"Just kill me. My life is nothing without you. Drive me mad. Let me be your sustenance. Eat my soul. You’re… you're tearing me apart!"
A series of young adult Paranormal Romance novels by Serra Elinsen. It is about a girl named Andromeda "Andi" Slate who falls in love with Riley Bay, the human guise of none other than Cthulhu himself. Andi is a really special girl; she has dreams of him in her dreams and notices... strange things about him.
Two sequels were meant to be written but ultimately ended up in Development Hell before being cancelled.
Character sheet under construction.
This saga contains examples of:
- Abduction Is Love: What makes this story so different from other paranormal romances and weirdly interesting is that there are real stakes. It is always difficult to know what Riley is up to and you can genuinely wonder whether it's going to be the cute kind of kidnapping or not when Riley ties up Andi and brings her to his house while she is passed out.
- Affectionate Parody: Of both the Paranormal Romance genre and of Cosmic Horror. For the former, it exaggerates every trope to a ludicrous extent, but at the heart of it it's still a convincing if unsettling love story.note For the latter, it's Cthulhu turned into a heartthrob, which might not quite have been what Lovecraft had in mind... but the dark poetry and grandeur of the Cthulhu Mythos is still very much present.
- Alien Geometries: Riley's home is like this.
- Beautiful All Along: Riley to Andi after he reveals his true form. Closet zoophilia rules!
- The Cassandra: Very cleverly Subverted Trope. Andi is Genre Savvy enough to know that no one will believe her if she spills the beans about Riley's crime. So she jumps all the boring asking for help and seeing Adults Are Useless and immediately interrogates the potential criminal on her own where no one can see them.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Riley dramatically reveals his true nature.Riley: I once walked among the stars, a giant. I once slumbered here, in a space between spaces. I... am the Priest All-High of the Great Old Ones.Andi: Does that mean... that you can't... you know, be with someone?Riley: (tired sigh) No, that is not what it means.
- Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: The premise.
- Fat Best Friend: Bridget "Bree" Fifan. Her full name is actually an anagram for "big fat friend".
- For the Evulz: One of the most refreshing examples of innovation in this book is how Riley isn't humanized via Hidden Depths or Character Development or Freudian Excuse, nor idealized with
Draco in Leather Pants by the writer. Though Andi isn't especially harsh, it's clear that Riley is just a Starfish Alien bastard whose sheer selfishness has to be reckoned with, but since this selfishness makes him want to spend some time with Andi too, we love him for that. - Genre Savvy: Andi, who almost guesses Riley is extraterrestrial before her self-issues make her choose to doubt herself... yet again.
- Lovecraft Lite: To an extreme.
- Love Triangle: Will Andi end up with Cthulhu or her childhood friend?
- Made all the more poignant because she knows her friend since not-so-long, so they didn't even get to build part of what concretely a relationship.
- Meaningful Name:
- Ms. Scarlett Epistola. Epistola means "letter" (as in "the thing you send home from camp", or an epistolary novel).
- Riley Bay is secretly a sea creature-thing; also, Riley is a pun about R'lieh, the city where Cthulhu is "dead yet dreaming".
- Andromeda Slate: the character is supposed to be empty and thus is a blank slate. Also, in Classical Mythology, Andromeda was a princess who was sacrificed to a sea monster.
- Mythology Gag: No names are given, but Nyarlathotep mentions how he and Nikola Tesla used to mess with HP Lovecraft.
- Noodle Incident: Half of Uncle Neil's life. Also, the villain is repeatedly described as a "woman scorned", but we never actually learn what happened.
- Only Sane Man: Andi, who has to deal with moody but deep Riley, insensitive intrusive mom and the Woman Scorned antagonist.
- The Power of Love: How Andi and Riley overcome the Cult's first attempt at an apocalypse
- Lamp Shaded and made fun of by Neil
- Purple Prose: How else could so much emotion be conveyed into a book?
- Property of Love: This is present in the couple because of Riley's trouble with petty human laws and comfort zones and his sheer, ultimate and entirely fulfilled vision of love.
- Screw Destiny: Riley's entire purpose is to send out his Call when the stars are right and end the world. For Andi's sake, he declares that he's going to do no such thing, and to hell with the universal order. The villain is a doomsday cultist who's trying to prod him into getting with the program again.
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Cthulhu becomes human due to a prophecy that the protagonist will ruin his plan to destroy the world. Turns out, due to that very investigation he falls in love with her, and doesn't want to destroy the world anymore.
- Sensible Heroes, Skimpy Villains: Oh so played straight with the way Ms. Epistola dresses compared to Andi.
- She Is All Grown Up: Vic at the end. Deconstructed Trope because he has lost all the attaching traits of the dorky Unlucky Childhood Friend he used to be when Ms. Epistola's Mind Rape turned him into a decent Love Interest.
- Shout-Out:
- Two to Harry Potter, both hidden in Uncle Neil's shop.
- And another to Supernatural in the garage.
- One that only counts as a Shout-Out because of the parody nature—'You're tearing me apart!'
- The tagline, "In dreams he came..." is a lyric in the title number from The Phantom of the Opera.
- Sesquipedalian Smith: Andromeda Slate.
- Tome of Eldritch Lore: Two in the series including the Necronomicon.
- Words Can Break My Bones: According to Riley.Riley: Words have power. Words cut. All reality, the planet within which we stand and the universe within which it spins, all are shaped by words. Some believe the very universe itself was created with a word. Well, Andromeda, open your mind's eye to this hideous truth: the universe shall end with but a word.
