The Caretaker Trilogy
The Caretaker Trilogy is a sci-fi/fantasy book series by David Klass, which has the interesting distinction of being the first piece of fiction ever to be endorsed by Greenpeace, due to its Anvilicious environmentalism message. The books focus around one Jack Danielson, who gets caught up in a war from the future and battles the forces of evil to save the Earth from being ruined, first by saving the oceans (Firestorm), then the Amazon rainforest (Whirlwind), and apparently the third book (Timelock) will tackle global warming.
As silly as that makes the series sound, the story is very well-written and imaginative. Not least because of its unusual writing structure. It's written almost entirely in sentence fragments. Like this. All the time. Author claims they generate pace. Good pace. Sentence fragments make for fast-paced reading, particularly during the numerous action sequences.
- Animorphism: The Dark Lord can turn into a gigantic tarantula.
- Anvilicious: Environmentalism in spades. Especially speaks out against bottom-trawling, and the devastation of the rainforest.
- Authority Equals Asskicking: Both Dargon and Colonel Aranha are more powerful by far than any of the Mooks they employ.
- Badass Grandpa: Kidah
- Big Bad: Dargon in the first book, Colonel Aranha in the second.
- Cassandra Truth:
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Police Chief: "Your ma was a nice lady. Who cut her up and torched her house?" |
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- Changeling Fantasy: Subverted: Jack, it turns out, is actually Jair, prince of the Dannites. However, he wants absolutely no part of that, harboring resentment towards his true parents for sending him back in time as a baby, and "living a lie" all his life. He'd much prefer his foster parents to still be alive, and himself to be ignorant of his true identity.
- Cool Old Guy: When he isn't being a Badass, Kidah definitely fits this trope.
- Complete Monster: The Dark Lord (obviously).
- Dark Lord
- Deadpan Snarker: Gisco, a telepathic snarker.
- Damsel in Distress: PJ
- Empathic Weapon: A lot of the future tech seen is telepathically controlled, and quite intelligent as well.
- Friend to All Living Things: In keeping with the environmentalism, the Dannites. Some can even communicate on a near-telepathic level with animals.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The Dark Army is made up of genetically engineered mutants, cyborgs, and chimeras ("chimera" here referring to anyone with more than one type of DNA in them).
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Jack. He recognizes the importance of the war being fought, but would, all things considered, much rather leave it to the Dannites. Combined with Screw Destiny, since the Dannites have quite a few prophecies concerning him.
- Instant Expert: Jack learns martial arts, telepathy, how to sense his environment in the dark, and various other skills pretty quick. Justified in that it's implied that he had these abilities all along, and just needed to learn to tap into them.
- Large Ham: Gisco. Seriously, if there was ever an Animated Adaptation of the books, he'd be a huge telepathic ham.
- Long-Lost Relative: Dargon claims to be Jack's cousin. A distant one, but nonetheless...
- MacGuffin: Firestorm from the first book
- No Name Given: The Dark Lord. When dealing with people from this era, he goes by the pseudonym "Colonel Aranha".
- Not So Different: Dargon tries this on Jack.
- Obviously Evil: The Dark Army.
- Psychic Powers: Common enough in the future. Telepathy seems to be something that everyone has, and with lots of training telekinesis is possible as well.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: The Dannites' plan. The Dark Army copies them, trying to Set Wrong What Had Been Going Right.
- Shark Pool: Literally in the first book, but the second contains a candiru pool, which is arguably much, much worse.
- Talking Animal: Gisco. Although only telepathically.
- The Chosen One: Jack is the only person, for no adequately explained reason, who can find and use Firestorm. He is often refered to as the "Beacon of Hope" by Eko and Gisco, much to his irritation.
- Time Travel: The Dark Army and the Dannites (including the protagonist) are both from the future. They've witnessed the end result of the ecosystem collapsing. One likes the result. The other does not.
- Took a Level in Badass: Jack partway through the first book, thanks to Eko's Training from Hell.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: For some reason, only women are capable of this. Eko is the most blatant example, but the Gorm that Jack meets early on also uses it.
- We Can Rule Together: Dargon attempts this although it's really just a ploy to gain Jack's cooperation long enough to find Firestorm. Jack sees right through it.