Hilari Bell

Hilari Bell is an American science fiction and fantasy writer. Her works include the Knight and Rogue Series (currently The Last Knight, Rogue's Home, and Player's Ruse), the Farsala Trilogy, A Matter of Profit, and several other sci-fi and fantasy works for children, young adults, and (in Navohar, which featured a forty-year-old-plus woman geneticist as its lead) adults.

She's notable for not only creating strong characters but entire new worlds, complete with ecosystems, religions, laws, inter-species tensions, and so on with every new book or series.


 * Farsala Trilogy
 * Knight and Rogue Series
 * The Goblin Wood


 * Action Girl: Pretty much all her central heroines eventually fall into this category sooner or later.
 * All Men Are Perverts: When Raven is traveling with Kelsa as a boy in Trickster's Girl she mentions that he's cute once and he's only described again to explain his different transformations. When he becomes a girl in order to work with Jason an incredible amount of attention goes towards her butt and the fact that she's naked after transforming.
 * Arranged Marriage: Sabri is engaged to marry Prince Dravik, the emperor's heir and an all-around creep. Her brother spends most of the book trying to get her out of it.
 * Can Not Tell a Lie: Ahvren in A Matter of Profit, part of his PTSD after fighting in a war.
 * Dark Magical Girl: Subverted by Makenna in The Goblin Wood.
 * Demythtification: Hilari Bell loves this. Comparing what actually happened to the stories about what happened is all over her books.
 * The Empire: The Hrum in the Farsla Trilogy
 * Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Something she loves to constantly lampshade in her books.
 * Fiery Redhead: Sabri; Ahvren lampshades it by remembering an old myth that red-haired Vivitare are the descendants of a volcano god.
 * Gender Bender: Raven, in order to more effectively deal with the shift to a male lead in Traitor's Son, becomes a girl.
 * Genre Savvy: Most of her characters are smart enough to take note of what's going on - unless they're being too clever for their and the plot's own good, at which point they become Wrong Genre Savvy.
 * Going Native: Farsala, Navohar, one of the major points of A Matter of Profit.
 * Happily Adopted: Although Sabri's relationship with her adoptive parents has soured by the time of A Matter of Profit, she and her brother Ahvren remain close.
 * Humans Are Warriors: In Songs of Power, Imina warns  that if they plan on destroying humanity they should be ready for one hell of a fight war on their hands. At the very least, it would be a Pyrrhic Victory for them if they tried.
 * Humans by Any Other Name: The Vivitare in A Matter of Profit.
 * King Incognito: Edoran, in Crown of Earth
 * Lampshade Hanging: In Shielf of Stars Weasle expresses his doubt that they'll find a hidden tunnel in the castle, since that only happens in bad 3 book novels. They promplty find a hidden tunnel.
 * Lord Error-Prone: A Matter of Profit, Knight & Rogue, The Prophecy...
 * Loveable Rogue: This has got to be Bell's favorite trope.
 * Magic Antidote: Anomaly 1 in Navohar which doubles as the MacGuffin.
 * Our Goblins Are Wickeder: The Goblin Wood, what else?
 * Prophecies Are Always Right: Both subverted and played straight in The Prophecy.
 * Proud Warrior Race: The Vivitare in A Matter of Profit and the Deghans in The Farsala Trilogy
 * Pyrrhic Victory: She uses this one a lot.
 * Reasonable Authority Figure: A staple in all of her works.
 * Secret Test of Character: Most prominent in The Wizard Test.
 * Talking Weapon: The Prophecy.
 * Taking a Third Option: Many cases since most of her protagonists are savvy enough to think outside the box.
 * Teen Genius: Makenna in The Goblin Wood turns out to be a military genius.
 * Trick Twist: About the only book that doesn't contains a trick twist or five is Songs of Power, and that's because the twist is revealed on the cover.
 * Two Lines, No Waiting: Knight and Rogue alternates telling the story from Michael's and Fisk's points of view, the Farsala trilogy between Soraya, Kavi, and Jiaan, and The Goblin Wood between Makenna and Tobin.
 * You Are a Credit to Your Race: This is Raven's favorit trope in Trickster's Girl. Whenever Kelsa tries to point out that even if he's trying to compliment her, she finds the condenscending way he talks about humans while doing so to be incredibly insulting, he seems to just not get what the problem is.