Literature / White Trash Warlock

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White Trash Warlock is a 2020 novel by David R. Slayton and the first of the Adam Binder series.

Adam Lee Binder is a twenty-one year old high school drop out and former mental patient struggling to make ends meet while living in a trailer park with his great-aunt Sue. He is also a witch, which complicates things, especially since seeing and hearing magic is what got his brother to put him in the mental institution to begin with. When he isn't struggling to find work, he devotes his time to tracking down a malevolent warlock who has been targeting supernatural beings and binding their pain into cursed artifacts— a warlock he is afraid may actually be his missing father who walked out on the family when Adam was a very small child.

When his brother, formerly Bobby Jack Binder, but now respectable Dr. Robert Binder, contacts him begging for help with an evil spirit that's possessed his wife, Adam bites the bullet and goes to Denver, only to find every local witch dead. Now Adam has to deal with a malevolent spirit older than Death, eldritch abominations, elven nobility, and his family's troubled past.

The series consists of:

• White Trash Warlock (2020)
• Trailer Park Trickster (2021)
• Deadbeat Druid (2022)

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Provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Adam and Robert's father was an abusive monster. Adam doesn't remember much of it, but the parts he does still give him nightmares. Robert, being ten years older, has a clearer memory of their father and it's partly why he hates Adam's magic so much. Their mother let the abuse occur as she herself was a battered woman, but even after their father is gone, she remains emotionally distant and verbally abusive to Adam.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With:
  • Powerful beings like the elven monarchy have physical forms they use when interacting with humans. When in Alfheimr and not using one of those forms, their presence can strike any human looking at them blind.
  • When traveling through the various hells, Adam and company interpret the landscape a warped version of places they know, making the journey appear like a road trip through a hellish version of the states.
• All-Loving Hero: Brought up in-story in Trailer Park Trickster. Despite not feeling like a particularly altruistic person, Adam is developing this reputation among the elves. He puts this down to many of them having such a poor opinion of humans that any small act of selflessness is a big deal. Others, like Argent and Vic, think he's genuinely too self-deprecating to appreciate his own goodness.
• Almighty Janitor: A janitor Adam bumps into in Robert's hospital turns out to be a Reaper.
• Bedlam House: The backstory of the characters is that when Robert decided to make a clean break away from his old life, he convinced his mother to sign custody of Adam away into Liberty House mental institution because of his Sight, and the fact that as far as normal people are concerned, Adam is talking to things that aren't there. Because part of Adam's magic revolves around empathy, he wound up absorbing the mental anguish of other patients, so not only did he have to deal with the "regular" abuse of the orderlies, the institution's over-reliance on heavy medication, and general bad living conditions, he also had to deal with mental torture from proximity to so many suffering people.
• Batman Gambit: In the second book, Silver goes to negotiate relations with the sea elves of the Court of Cups. He attacks a traveling Argent and Vic without them knowing it was him. They assume it was the Court of Cups and go to investigate. This results in them being at the negotiation hearing when the Sea Elves betray Silver— all of which Silver was planning on.
• Blue-Collar Warlock: Adam wishes he were blue collar. He starts the series so poor that a big concern with his hunt to find evil artifacts isn't the confrontation he'll have with the warlock who made them, but the gas money it's costing him going out and finding the damn things.
• Calling the Old Man Out:
  • In the second book, Silver finally confronts his father, the King of Swords.
  • In book three, Adam and Bobby find the ghost of their father, who has spent the last fifteen years forced to relive and regret all of his actions in life. Part of killing the demon imprisoning him and many other spirits is to feed Adam's warlock wound negative emotions, so Adam takes the opportunity to call his father out for everything he's done to them. This simultaneously empowers Adam's wound, distracts the demon from Bobby, and lets his father know how he feels.
• The Chosen One: Robert and Adam's lineage had been crafted over god knows how long by Death so that Adam would be just the right amount of mortal and immortal to kill The Spirit once it possessed Robert. In the third book, it's revealed that she also was trying to create a bloodline that could have an individual with both warlock and reaper abilities.
• Cliffhanger:
  • Book 1 ends with Adam realizing that Sue might be in danger.
  • Book 2 ends with Adam approaching Death for a deal to rescue Vic.
• Closet Key: Downplayed. Vic had been a long time thinking that he might be attracted to men, but mostly ignored that part of him up until he fell for Adam and it become something he couldn't deny anymore.
• Dating What Daddy Hates: It turns out that Perak, Adam's first love and the elf who taught him magic, didn't abandon him because he got bored of him, but because Perak's father forbid him from consorting with a mere human.
• Dead All Along: In the first book, Robert Senior, Adam and Robert's father. In the second, Jimmy.
• Deal with the Devil: Explicitly one of the things witches have to worry about when messing with higher powers. Nothing is free, and if they aren't careful, humans can end up on the wrong side of a deal and wind up in a Fate Worse than Death.
• Disappeared Dad: The first book starts out with Adam looking for his father. . . because he suspects his father is a warlock creating evil artifacts and needs to be stopped.
• The Dog Bites Back: The true fate of Adam and Bobby's father. A teenage Bobby came home and found their father beating Adam and acting as though this time he would really kill Adam, so Bobby smashed him in the back of the head with a hammer.
• The Dog Was the Mastermind: Sara, an elderly witch that Sue introduced to Adam, turns out to be Death, and the Greater-Scope Villain that planned Adam and Bobby's lives so that they would cause The Spirit's death.
• Druid: In book three, Adam learns that this is the specific kind of magic that runs in his family, and why his own magic is so empathetic. While Perak and Sue taught him the general basics of magic, historically his family had a much deeper connection to nature and healing until his grandfather John corrupted it. Adam ends the book not entirely certain what being a druid entails, but he knows it involves making a binding pact with the manifestation of Life.
• Druidic Sickle: Adam Binder gets cut open by one of these in book two.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Adam decides to save Vic, a man he had just met, from a Reaper, using magic he isn't even sure would work. It's lampashaded by the Reaper that he has no reason to do it, Adam jokes that it may be because he finds him hot. Adam later says that he would have done that for anyone, because he didn't think anyone should have died then.
• Eldritch Abomination: The "spirit" that's attached itself to Annie and others is a colossal, floating, eyeball-encrusted, tentacled, bleeding monstrosity. It is also the heart and last remaining organ of an even bigger, more monstrous eldritch abomination from before creation.
• The Empath: Part of how Adam's magic manifests is an ability to feel what others are feeling. This led to him failing out of high school as the emotional weight of all the other students overwhelmed him, as well as made his stay in Liberty House all the more tortuous, as he was then enclosed with the mental and emotional anguish of the other patients.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • Adam's Great-Grandpa John genuinely loved Adam's uncle Jimmy. Didn't stop him from sacrificing him and stealing his life. When Adam sees John's memories of the incident, he finds John tearfully cutting up the body for disposal while thinking that the grief and pain he's feeling will make the spell stronger.
  • It seems that everything Sara has done to Adam and his family has been for the end goal or rescuing her daughter from the afterlife. As Death itself, Sara can't go into the afterlife (the same way you can't go into your liver), so she needed someone with both reaper, druid, and warlock abilities to open a passage there. Her first real attempt was John, but he went Axe-Crazy. When Adam became a warlock and forged a magical connection with Vic, that's when Sara made Vic a reaper and set them both up to ''need' to go to the afterlife.
• Evil Is Visceral: The spirit in book one looks like a massive, floating organ. Which makes sense again considering it's an ancient heart of an Eldritch Abomination.
• Evil Reactionary: In the second book, the Court of Cups want to rid the world of humanity and revert back to how things were before humans existed. The King of Swords agrees with them.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink: Elves, dragons, gnomes, leprechauns, lizard-people, and a myriad of other magical beings all exist on the "other side."
• Fantastic Racism:
  • Silver and Argent's father may be responsible for helping keep the mortal world safe from eldritch abominations, but that doesn't mean he wants a human as an in-law.
  • Seamus mentions that though he's a Guardian now, his kind were not always respected by the elven monarchy and had been prevented from having a voice on the council.
• The First Cut Is the Deepest: Adam was head over heels in love with an elf named Perak, who supposedly loved him back and taught him how to control his magic. Perak was the only respite Adam had in his time at Liberty House, and when he abandoned Adam out of nowhere, leaving no trace and never contacting him again, Adam was certain that the traditional fickleness of elves kicked in and Perak simply lost interest in him. Since then, Adam hasn't been able to form any kind of lasting romantic connection and he's developed a deep mistrust of elves.
• Finally Found the Body: In the second book, after decades of not knowing, the Binder family finally learns the fate of Adam's Uncle Jimmy.
• Friend to All Living Things: One of the hallmarks of a druid. When Adam looks through a druid's memories, he sees them as a young child joking with the frogs who live by his house and playing with wildlife.
• Generational Magic Decline: It's mentioned in the first book that human magical practitioners aren't what they used to be, but in the Binders' case, it's because their family had historically been powerful druids that passed down their knowledge via an ancient family spell book, but Adam's great-grandfather became a warlock, hid the book, and ruined the generational chain of knowledge so his decedents would still be born with magic, but wouldn't be able to defend themselves when he went to devour them.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Death. Over a long period of time, she crafted Adam's bloodline so that he'd be the perfect being to finally kill The Spirit, an act of which that she knew would turn him into a warlock, thus letting him be able to go to the afterlife and kill the corrupted demons there. Adam can't wrap his head around every single detail of their lives she arranged, but at the very least she was the one that pushed Bobby into committing Adam to the Liberty House in order to make him hate him, and she was the one who let John become a Reaper.
• Gruesome Grandparent: Adam's great grandpa John has been murdering members of his family for generations in order to steal their life force and any magic they may have, including Jimmy, who John genuinely loved.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Downplayed, as they're mostly human, but it is confirmed that practitioners have elven blood and it's why they have access to magic.
• Horror Hates a Rulebreaker: Elves and magical beings in general follow strict adherence to rules mortals barely comprehend. Death is shown to be particularly angry when another supernatural being breaks one of the "fundamental" rules, and she holds a grudge against it for thousands upon thousands of years.
• Horrible Housing: Adam lives in a trashy trailer park with his aunt, with furniture falling apart, limited space, and no privacy.
• I'm Having Soul Pains: In book three, Adam's warlock wound flares up frequently, causing him pain. The only time it settles down is after he learns he can kill demons by "feeding" them to the wound, letting it chew of them instead of him.
• Land of Faerie: Alfheimr, a section or offshoot of the Other Side where the elves live.
• Malevolent Architecture: The city created by the woken demons in book three. It's designed specifically to trap the souls of the dead and prevent them from completing their journey, and every single building is actually a demon devouring whoever enters.
• Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight: When Silver and the King of Swords duel, the latter is ready for a traditional sword fight. Then Silver pulls out Vic's gun and shoots him twice in the heart and once between the eyes.
• Never Found the Body: In Trailer Park Trickster, it's revealed that Sue's son, Jimmy, mysteriously vanished before Adam and his brother was born. Likewise, their great grandfather also vanished.
• Our Dragons Are Different: They are as powerful as the highest ranking elf, and the one we see lives in a mountainside, protecting its hoard.
• Our Elves Are Different: Elves are unanimously more magically powerful than humans, and they live in a spirit world/dimension adjacent to the mortal world that can be accessed by spirit walking. They have a hierarchy system of kings and queens and knights, and the ones at the top are akin to minor gods. The most powerful are called "Guardians" and live in magic towers that are supposed to look over the world and ensure nothing magical is going terribly amiss, and the Guardians can only interfere if they are petitioned directly (usually by a mortal practitioner). Unlike most iterations of The Fair Folk, they can lie.
• Our Fairies Are Different: Aside from elves, there is also every other kind of magical being running around, including gnomes, who run the Gaoler's Guardian tower.
• Patricide:
  • The ultimate fate of Mr. Binder. Bobby killed him when he was beating a very young Adam, and he and his mother buried him by a pond out in the woods on their property.
  • Happens to the elven king. Silver takes him out once it's become clear he's willing to let the mortal world collapse.
• Personalized Afterlife: Death warns Adam of this when he goes to the afterlife in Deadbeat Druid.
  "Hell is personal.
• Powered by a Forsaken Child: The artifacts Adam seeks out to destroy are bound in bone and iron, and they are powered by the torturous death of a magical creature whose pain is bound into the piece of bone.
• Psychopomp:
  • Reapers are people chosen by Death to lead dying humans into the afterlife. They manifest as some kind of possession, sleeping inside an individual until they come across someone whose life needs to be claimed. Not everyone becomes a Reaper, and not every dying person gets a Reaper to escort them. Adam has no idea how the system works, and he doesn't want to know.
  • Spider, Sue's cat is also a psychopomp.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Argent is an elven queen, and though that doesn't necessarily mean the same as it does for humans (her father is a king and of higher rank than her and her brother is a knight and a prince, but also will be the one to inherit his father's title), she is still the main figure of authority overseeing the issue in Denver, and despite having pseudo-god-like power, she is willing to listen to Adam's ideas, and she takes the protection of the mortal world seriously.
• Rescued from the Underworld: The plot of book three. Vic, Jodi, and John are in the farthest hell and Adam needs to go after them.
• Rich Sibling, Poor Sibling: Robert left Oklahoma and his family behind in order to live a normal life. He became a doctor and lives a comfortable upper-middle-class existence. Adam is an unemployed high school dropout and a former mental patient who lives with his great-aunt and does odd jobs around the trailer park they live in in order to scrape by.
• Self-Made Man: How Robert perceives himself. Despite coming from the same place as Adam, Robert put himself through medical school and became a doctor.
• Soul Eating: All over the place in Deadbeat Druid.
  • The demons encountered in the different hells are supposed to eat some parts of the souls that travel through, then let them go. Some demons eat memories, some eat regrets, (etc.) all with the intention that by the time the souls pass through all of the different afterlives and make to to the very end, the Ebon Sea, they will be free and ready to dissolve in the waters. However, because of The Corruption caused by living beings in the realm of the dead, many demons ''aren't' fulfilling their function and instead are keeping souls imprisoned in order to feed on them forever.
  • Shepherd, a corrupted demon, has a cult of dead souls that are more "aware" than others. They take the souls passing through and if they are also aware, they indoctrinate them into their cult. If the souls are too empty, the cult members devour them and fortify themselves with their essence.
  • As Adam finds out first hand, warlocks can do it too.
• Straight Gay: Adam is into men, as is Vic. While Adam isn't particularly camp in general (becoming exasperated once when a woman asks him for fashion advice), he especially tries to hide his sexuality growing up in a rural backwoods town in an abusive household with his bigoted father.
• Synchronization: Adam saves Vic's life by sharing his own life force with him. Unfortunately, this means the two of them are linked and can feel each other's pain, as well as occasionally read each other's thoughts. Adam is surprised when Argent tells him that this is how elves normally marry.
• Targeted Human Sacrifice: In Trailer Park Trickster, the Druid starts going after the Binder family specifically in order to steal their life force and any inherent magic they may have.
• Tarot Motifs: Tarot motifs appear throughout the novel: the hierarchy of elven royalty seems reflective of the suite of swords, and when Adam goes spirit walking, he lies in bed in the same pose as characters from different cards as a way to help himself focus. It turns out, Elves on the Other Side can tell what pose and card he used, and take it as a sort of announcement of his intentions.
• Tarot Troubles: Sue can see the future on her own in bits and pieces when her Sight kicks in, and she also does Tarot readings on the side. When she does Adam's, he gets "Three of Swords," "Lovers," and "Death"— which while initially interpreted symbolically, all become very literal as the novel progresses. Later, Adam tries his hand at using the tarot deck Sue gave him, and comes up with the same results each time: "The Tower," "Page of Swords," "Knight of Swords." He again interprets these symbolically at first, but it becomes clear that the Tower is literally the Guardian Tower he has to visit, and the Knight of Swords is Silver.
• Rule of Three: Part of Adam and Sue's magic works in patterns and feeling/recognizing those patterns when they happen. Many times, this manifests in threes. For example, a Saurian Adam encounters in the first chapter mentions Denver, then later Robert calls Adam to visit him in Denver. Sue tells Adam to expect a third— and then Tanner tells Adam that his father acquired a cursed pool-cue in Denver. Adam and Sue both acknowledge that clearly he has to go to Denver.
• Spanner in the Works: Death sets up several plans through the books, only for humanity's free will to mess them up.
  • Annie in book one. Over their life, Death planned for the Binder brothers to be the major targets of The Spirit. Robert was supposed to be possessed by it, and Adam was supposed to kill him, fueled by years of hatred and resentment. Annie becoming The Spirit's host was not at all planned or wanted.
  • She intended for Adam's evil grandfather, John to fall into the Sea of Ebon and for Adam and Vicente to go there to hunt him down, only for Vicente and Jodi sucked down there too.
  • In the third book, it's confirmed that Death is the one who got the The King of Swords to send Silver to teach Adam magic, wanting to ensure that her future playing chip was trained properly. She hadn't counted on them falling in love and Silver's dad having to intervene.
  Death: Free will. (sigh) With it, nothing ever goes according to plan.
• Trashy Trailer Home: Adam and Robert grew up in one, and Adam currently lives in one with his aunt. Tilly Mae still lives in her trailer in Oklahoma, though it's in the middle of the woods as opposed to a trailer park.
• Tragic Stillbirth: Robert and Annie have been trying to have a child for ages, but so far they've had three miscarriages. The post-miscarriage depression is what opens Annie up to being possessed by the malevolent Spirit over Denver.
• The Unfavorite: Adam to his mother Tilla. She dislikes the fact that he is a witch and gay and closes off at the mention of either. However, she gets a little better by the third book.
• We Have Reserves: The King of Swords knew that the Spirit would return and that he would need the aid of mortal practitioners to vanquish it as their ancestors had done. Unfortunately, times have changed, and neither humans nor elves are as powerful as they once were, meaning that the elves kept sending human mages into a meat grinder hoping that the next one would be able to succeed when the rest failed. This is made worse when we learn that the King intentionally sent his agents out into the world for decades to find humans with a knack for magic, then teach them how to control it in the hopes that one day they might be useful, essentially grooming a generation of cannon fodder.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Silver in the first book is afraid of his father's disapproval, to the point where he stops becoming Perak and cuts it off with Adam in order to stay in his father's good graces.
• Whole Episode Flashback: A few chapters in the first book are focused on the childhood of the Binder brothers, and the various events surrounding their father that made their life difficult. Chapter 38, for example, describes the day that Adam was taken by Bobby to Liberty House.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Creatures that go through the warlock's ritual suffer physical and spiritual wounds that will pain them forever. Adam wounds his soul this way when using the ritual on himself to create a weapon that can hurt "Mercy.")
• Year Outside, Hour Inside: It's mentioned that this is one of the effects eating food in the supernatural realms may have, and one of the reasons to deny any food or drink that's offered.

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