The Last Rune

The Last Rune is a series of fantasy novels written by Mark Anthony. Consisting of the following novels:


 * Beyond the Pale (1998)
 * The Keep of Fire (1999)
 * The Dark Remains (2001)
 * Blood of Mystery (2002)
 * The Gates of Winter (2003)
 * The First Stone (2004)

This series provides examples of:

 * Always Female: Witches.
 * Ascend to A Higher Plane of Existence: Tira, though she comes back for visits.
 * Beard of Barbarism: King Kel has one of these.
 * Big Bad: the Old God Mohg.
 * Actually, for most of the series the tangible Big Bad is The Pale King. Mohg is more like the Bigger Bad
 * Bittersweet Ending
 * Blind Seer: the boy Danyn went blind when he stared at the sun too long. He possesses some glimmer of the Sight.
 * Dont forget Sister Mirrim!
 * Blood Magic: Sorcery involves sacrificing the blood of one's self or other to compel the mondari, Those Who Hunger, to do the sorcerer's will.
 * Drag Queen: Marjie
 * Either or Prophecy: people are trying to save or kill Travis since he's fated to both save and destroy the world (usually based on how optimistic they are). Turns out he destroys the world then rebuilds it exactly the same only without the Big Bad.
 * Evil Albino: The Pale King, though whether his skin is naturally that white or just looks like that because of magic is unclear.
 * Evil Gloating: Kelephon does this in his only major appearance in the novels, providing a nice little Info Dump and showing a staggering lack of Genre Savvy.
 * The Fair Folk: Not as malevolent as the example, but not Disney either, and they have no compunction about manipulating the heroes to their own ends.
 * Functional Magic
 * Gay Cowboy: the minor characters Davis and Mitchell, two gay ranchers who have been together for over twenty five years.
 * Genius Bruiser: Durge
 * God in Human Form: Melindora Nightsilver and the rest of the Nine.
 * Has Two Daddies: Thanks to the powers of magic, this is a literal case!
 * Knight in Sour Armor: Durge is a mild example. It's not so much that he's cynical, he just expects the worse. All the time. But he is, rarely, capable of humor.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Beyond the two main characters, the cast of major side characters balloons to about eight by the fourth book, and some minor characters that only show up for a few chapters get detailed backstories.
 * Love Triangle: Beltan and Vani are both in love with Travis.
 * The Magic Goes Away: The main plot of the last book.
 * The Magocracy
 * Mega Corp: Duratek.
 * Now or Never Kiss: Beltan kisses Travis (who he thinks has previously rejected him; in reality Travis has no idea he's even interested) while the former is mortally wounded. In an interesting twist, after Beltan recovers he apologizes, saying it was a coward's move and a terrible position to put Travis in.
 * Only the Chosen May Wield: Fellring
 * Our Dragons Are Different: In Eldh, dragons are hyper-intelligent, virtually all-knowing beings who existed before the creation of the universe and want to return it to formless chaos.
 * Physical God: Both the Old Gods and the New Gods have been shown to be this, more or less.
 * Pure Magic Being: The fairies. When they travel to Earth, where magical power isn't nearly as common as on Eldh, they suffer horrific pain and slowly die unless they take special drugs.
 * Religion of Evil: The Raven Cult
 * Shoot the Dog: Ivalaine attempts this on Teravian
 * Spikes of Villainy: Kelephon's armor
 * Spy Catsuit: The assassin Vani wears one of these, high heels included.
 * Time Travel: Occurs in the 4th book of the series, transporting a few of the characters into 1880's Colorado. This leads to something of a Stable Time Loop
 * The Reveal:
 * The Speechless: Sky, the Runespeakers' servant, has had his tongue cut out.
 * Trapped in Another World: Travis and Grace, though Grace decides pretty quickly that she prefers Eldh to Earth.
 * Who Wants to Live Forever: Falken and his "gift" for his role in the fall of Malachor
 * World Sundering: The Ironfang Mountains were created by the Runelords so that the Big Bad's kingdom in Imbrifale would be cut off from the rest of Eldh.