Atlan: Difference between revisions

* [[All Men Are Rapists]]: Not literally ''every'' man in the series is a rapist, but Cija's suspicions of the men she meets on her travels are often well-founded. She spares the reader the details.

* [[Brainless Beauty]]: Cija, initially.

* [[Camp Gay]]: In ''The Serpent'', Cija encounters Lel, an effeminate boy who describes himself as "wishing [he] had been born a girl." [[Trans Equals Gay|Before the reader can assume that Gaskell included an impressively early example of a transsexual character in a fantasy novel, Lel appears as the catamite to a decadent aristocrat from a court full of "woman-hating men."]]

* [[Classical Antihero]]: Cija begins as a pitifully weak heroine and improves as she grows older.

* [[Disappeared Dad]]: Cija grew up without a father, but she eventually finds him. The results are not heartwarming.

* [[Gratuitous Rape]]: Every now and then.

* [[Infant Immortality]]: Possibly averted in ''Atlan'', in which Cija's son Nal wanders off in the middle of an earthquake.

* [[Interspecies Romance]]: Zerd was born by a reptile mother to a human father. Zerd's marriage to Cija also counts, despite the lack of actual romance in their relationship.

** When Cija finds her father in a temple, she notices that he has married an alligator.

* [[Jungle Opera]]: ''The Serpent'', ''The Dragon'', and ''The City''.

* [[Lost World]]: The setting as a whole qualifies, but the titular Atlan (short for Atlantis) merits this term especially, being shielded by a force field and accessible only via an underwater tunnel.

* [[Obfuscating Stupidity]]: The Dictatress urges Cija to use this tactic on her enemies. It works entirely too well.

* [[Royals Who Actually Do Something]]

* [[Science Marches On]]: Both ''The Serpent'' and ''The Dragon'' conclude with bibliographies of discredited reference works (specifically, Robert Graves's ''The White Goddess'' and James Churchward's ''The Lost Continent of Mu'').