Line #43 Literature/FelixCastor


1	Felix Castor is the main character of a series of novels written by sometime ''ComicBook/{{Hellblazer}}'' and ''Comicbook/{{Lucifer}}'' author Mike Carey. He appears in the following novels and one novella:
2	* ''The Devil You Know''
3	* ''Vicious Circle''
4	* ''Dead Men's Boots''
5	* ''Thicker Than Water''
6	* ''The Naming of the Beasts''
7	* ''The Ghost in Bone''
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9	The genre can only be described as "exorcist noir:" it's got elements of OurGhostsAreDifferent and FilmNoir. Castor, known as "Fix" to his friends, is a for-hire [[WhoYouGonnaCall exorcist]] who deals with ghosts that have risen ''en masse'' in the last century.
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11	The series is largely set in London, England; there's quite a lot of SceneryPorn and paragraphs dedicated to describing London streets, landmarks, and architecture.
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13	According to WordOfGod, a sixth installment was supposed to be out in late 2011, which will either be the end of the series or at least of the current arc, and in which (more or less) All Will Be Revealed. For various reasons however, the series went un-updated until 2023, when Carey published a novella in July. Perhaps then, All Will Be Revealed.
14	----
15
16	!!The series uses the following tropes:
17	* AntiHero: Castor fights dirty, banishes ghosts without a thought to giving them resolution, and will consign people he doesn't like to death with nary a second thought. After the first book, [[spoiler: he starts caring about giving ghosts resolution after he realizes that they're not just mindless psychic imprints. He's still a bit of a bastard, though]].
18	* AntiVillain: In ''Dead Men's Boots'', [[spoiler: Aaron Silver, the old ghost of an East London mobster, started a possession racket involving, ultimately, hundreds of ghosts of criminals who would steal living bodies. After the other ghosts take turns possessing his ''two year old son'' and damaging the child for life, he resolves to arrange their destruction from behind the scenes, feeding hints and assistance to exorcists. He may be a bad, bad guy who set monsters loose on the world, but he still reads bedtime stories to his developmentally damaged son.]]
19	* ArcWords: ''Thicker Than Water'' has the creepy "Now it bleeds", which manages to keep getting creepier and creepier as the story develops and the backstory is revealed.
20	* TheAtoner: About half the cast in some form, including Fix himself, though it takes him awhile to get there.
21	* AwesomeByAnalysis: Nicky Heath and Jenna-Jane Mulbridge.
22	* AxCrazy: Myriam Kale.
23	* BewareTheNiceOnes: Pen, Castor's friend/landlady/lingering object of (unrequited) love, may seem like a GranolaGirl most of the time, but you don't want to make her angry. Also once took down a demon with bullets made from rosary beads. [[ShrinkingViolet Susan Book]] can be this when roused.
24	* CaptainErsatz: Castor bears a notable resemblance to ComicBook/JohnConstantine, a character Carey also wrote for a while, [[WordOfGod drawing on]] his [[SelfInsertFic own]] Liverpool-to-London background for both. (Fix also gets ''part'' of Carey's own Oxford degree, before dropping out to WalkTheEarth a while). Ajulutsikael also has some points of similarity with Carey's [[CharacterDevelopment take]] on [[ComicBook/TheSandman Mazikeen]] in Comicbook/{{Lucifer}} and with Hellblazer's succubus Chantinelle.
25	* TheChessmaster: Jenna-Jane and ChurchMilitant leader Father Gwillam. And [[spoiler: Asmodeus.]]
26	* ChurchMilitant: The Anathemata Curialis (technically excommunicated).
27	* ConspiracyKitchenSink: How [[OurZombiesAreDifferent Nicky Heath]] sees the world. He's not always wrong.
28	* DeadpanSnarker: Castor faces down everything from thugs to werewolves to demons from {{Hell}} with the same quippy attitude. Proving to be amusing has arguably saved his life more than once. Also Asmodeus, when not raging against his confinement. Also literally deadpan with Nicky, and appears to be a near-endemic condition in the police force, at least once into command level.
29	* DealWithTheDevil: The gangsters in ''The Devil You Know'' have a deal with Ajulutsikael. Castor himself makes a deal with Moloch in ''Dead Men's Boots'', and with Asmodeus in ''Thicker Than Water''.
30	* DemonicPossession: Fix's friend Rafi is possessed by a powerful demon, Asmodeus, before the series even starts. One of Castor's big motivators is guilt for accidentally binding the demon and man together inseparably, which had the twin effects of preventing HellOnEarth and ruining Rafi's life.
31	* DidYouJustIndexCthulhu: The series takes a ''serious'' GottaCatchThemAll approach to these tropes. DidYouJustPunchOutCthulhu and subtropes of this are most prominently featured, but nearly all the others have been invoked directly or foreshadowed heavily to feature in later stories. With the possible exception of the country-side ones, and even there, it may just be that Fix went through [[UsefulNotes/HomeCounties Surrey]] in too much of a rush. (Also, even these are [[PlayingWithATrope played with]] more indirectly, especially in the U.S. parts of ''Dead Men's Boots''). Fix bears the brunt of it, but [[spoiler: Ajulutsikael]] does her share, when she's not [[spoiler: the Cthulhu herself]].
32	* DissonantSerenity: Ajulutsikael in fight mode; Father Gwillam and Professor Mulbridge nearly all the time.
33	* DrivingQuestion: Why are the dead coming back? And, later [[spoiler: what was the Great Project?]]
34	* EnemyMine: Rampant and constantly shifting.
35	* FantasticRacism: The mutual prejudices between different kinds of demons, as well as the DoesThisRemindYouOfAnything civil rights issues faced by the various undead.
36	* FemmeFatale: Quite literally, a succubus named Ajulutsikael (she unsurprisingly goes by the less tongue-twisty name of [[spoiler: [[SomeCallMeTim "Juliet"]]]]) is summoned from Hell to rape and devour Castor. [[spoiler: Fix frees her from her binding at the end of the first book and she decides to become an exorcist herself.]]
37	* FemmeFatalons: Ajulutsikael, of course.
38	* FieryRedhead: Pen, and how!
39	* FirstPersonSmartass
40	* FlatEarthAtheist: Fix.
41	* FriendOnTheForce: Gary Coldwood, to Castor.
42	* HeelRealization: Quite a few, with Dennis Peace as the standout so far.
43	* HellOnEarth: Probably just around the corner, if not already breaking out, and sometimes you get a taster version.
44	* HideYourLesbians: Averted with Juliet and Susan Book. At the end of ''Dead Men's Boots'', [[spoiler: Castor gets an invitation to their civil union.]]
45	* HolierThanThou: Both the Anathemata and Castor's AloofBigBrother Matt (a priest) tend to fall into this.
46	* HollywoodExorcism: Averted and subverted.
47	* HollywoodVoodoo: Subverted with Imelda Preston.
48	* HumanSacrifice: A plot point in ''Vicious Circle'', with a nasty side serving of PoweredByAForsakenChild.
49	* LadyKillerInLove: Rafi with Pen. Being demonically possessed rather cramps his style, though.
50	* LikeRealityUnlessOtherwiseNoted: Prime Ministers, Presidents, even London mayoral politics, are as in RealLife. So is popular culture. The "unless otherwise noted", though, is the return of the dead, and the possibly looming EndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt.
51	* LoveableRogue veering into MagnificentBastard: Rafi before possession.
52	* LukeYouAreMyFather
53	* MagicMusic: Castor uses his power on ghosts through music; usually he does this with a tin whistle, but he can also use his voice or tap out a rhythm with his fingers, to varying effect.
54	* MaleGaze: Fix, practically any time he encounters a woman, and no, not just when [[JustifiedTrope she's a succubus]].
55	* MeaningfulName: Susan Book, Juliet's girlfriend, is a librarian.
56	* NobleDemon: [[spoiler: Juliet decides that she doesn't want to go back to {{Hell}} after Castor frees her from her binding, so she cleans up her act, decides not to rape and murder men anymore, becomes a for-hire exorcist, and settles down with a nice girl. She's still incredibly dangerous and has her own agenda, though.]]
57	* NoSocialSkills: Ajulutsikael's not always entirely successful or whole-hearted attempts to get her head around human concepts like altruism, table-manners and small talk. Or traffic regulations. Or [[FullFrontalAssault clothes]].
58	* OurDemonsAreDifferent: Demons have a complex ecosystem in Hell, and apparently complicated politics. Ajulutsikael is certainly not friends with the other two main demons that have so far been introduced in the series, Asmodeus and Moloch. And then there's the one on the Salisbury estate in ''Thicker Than Water'', which complicates the picture still further.
59	* OurGhostsAreDifferent: Ghosts CannotCrossRunningWater. Also, ghosts are the source for nearly all other supernatural types in the world. See also OurZombiesAreDifferent and OurWerewolvesAreDifferent.
60	* OurWerewolvesAreDifferent: Werewolves are the result when a human soul possesses an animal and imposes a human shape on it. Eventually the animal nature starts asserting itself, and they become wild. One "werewolf" is actually a huge pack of ''rats''; when the ghost is "spiked" (cast out of its body), it disintigrates into its component animals. Also, some of them are militant (if technically excommunicated) Catholics.
61	* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Zombies are ghosts who have possessed their old bodies and climbed out of their graves. Usually little more than [[ZombieGait shamblers]], some are able to function in society. [[spoiler: Especially with a bit of voodoo to keep things from decaying]] Fix's friend Nicky, a paranoid ConspiracyTheorist, is a zombie who actually thrives off being dead and [[UndeadTaxExemption "off the grid"]].
62	* PardonMyKlingon: The demons, especially Ajulutsikael, tend to lapse into their own languages every so often, especially when annoyed.
63	%%* ThePornomancer: [[JustifiedTrope Justified]] for Ajulutsikael.
64	* PrivateDetective: Averted, insofar as he is '''not''' a P.I. He does end up in mystery cases involving ghosts consistently, however.
65	* PsychoForHire: Subverted. "Mob hitwoman" Myriam Kale never actually took on a contract; she killed a lot of gangsters mostly because she ''met'' a lot of gangsters.
66	* ReallySevenHundredYearsOld: Most of the demons - most of the ghosts are relatively young, with the notable exception of mysterious (and lusty) Rosie Crucis, a captive of Jenna-Jane's.
67	* RefugeInAudacity: Fix, most of the time, and Rafi (pre-Asmodeus) ''all'' of the time.
68	* ReligionIsMagic: Any religious object will work against the undead as long as created or consecrated by a true believer. Fix has to rely on his friends, improvisation skills and "death sense" instead.
69	* ReligionOfEvil: Fix tangles with the Satanist Church of the Americas in ''Vicious Circle''.
70	* SealedInsideAPersonShapedCan: Rafi. Subverted slightly in that Asmodeus isn't simply sealed in Rafi, they also need to keep him in a silver-lined cell in an asylum for the criminally insane and Castor periodically has to tame the demon with his music in order to talk to Rafi instead of Asmodeus.
71	* ShrineToSelf: Rafi built one of these as a teenager.
72	* SignificantAnagram: A plot point in ''The Naming of the Beasts'', with a nasty side serving of DrivenToMadness.
73	* TrenchCoatBrigade: Fix wears a Russian army greatcoat with special pockets sewn in to keep his whistle and other items handy for an exorcist.
74	* TyrantTakesTheHelm: Jenna-Jane is the villain of this storyline.
75	* TheUnmasquedWorld: Ghosts have become commonplace over the last century, particularly since the year 2000. Castor often laments that the law hasn't caught up with the reality of the world; for example, there is no law in place that covers a situation where someone gets possessed and then commits a crime under the influence of a ghost.
76	* UnusualEuphemism: "Metamorphic ontology", a term coined by Jenna-Jane Mulbridge. Or as [[DeadpanSnarker Fix]] puts it: "The dead are coming back as some seriously scary things. Let's talk some serious Latin about it." (And yes, being fluent enough in ancient languages for exorcism purposes, he probably does know it's pseudo-Greek and not pseudo-Latin).
77	* UnwittingPawn: Fix, and various others, every so often. The demons also, as one, think of the [[ReligionOfEvil Satanists]] as this.
78	* WellIntentionedExtremist: The Anathemata, with Father Thomas Gwillam very much in the lead. Jenna-Jane ''claims'' to be this. And on the opposite side, the Breath of Life movement (known as the Breathers), who campaign militantly for the rights of the undead.
79	* WhoYouGonnaCall: Exorcism is actually a regular paying gig in Castor's world; there's a culture and landmarks associated with them. Ghosts are everywhere; when they go violently "geist," they're treated like a pest problem; an exorcist needs to calm them down or send them packing to the great mystery of whatever comes after death.
80	* WickedCultured: Most of the demons, but especially Asmodeus. He likes his pop culture references, too.
81	* AWolfInSheepsClothing: Castor's sometime employer, Professor Jenna-Jane Mulbridge. Looks and acts like a sweet old lady, but performs horrendous experiments on captive undead ForScience, and [[TheChessmaster plots relentlessly]] for power and money to continue these. She claims to be just [[WellIntentionedExtremist misunderstood]], though her [[ManipulativeBastard management style]] as well as her fundamental callousness towards her research subjects belies this.
82	* TheWorfEffect: whenever someone manages to lay some damage on [[spoiler: Ajulutsikael]]. You know it's a WorldHalfEmpty at best because this is about once a book. Sometimes more.
83	* ZombieAdvocate: The Breath of Life movement.

Context Literature / FelixCastor