Dark-Hunter

"Let me give you the job descriptions. Me, Dark-hunter. You, Daimon. I hit. You bleed. I kill. You die."

—Zarek summarizes it much quicker.

The Dark-Hunter series is a group of books written by Sherrilyn Kenyon. The Hunters noted in the series can be broken down as follows:

Dark Hunters: These were created by the Greek Goddess Artemis to destroy Apollites who steal human souls to artificially enlongate their lifespans.

Dream Hunters: These are mostly composed of Greek pantheon hybrids, and usually are found in a dimension between human reality and Mount Olympus. They are charged with keeping humans from going insane while sleeping, or to assist others (like Dark Hunters) by accelerating their healing while they sleep.

Were Hunters: These are the results of Apollite/animal tampering, resulting in two bloodlines for each animal. The Katagari are predominantly animal; the Arcadians are predominantly human. The primary animals are: Bear, Dragon, Hawk, Leopard, Panther, Tiger, and Wolf.

As of April 2020, there are a total of 42 books and novelettes encompassing the series, along with a Companion Book.

The following tropes are common to many or all entries in the Dark-Hunter franchise.
For tropes specific to individual installments, visit their respective work pages.

Abuse Is Okay When It Is Female On Male: Acheron revolves around this trope. The titular main character is abused by men and women alike, but a particularly dark subversion occurs with his initial love interest, Artemis. Her wanton and sadistic abuse of Acheron is treated throughout the entire book as being completely unacceptable. She also lampshaded this trope several times with a few of Acheron's lines.
Action Girl: Where do we start? Let's see... Katra, Tabitha, Danger, Delphine, Tory, Cassandra, Zephyra, Samia, Leta... and the list goes ON.
Affably Evil
All Myths Are True: And how. We have the Greek Pantheon, the Atlantean Pantheon, the Sumerian Pantheon, the Egyptian Pantheon, various Native American supernatural entities, voodoo (sort of)... vampires, vampires hunters, shapeshifters (kinda), 2012 prophecies, demons (lots of them, and multiple kinds), zombies... what's next, Sherrilyn?
Animesque: The OEL adaptation of The Dark Hunters is written by an American, drawn and lettered by Americans, and reads like a typical American indie comic, but it goes for a mangaish look and for some reason it's read from right to left. Decide for yourselves whether you like it that way.
Animorphism
Atlantis: Where Ash grew up. It was destroyed by his mother Apollymi, The Destroyer.
Author Appeal : An inordinate number of characters are into Goth fashion, Buffy, and using food during sex play.
Badass: ... too many characters to name.
Badass Longcoat
Badass Normal: Arguably the whole point of Blood Rite Squires.
Back-to-Back Badasses: This happens many times.
Bash Brothers: The individual Dark Hunters are each trained to kill Daimons. Although they cannot stand together without draining each others's powers (thanks, Artemis!), there is still kinship between them.
The Beautiful Elite: Everyone. Yes, even the bad ones.
Being Good Sucks: Some characters have this ideology.
Big No: Happens mostly when the heroine is injured or dies and the hero goes all "NOOOOOOO!!"
Blond Guys Are Evil: The Daimons.
Break the Cutie: Repeated. Ash being the epitome. You name it, he suffered it.
Bullying a Dragon: This trope is both lampshaded and subverted.
- Ash can pretty much destroy...well...everything, but keeps getting in ridiculous situations by being manipulated by others.
Butt Monkey: Acheron. Ahem... literally. Even when people try to HELP him.
Celtic Mythology
Christmas Episode: A short story were Gallagher experiences his first Christmas after becoming a Dark Hunter.
Classical Mythology: The pantheon is about what you would expect from the Greeks.
Cloudcuckoolander: Sunshine Runningwolf, to an extent.
Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: Either the female character turns out to be a kickass, or someone the hero or heroine knows turns out to be a know-it-all about mythology.
- Liza, the squire. An old sweet lady who will offer you tee, and if you have luck, she will give you one of her beautiful dolls... that are actually like retractable swords. Yeah.
Deus Ex Machina: With literal gods. Now where'd that conflict go?
Don't You Dare Pity Me!: They are strong men. They don't want you to feel sorry for them. Maybe.
Doorstopper: The book Acheron tops out at over 500 pages.
Drives Like Crazy: Nick and, allegedly, Tabitha.
Earn Your Happy Ending: Everybody now...! No matter how abused, misguided or misanthropic.
Mr. Fanservice: Ohhh, come ON. Dark and Troubled Past, Check. Troubled but Cute? Check. Sexy voice? Absolutely.
Eternal Love: All god/were-human relationships are resolved. Mortal? No problem! Now you're immortal AND have some cool supe powers!
Fur Against Fang: The Weres and the Dark Hunters aren't the friendliest neighbors, given that the Weres are cousins to the Daimons the Dark Hunters kill.
Granola Girl : Sunshine, again.
Heartbroken Badass
Hell-Bent for Leather: Everyone.
- Except for Valerius... he found it 'barbaric' to put it in his terms.
Hell Gate: The boltholes used by the Daimons.
Hollywood Sex: They are romance novels, after all.
Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Zarek, Sin, Aidan, Xypher, Stryker, Jericho, Nick...
Jerkass: Many characters, some more that others. Nick is a good example, although he has an excuse... right?
Jerkass God: Artemis being a really good example. Zeus can count in, too. And Apollo, of course. And... well, gosh, there are a lot of them in this series, too many to name.
Human Mom, Nonhuman Dad: Simone from Dream Chaser. Also, most of the kids, like Marissa Hunter, that the heroes and heroines of past books are shown to be popping out in their continuing cameos, since about 50% of the pairings are Dark/Dream/Were Hunter & ordinary human woman. And the doozy: Nick, who previously just thought his dad was a convict but in recent books has discovered was some powerful being from whom Nick's inherited supernatural abilities of world-changing/destroying power..
Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: The way to kill a Daimon is to stab them through the chest where the 'ink stain' of human souls resides. One "pop" and they get turned into golden powder.
It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Ash is also known as "the cursed god".
- Recurring theme in Chronicles of Nick.
Kaleidoscope Hair: Acheron can change his hair color at will. So far it's been black, brown, green, purple, platinum silver, and black with red streaks, among others.
Knight in Sour Armor
Jerkass: Nick has I deal with a lot of these. First there's Stone, who harasses him for his low income and also goads him into fights in order to get the rest of the school to think he's a delinquent and have him kicked off the football team. There's also Nick's first principal, who's view of Nick and his family isn't very different from that of Stone. His next principle isn't very different, and the second coach blackmails him into stealing things from the students at his school.
Mama Bear: Literally, with Nicolette Peltier. Apollymi also goes out of her way to protect her son Apostolos aka Acheron
Motive Decay: (Not sure this is exactly the trope I'm looking for for this): Artemis, (rather impressively actually) over the course of half of a book manages to go from a genuinely nice character in a tough situation who's trying her best to understand someone to a brain dead socially inept abuser. YMMV, but... uhm... by the end of the first half of the book she's very little like the character you're supposed to like a couple hundred pages ago.
Names to Run Away From Really Fast: If you're a Daimon or an Appollite, the mention of any Dark Hunter's name should create this. Otherwise it falls under Names to Trust Immediately.
- Speaking of which, Acheron's Theme Music Power-Up serves as Music To Run Away From Really Fast when played at the Sanctuary to alert any clientele who may not wish to meet him.
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: Can apply to many characters.
- Ash gets whipped raw by Artemis every time he gives a soul back to a Dark Hunter.
- Jericho (Cratus) was doomed to centuries of crude torture, because he saved a baby he was supposed to kill. This baby turned out to be Delphine, who ended up being his love interest.
One-Winged Angel: If Acheron is pissed beyond all hope of redemption, he turns blue, gets black horns, nails, and lips, and basically rips the ever-loving everything out of most everyone. Bonus points for the ability to end the world should he go visit his mother in Atlantean Hell.
Organization with Unlimited Funding: Artemis pays each Dark Hunter in a wheelbarrow-sized load of gold and precious jewels each month, which then has to be converted into normal currency. Multiply this by the number of Dark Hunters and the thousand years this has been going on, and you come up with some serious wealth.
Our Vampires Are Different: They burn in sunlight and have fangs, but they don't need blood to survive.
- Appollites are to die painfully at the age of 27, due to a curse from The Greek God, Apollo. They have fangs as well, and must feed from each other until they die. To circumvent this early death, they can choose to "go Daimon" by taking human souls into their bodies. This makes them targets of Dark Hunters.
Our Werewolves Are Different
Papa Bear: Bubba from The Chronicles of Nick. He's not just some redneck maniac. He was originally a wealthy married man. When his wife and child were killed bay robber, he had a massive Freak-Out, quit his job, started his store, and began giving self-defens lessons and to prowl the streets in search of anyone else who would take innocent life.
Power Nullifier: The metriazo collars to the Weres; low voltage electricity prevents Voluntary Shapeshifting.
Prophetic Names: Acheron. After the River of Woe. Let's see here. When he was born, his mother and father both denied him due to his silver eyes, a sign of him being a gift from the gods. They both utterly despised him, and he just couldn't understand why. It was made especially worse since he looks exactly like Styxx, his brother, who neither parent has a problem lavishing affection on. He's then taken away to become a prostitute, where he's raped, beaten, drugged... The list goes on. And that's only the start of things... May the gods have mercy on you indeed.
Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Apollymi.
Shapeshifter Default Form: Katagaria's main form is animal; the Arcadians, human.
Shirtless Scene: Every book, with tons of detailed description.
Single Mom Stripper: Cherise Gautier, Nick's Mom, particularly in Chronicles of Nick: Infinity. Watch what you say about her in front of Nick, especially since she's now dearly departed.
Sliding Scale of Vampire Friendliness: The Dark Hunters look like vampires, and they can even drink blood, but they are actually pretty friendly, especially given that they protect humans.
- Daimons have their friendly moments, too.
So Beautiful It's a Curse: Julian Alexander spent the majority of his life viewed as a Lust Object by women, and hated by other men because of it. Being the son of Aphrodite, it makes sense.
Spell My Name with an "S": From Acheron, to Asheron and later Ash...
- The Dark-Hunter Ravyn.
Super-Powered Evil Side: Ash. Apocalypse, anyone?
Tall, Dark and Bishoujo
Tall, Dark and Handsome
The Big Easy: The majority of the books are set in New Orleans.
Theme Music Power-Up: An affectionate parody; Acheron, the Atlantean god-turned-vampire warrior, has "Sweet Home Alabama" for his theme music.
The Power of Love: To the cavity-forming degree.
This Was His True Form: When a Were-Hunter falls asleep, faints, or dies, they go back to their base form.
Trauma Conga Line: Ash. Most recently Seth
Unfortunate Implications: Interspecies romances happen way more often than interracial ones, even in cities with large minority populations. Though common in supernatural romances, this becomes extremely jarring in the case of Bride, who is the sort of woman who could probably have found true love years earlier had she simply branched out a bit.
- Whenever the love between two men is mentioned, Kenyon makes damn sure you know it's absolutely NOT the gay kind, even in cases in which a father-son or fraternal bond has already been well-established in the narration.
- Kassim, the first (only?) black Dark-Hunter we meet is in a single scene, then dies off-screen.
Vampires Are Rich: Dark-Hunters get a monthly salary of a pile o' treasure, which funds their huge houses and expensive cars.
Supernatural Beings Own Nightclubs: Daimons and Weres certainly do.
Voluntary Shapeshifting: The Weres.
- Unless they are zapped with electricity; then they phase in and out without control for several minutes.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: Or as Ash says, "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". Heck, his life pretty much revolves around this trope, to a point that everyone identifies this as his Catch Phrase.
White-Haired Pretty Boy: Jericho (Cratus), when he gets his powers back.
World of Badass: ... do we have to explain?
You Cannot Fight Fate: The opening prologue of The Chronicles of Nick is dripping with this.