only seven survivors of the final battle. And this isn't from the people participating in the battle, it's from the ''planet'' that the battle took place on.]]

* ElementalPowers: If they were only immortal, they'd be envied or regarded as freaks. Unfortunately all the Tide Lords have elemental magic to varying degrees ranging from making a strong breeze or small fire to obliterating continents with tsunamis and earthquakes. Besides the 4 traditional elements, the human senses are considered part of the elemental group, so a Tide Lord can make a person blind or destroy their equilibrium

* [[spoiler: EverybodyDies: Oh yeah. There are only seven survivors of the final battle. And this isn't from the people participating in the battle, it's from the ''planet'' that the battle took place on.]]
* [[spoiler: EarthAllAlong: Amyrantha is an alien world, but at the end of the story the remaining Tide Lords have gated to a new world and lived 65 million years there. The new planet is our Earth]]

* [[spoiler: FailureHero: Declan may be an experienced spymaster but it seems his real talent lies in failing most of the time through a combination of bad luck, ignorance, and his own stubborness. His failures include the 'last battle' where the enemy win without even throwing a punch]]

** Played straight with Lukys

* IncestIsRelative: [[spoiler: unknown to all but a few, being a Tide Lord means being having a Tide Lord parent and Tide Lord ancestry somewhere in the other parent. Since only a couple of Tide Lords were on Amaryntha, all later Tide Lords have to be relatives one way or another. It's noted that Cayal may be Elyssa and Trayan's half-brother. The bloodlines are fairly muddled as male Tide Lords frequently use whorehouses and don't give a damn about contraceptives, so a fair number of female Tide Lords started off as prostitutes]]

* TheMagicGoesAway / TheMagicComesBack: The Tide ebbs and flows for centuries at a time, hence the name.

* SlapSlapKiss: Arkady and both Declan and Cayal
* StalkerWithACrush: Elyssa for Cayal.
* StraightGay: the Duke of Lebec
* TheReveal: ''Averted''. Seriously. The books don't so much as reveal plot twists as confirm things the readers have already figured out.
* TheBeard: Arkady for her husband.
* WhoWantsToLiveForever: Cayal's problem.
** [[spoiler: Strangely, though he was suicidal at eight thousand, he seems to have gotten over it at the age of 65 million. It turns out to be a phase some Tide Lords go through]]

* ArtisticLicenseAstronomy: The last part of the fourth book contains several tropes that have been discredited by [[ScienceMarchesOn the march of science]]. Wouldn't have been so bad if the books hadn't been written well ''after'' these advances had been made.

This series contains examples of:

* ImmortalityImmorality: Kentravyon especially but all the immortals tend to be shockingly callous when it comes to the lives of mortals. [[spoiler: They get alot better about this when they reach their new world, Earth]]

* AgeWithoutYouth: Many of the Tide Lords think they are frozen in time biologically and point to the fact that they can only breed with mortals as evidence. The really old Tide Lords know differently. Tide Lords actually age extremely slowly, it takes tens of millions of years to equal a decade of aging for a Tide Lord. Unfortunately some Tide Lords are rather vain and that's what starts the whole mess in the first place.

* ImmortalityImmorality: Kentravyon especially but all the immortals tend to be shockingly callous when it comes to the lives of mortals.

* FantasyGunControl: Lampshaded at the end of the series, the Tide Lords don't like to have their business pried into so they deliberately limit the technological development of the world. They do this through starting fake religions or blasting nations back into the stone age [[at the end of the series, which takes place on Earth sometime in our near future, the Tide Lords are weary of the constant destruction and have allowed the Earth to progress without their interference. Technology reaches a point where books no longer exist and asteroid mining is viable]].

* AncientConspiracy: The Cabal of the Tarot. [[spoiler: the real ancient conspiracy are by the first Tide Lords who aren't even native to the planet. It's their schemes to get one of their oldest members a new body that starts the creation of a new generation of Tide Lords and much of the life on the planet in the first place]]

* AncientConspiracy: The Cabal of the Tarot.

* ElementalPowers: If they were only immortal, they'd be envied or regarded as freaks. Unfortunately all the Tide Lords have elemental magic to varying degrees and the human senses are considered part of the elemental group

** [[spoiler: Strangely, though he was suicidal at eight thousand, he seems to have gotten over it at the age of 65 million.]]

* DeadpanSnarker - Maraliyce, at times.

-->'''Maralyice:''' Thought so when I first met him. He hasn't done much in the past eight thousand years to dissuade me of that opinion.

* CanonSue - Arkady has at least some shades of this: very smart (university professor), incredibly beautiful and loved/lusted after by several men. Even her gay husband loves her, although just platonically.

* ParrotPetPosition: Coron the rat, Lukys' LoyalAnimalCompanion (well...sort of: [[spoiler: 'Coron' is actually Coryna, Lukys' immortal love, trapped by accident in the body of a rat in a GrandTheftMe gone wrong.]]

* WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity: Truest of Kentravion but to a lesser (or at least less obvious) extent with most of the Tide Lords.

* AGodAmI: Kentravyion and to a lesser extent all the other Tide Lords.

* ImmortalityImmorality: Kentravyion especially but all the immortals tend to be shockingly callous when it comes to the lives of mortals.

** [[spoiler: At least, that's the official story. The truth, as Lukys revealed after Declan accidentally made himself immortal, is that immortals are created when a Tidewatcher whose mortal parent is descended from another Tidewatcher (will to survive is irrelevant) is burned alive (The specific flame does not matter).]]

* CanonSue - [[YourMileageMayVary YMMV]], but Arkady has at least some shades of this: very smart (university professor), incredibly beautiful and loved/lusted after by several men. Even her gay husband loves her, although just platonically.

* ImmortalProcreationClause: Immortals cannot reproduce with each other, but they can father or bear the children of mortals. These children are mortals known as Tidewatchers. New immortals are not created by a person with an extreme will to survive is burned by the Eternal Flame, which Cayal had long since extinguished.

** [[spoiler: Strangely, though he was suicidal at six thousand, he seems to have gotten over it at the age of 65 million.]]

* LoveMakesYouCrazy: Or at least rather obsessive in Lukys's case.