The Orphan's Tales

A mysterious orphaned girl lives by herself in the garden of a Middle Eastern-esque palace, shunned by the nobility and considered a witch due to the black birthmarks around her eyes. A boy, son of the Sultan, manages to find out her secret: in the marks are written stories, which the girl agrees to narrate. Thus begins the Framing Device to The Orphan's Tales, a fantasy book in two volumes (In the Night Garden and The Cities of Coin and Spice) by Catherynne M. Valente. What follows is a complex plot that, heavily inspired by several fairy tales and the Arabian Nights, includes most of the tropes related to those stories and subverts, deconstructs or lampshades most of them along the way.

The Orphan's Tales provides examples of:

• Aerith and Bob: Characters have names with Middle Eastern, Scandinavian, Indian, African, Japanese, Eastern European, Greek, English and many other influences. Bonus points need to be given to Ragnhild and St. Sigrid, two women from Middle Eastern inspired cultures who have Scandinavian-sounding names.
• Affably Evil: The Leucrotta is actually a fairly nice guy, if you don't try to fight him. Even then, he'd mostly kill you because that's his role in the story, not because he actually dislikes you.
• All Myths Are True: A great deal of the monsters and humanoid races in the books is based on something that Earth scholars once believed (mostly classical and medieval.) Firebirds, manticores, and fox-women are only the most well-known.
• Always Save the Girl: Eyvind sets out to defy all his country's laws and traditions to be with the girl he loves. He even changes his species. In the end he estranges himself for decades from everyone he knew and loved in the hopes of being reunited with her.
• Ambiguous Gender: In Al-a-Nur, the dedicates of the Tower of Hermaphrodites all dress identically, covering their bodies in such a way as to leave their genders entirely ambiguous. This is part of their religion: they find the sacred in perfect balance between opposites. However, this can cause problems... see Conflicting Loyalties, below.
• And the Adventure Continues: The story ends with Aerie, Lantern, Solace, Scald, and Sleeve showing up to embrace Sorrow as her family. The prince is sad, as he thinks his role in the story is over... until Sorrow reaches out to him, asking him to join her on her future adventures, and he follows her with great joy.
• Ape Shall Never Kill Ape: No Star has ever killed another Star, according to the Harpoon-Star. He can't bring himself to even Mercy Kill his sisters' handmaidens, when they beg him for death.
• Arc Words: Several phrases recur in particular books, others appear throughout the stories. For example,
  • "A hole is just empty space."
  • "I [verbed]. Who would not have [verbed]?"
  • "Ajanabh was only lately dead — the wake still raged on."
  • "In my younger days I was a [insert improbable creature here]."
• Arranged Marriage: Dinarzad is engaged and by the end married to a stranger.
• The Atoner: Leander's story almost entirely revolves around him attempting to bring back to life Aerie, who he foolishly killed. Later, it shifts to being about avenging Knife and Aerie, who have been wronged by his father.
  • The Sirens in book four are also atoners. They used to sing happily on their rocky island, but they didn't realize that their beautiful voices drew sailors to founder and drown on their shores. After they discover this, they leave their island, vow to never sing again, and become dancer/calligraphers.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Leander wants an adventure when he sneaks out of the palace. He comes to regret it. The idea is also expressed in this trope:
  "Children make prayers so thoughtlessly, building them up like sand castles—and they are always surprised when suddenly the castle becomes real, and the iron gate grinds shut."
• The Beautiful Elite: Wealthy residents of the city of Shadukiam. The setting alone should give you an idea: They live in the most beautiful city in the world, pieced together by djinn-magic, crowned by diamond spires and a magnificent dome covered in roses that never wilt. The crowning achievement of their lives is eating anything dainty, rare, and unhealthy, especially food derived from jewels. Look away from the Rose Dome, however, and you'll find crowded slums teeming with Fantastic Racism, corpse-defiling evil spirits, and a long history of corruption, greed, and betrayal, which finally catches up with the beautiful city.
• Beauty to Beast: Magadin, and the Wizard's other victims, have been turned into monsters over the course of their confinement, although she retains her pretty face, at least. But after Knife sets her free, she learns to love her monstrousness.
  • The subjects of Marrow were turned from ordinary humans (although ones altering themselves with plastic surgery in bizarre ways) into Pra-Iti, ungainly and ugly beings with hideous long necks and stomachs of diamond.
• Belly Mouth: Giota.
• Best Served Cold: Sleeve is a very small, but also very patient spider.
• Big Brother Instinct: Lantern towards Aerie.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Almost all of the Stars, and a few other elemental forces.
  • The Yi. They can’t understand why people may be terrified by seeing of their dead loved ones, walking amongst them again. They seem to be offended by the law that forces them to wear distinguishing clothes.
  • The Gaselli. There's nothing wrong with eating people but it is an abomination to eat sheep or goats, because they look after the sheep and goats.
• Blood Magic: Starlight is really the blood of the sky and can be used to perform some kinds of magic, like ShapeShifting.
• Body Surf: The Yi possess the bodies of the dead, but the bodies that they use inevitably end up decaying and becoming unusable. There is also a necromancer who learns this art from the Man Dressed in the Moon. Because he isn't Yi bodies he inhabits don't decay the same way bodies inhabited by Yi do.
• Bond Creatures: Discussed, but not seen in The Book of the Sea. In the Tower of Life in Al-a-Nur, dedicates bond their lives to an animal, and they live together, hunt together, and die together.
• Born in the Saddle: Knife's tribe, a Proud Warrior Race who live in such harmony with their horses that they even picture God as a powerful mare (other people talking about the Mare refer to her as the "Sky").
• Brainless Beauty: Magadin’s stepsisters are described as very beautiful, but also not too bright.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Quri and Jin. Justified, since this is the only way their species will survive.
• Burn the Witch!: Leander's mother is burned at the stake for committing witchcraft.
• Cast Herd: The number of named characters is humongous, but fortunately they are divided up by appearances in four books. Mostly.
• Celestial Body: The Stars. First, they were lights in the sky. Most of them chose to come down to earth, but still claim to their homes in the firmament. On Earth they take various forms, some humanoid, some not, but most of them have a blazing white look to them, and when cut, they bleed powerful liquid magic.
• Celibate Hero: Taglio castrated himself as a way to worship the Heifer-Star.
• Chained by Fashion: The Black Papess wears the chains that were used to bind her previous incarnation in death/torture.
• Chekhov's Armoury: As is typical for a Catherynne M. Valente book. Just to begin - just staying within "The Book of the Steppe"... that firebird that the Harpoon-Star was hunting? The gold-and-jasper belt that King Ismail fitted around his wife, Helia? The one feather that Lantern gives away? They will all make important re-appearances within that book.
• Chekhov's Gunman: Likewise, almost every major character comes back (or is at the very least referenced) later in the story, with added significance. Examples include (but are not limited to) Aerie, Zmeya, Itto, Lantern, Hind, and Eyvind.
• Clockwork Creature: Hour resides in the city of Ajanabh, the creation of semi-mad scientist Folio. Originally Hour was a fancy clock, shaped like a rooster, but Folio kept fiddling with the device, adding more parts and a voice, and Hour began to ask questions. Now Folio considers her to be a clockwork daughter.
• Conflicting Loyalties:
  • Cveti, who is put forward as a candidate for the Papacy of Al-a-Nur, in the city's desperate hour. As a member of the Tower of Hermaphrodites, publicly admitting to their gender would be a heartbreaking renunciation of their faith. But as a loving subject of the city, denying the Papacy could doom Al-a-Nur. In the end, Cveti comes out as female, and ascends to the Papacy, but she holds fast to the tenets and sacraments of the Hermaphrodites as she can.
  • Sigrid the Netweaver is torn at the end of "The Book of the Sea." On the one hand, her long-lost love from her childhood, and the prospect of returning to her old home. On the other hand, the very Saint she's idolized for so long, and the prospect of sailing beside her. She goes with St. Sigrid, and "glows like a new bride" when she boards the Maidenhead.
• Cool Boat: The good ship Maidenhead, a red ship whose very boards are infused with the magic and love of a Star. Crewed entirely by women, and monstrous women at that. Her mast bears sweet oranges for all the crew, and her red sails are feared the world over as omens of piracy!
• Court Mage: Omir serves three kings over the course of his career. Although it might be more accurate to say the later ones serve him.
• Creation Myth: The proper "creation of the world" myth is told early in the first book, the story of how the Mare appeared out of the blackness, created the Stars, and created the world and all who live there. Lesser creation stories that line the pages involve the creation of a ship-tree, of a human bloodline that gains magic power from Star-blood, of the city of Shadukiam and the City of Marrow, and in fact, the series ends up culminating in the story of how one girl came to be born.
• Cryptically Unhelpful Answer/ Non-Answer: Found in the epilogue. Sorrow asks Aerie why she didn't come to Sorrow sooner, why did she leave Sorrow alone to suffer in the Garden? The closest Aerie gets to answering is "The world is wide, and the raising of children is a delicate matter." Helpful stuff.
• Curse: Golod, He Who Swallows, is an embodiment of hunger and devours the city of Marrow, where they had boasted that they "ate all things" and prized nothing but money, food, and riches. Subverted interestingly, in that Golod himself claims that he isn't some kind of cosmic punishment, but that he only set to devouring Marrow-That-Was because it seemed interesting and delicious.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: Sigrid is kidnapped by pirates when she is sixteen. It's lampshaded as "the age at which such catastrophes of serendipity occur."
• Dark Is Not Evil: Several instances, including the Leucrotta and the harpies, and some might argue that Zmeya herself counts. But the clearest instance is in the faiths of the Tower of Patricides and the Tower of the Dead. Both faiths dedicate themselves to spiritual understanding, knowledge, and ritual, and live in harmony with the more "conventional" Towers such as the Tower of Life and the Tower of Sun and Moon.
• Despair Event Horizon: In Book Four, The Basilisk accidentally kills his dearest friend, Ulissa, and is so heartbroken that he sets his Walking Wasteland powers to work on the fields of Ajanabh, and finally looks at his own reflection.
  • In Book One, the handmaidens of the Snake-Star beg for death after their temple is sacked. They've suffered rape, their goddess is gone, their temple is destroyed, they have nothing left to live for.
• Distinguishing Mark: The Girl's dark markings around her eyes, which have led the court to fear and ostracize her.
• Double Standard: Rape, Divine on Mortal: Aukon fell in love with a mortal girl and took her without her consent. He additionally changed her shape for these of a cow and put her in the sky to keep her all for himself. Subverted since he was finally punished for this by his sister Aukai.
• The Dulcinea Effect: Applies to Zmeya, to an extent (people who hear her tale tend to grow obsessed by it), but more pertinently, applied to the tales themselves. To name one example, Scald is ready to abandon her entire race and protect the city of Ajanabh at all costs, just after spending a night listening to Ajanabh residents tell their stories. Seems to be a deliberate pattern, but the girl only says, "The tales have a great magic in them."
  • This also explains, in the frame story, Dinarzad's change of heart after having heard only a fraction of the Book of the Sea — and maybe why she is so invested in the story of the Black Papess, when she actually never heard any of the story of the Black Papess.
• Elemental Motifs: Applied to all four "books." The Book of the Steppe is Earth, where protagonists seek wisdom in deep caves, the Sea is Water as it focuses on pirates and seafarers, the Storm is Air because the city of Marrow brings a terrible storm wherever it goes, and the Scald, with tales of djinni and firebirds, is Fire.
• Emergency Transformation: Happened to Aerie and other people from her tribe.
• End of an Age: A recurring motif. The Stars' power is greatly waned in the world; the Sorella foresee that their death shall mean the end of their tribe's current way of life, and eventual decline and eradication; Oluwakim is ready to hunt the griffin into extinction, and end the war between them and the Arimaspians once and for all. His daughter then slays him, declaring the start of a new dynasty where griffins shall live unmolested by the giants.
  • There are no less than three explanations offered for the decline and "death" of Ajanabh. These are, the farmland was farmed to exhaustion after centuries (bo-ring), that a basilisk blighted the fields, and that their Mint (a Lamia who was kept imprisoned there and forced to cough out coin after coin) was discontinued. Then again, possibly Subverted, as Ajanabh enjoys (at least briefly) a second life of art and creation run rampant after the majority abandons the city.
• Engagement Challenge: By longstanding tradition of his country, Ismail can only marry a woman who perfectly fits a gold-and-jasper belt. He thinks the tradition is stupid, but also realizes he won't be king without meeting the condition.
• Entitled to Have You: This is Cariaco the Hedgehog's feeling towards Oubliette. He thinks that since he was such a good and playful golden ball, he's entitled to marry her.
• Evil Sorcerer: Omir Doulios, whose evil hand is at work throughout the first book. For one thing, he keeps a tower in the woods where he imprisons maidens; his ghastly research transforms them piece-by-piece into chimeric monsters, until they die and he mounts their heads on the wall to torture their successors.
• Eyes Do Not Belong There/Eyeless Face: One of the Giota triplets has no eyes on her face, but instead has them on her stomach. To round out the trifecta, one of her sisters has ears on her stomach rather than her head, and the last sister has her mouth on her stomach.
• Famed in Story: Zmeya's tragic story is so popular people go mad from love for her, or like Oubliette try to follow her to the land of death.
• Fantasy Kitchen Sink
• Fantastic Ghetto: Magical beings and other non-humans in Shadukiam live in separated areas, outside of the Rose Dome. Djinn had their own crowded quarter, before they moved to Kash. Yi are forced to wear special clothes to distinguish them from normal people. Giota, an oracle who knows the answer to every question, chose to reside in the shadow of Basilica, where only the despised appear, to guide them.
• Fantastic Racism: Between humans and almost every magical being, especially Stars.
  • Also how the Oluwa feel about the Griffin and vice-versa — heck, Oluwakim feels this way towards humans, believing them to be a far inferior race to Arimaspians.
• Fantastic Religious Weirdness: Seen a couple of times in Al-a-Nur. A candidate for Papess is torn because their faith, as one of the Tower of the Hermaphrodites, demands that they keep their physical sex concealed. Also, Leander's story finally ends with him entering the Tower of Patricides, whose members must be male and, well, patricides.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The Monopods have a few things in common with Jews — for example, the main Monopod in the story is named Chayim, and his beloved is Tova, they look back with longing towards a lost homeland. The other people of Shadukiam hate and despise the Monopods, and blame them for poisoned wells and blighted crops. This baseless hatred can be traced back to medieval anti-Semitic literature.
• Fauns and Satyrs: Eshkol and her kinsmen. They are divided into families based on which tree they will turn into after their death.
• Fierce Unicorn: The third book introduces a unicorn, which tells its tale, "A Tale of Harm". The tale relates how unicorns are savage and destructive, and are only attracted to innocence because it is their opposite. This particular unicorn was lured into a trap by a virgin boy — who stole its horn with a calm smile, having now completed his collection of poisons and antidotes.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Hind and Hadil appear to be this, but as the story progresses it becomes much more complicated as to whether or not being the "responsible" girl is actually a good thing to be.
• Framing Device: Like an updated version of the Arabian Nights, the four books are framed by the story of a prince, the sultan's son, who seeks out an outcast, mysterious girl in the garden. She tells him the stories from dusk until dawn, and always promises, at the end of one book, that the next book shall be even more wonderful.
  • This framing device deconstructs or subverts many of the tropes of the story of Scheherezade. Instead of a crowned Sultan who is set in his ways, the boy is young and impressionable. Instead of taking place in a plush palace bedroom, the tales are told in a garden — beautiful, but not hospitable. And instead of telling tales to delay her death, by telling the tales, the girl accelerates whatever terrible fate is waiting for her.
• Gender Is No Object: Taken to an extreme position with the Tower of the Hermaphrodites. Their members present to the whole world (and one another) as androgynes, so anyone will be accepted as an acolyte... as long as they have disguised their gender from the moment they entered the city.
  • Averted with the Holy Seat of Al-a-Nur. They can only accept a Papess, someone who is publicly female.
• Genie in a Bottle: What happened to many genies before and what many of them still fear.
• Girl in the Tower: Subverted. Magadin isn't actually a damsel, nor is she trapped.
• God: The Mare. It's easy to see her as one, since she created a whole universe.
  • Have You Seen My God?: She left this world behind.
  • The Gods Must Be Lazy: Some characters wonder, where is Mare, when her children left alone are spending time killing and torturing each other.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: The Black Papess.
• Godiva Hair: Giota wears nothing but a dress made of her hair. This was normal for her and her sisters, as their entire bodies were held to be sacred, and thus they couldn't find holier cloths than their own hair.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Iolanthe prefers Magadin over her own birth daughters. Their jealousy makes them rat Magadin out to Omir.
• Half-Breed Discrimination: Genie/human couples are strictly forbidden. Children from such unions, if discovered, are burned alive and then have their ashes thrown into the sea.
• Half-Human Hybrid: Huldra, 1/3 a cow, 1/3 a tree and 1/3 a girl.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Grog the Magyr's first scene has her entering a seaside bar, hollering for rum.
• Harping on About Harpies: Harpies in this world are vocational mourners, and devote themselves to smelling and inspecting putrefying bodies so they can prepare proper laments for the dead one's life. And they resemble women with the heads of hoopoe birds.
• Healing Unicorn: The third book introduces a unicorn, whose horn is a powerful antidote to poison. A journeyman apothecary steals the horn to complete his collection of venoms and antidotes.
• Hive Mind: The Kingdom of Mice.
• Holy City: Al-a-Nur, the seat of the Twelve Towers. Eleven religions are held in balance by the rule of a Papess.
• Horror Hunger / Hungry Menace: A lord named Maciej becomes filled with an insatiable hunger, which drives his lands to ruin and can only be (briefly) sated by eating his wife's body. His hunger is reincarnated in Golod, a demonic creature that lays waste to an entire city.
• Human Sacrifice: Attempted with Seven. The "gods" didn't care or even knew.
• I'm a Humanitarian: The Gaselli are the most prominent example.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: The city of Marrow. It also stands out as the only place with an English name. Marrow is not a designation, it's a description.
• Identical Stranger: Ulissa and Orfea cross paths in Ajanabh. As they look so alike, and each is bored with her lot, they decide to switch places.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: The Ash Queen. Played with in that normal for her is possessing a spark of flame like other djinn.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Idyll
• Insistent Terminology: Grog is a Magyr, not a mermaid. They are two completely different species, and the former is a great deal more badass.
• Interspecies Romance: Shroud, a selkie, and Eshkol, a satyr. There's also Seven, an ordinary human, and Oubliette, a huldra. And there are possible others, ambiguously phrased.
• Invisibility: Ostraya, the Princess of the Country of Glass, is afflicted with this condition. There is a huge bit of Fridge Logic implicit — she acquired her invisibility by being caught outside during a rain of glass shards, and she says that as a result, her body is made of glass. But the narrative treats her as if she is perfectly invisible, when common sense deduces that glass in the shape of a young woman would still be quite visible, by reflecting light and distorting the images of what's behind her.
• Jerkass: Dinarzad, the Marsh King, Marsili, Oluwakim, and many others.
  • Dinarzad loses her Jerkass status entirely by the second book.
• Karmic Death: Indrajit and the Vaharaasind get some.
• Karmic Transformation: A whole city, which becomes the city of Marrow.
  • Also after you die, you are given a form, which is connected to who you were during your life.
• Knight Templar Big Brother: Laakea.
• Last of His Kind: Quri and Jin are the last of the griffins, as they have been hunted to extinction by the cyclops, until their eggs hatch.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: A straight example in the case of Immaculota's parents. She is born as a Wonder Child. Lantern the firebird is another example. He wants nothing more than a little chick of his own to love— unfortunately, as a firebird, his life cycle is symbiotic with the Ixora tree. Later, he gains an adoptive human daughter, Solace.
• Like Brother and Sister: During their time in Marrow Oubliette and Seven become very close and even sleep in the same bed, but don’t show anything besides brotherly/sisterly devotion to each other. It’s subverted much later when Seven starts to develop more romantic interest in Oubliette. It makes her want to leave him behind and go find Zmeya.
• Loads and Loads of Races: There are humans, to start with. There are animals such as hedgehogs, goldfish, cormorants, polar bears, and herons, which talk and have their own societies. Then there are Stars, djinni (made from Star-fire), the Yi, and the Hsien, for races that come from the heavens. Races that come from the sea include Magyrs, mermaids (a brief mention), Lamia, and selkies. On earth there are Arimaspians and other cyclops, giants, Griffins, dragons, centaurs, Monopods, Cynocepheli, huldras, harpies, manticores, Gaselli, satyrs, kappas, and there are references to more.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Zmeya and Itto are the girl's parents.
  • Knife is Leander's mother
• Mad Oracle: Subverted with Giota. She pretends to be mad to scare off wealthy hypocrites and make space for those desperate enough (thus really in need) to seek her advice.
• Mad Scientist: Folio, who is at least a very eccentric one.
• The Magic Goes Away: Sort of: there's plenty of magical creatures around, but the magic of the Stars has been diluted down to essentially nonexistence.
• Mama Bear: Knife. She demands a quest of Leander to atone for the accidental murder of her daughter, and makes it clear that if she had thought it wasn't accidental, she would have "eaten his liver and smiled through the meal." Of course, as she's also Leander's mother, it's a little weird.
• Master of Illusion: Ragnhild. The people of Shadukiam would not follow her to war, terrified of Al-a-Nur and its secret powers, and so her entire army of monsters and killers is an illusion she conjured up on the hope that Al-a-Nur would give up without a fight.
• Maybe Ever After: Seven and Oubliette.
• Meaningful Name: Sorrow's mother hoped to avert this for her, giving her that name so that the rest of her life would balance it in joy. Other names include Solace (Sorrow's counterpart), Knife (part of a Proud Warrior Race), Hour (originally a clock), Seven (the seventh son of a seventh son), Snow (a girl who lost all color), Scald (a djinn born of magic flame), Dinarzad (Queen Scheherazade's sister in Arabian Nights) etc. Oubliette is a name for a trap from which no one can escape, and Oubliette develops an obsession with escaping and freedom.
  • The name Sleeve may seem an odd one for a spider, but it might be an updated version of "sleave," an antiquated word (found in Shakespeare) that refers to silk that is prepared for weaving.
  • The name of the city of Al-a-Nur sounds like the Arabic words "Allah" and "Noor," meaning "God" and "Light."
• Meaningful Rename: In Al-a-Nur, the new Papess takes on a new name with her office, just like the Pope in our world. Furthermore, all the dedicates of the Tower of St. Sigrid name themselves "St. Sigrid," with distinguishing titles. The woman who narrates most of "The Book of the Sea" is "Sigrid of the Ways," though on this page we also refer to her as "Sigrid the Netweaver." Late in the book, we learn her birth name was Ulla.
• Mercy Kill: The handmaidens of the Snake-Star ask her brother, the Harpoon-Star, to kill them after they deliver their message. Their mistress is dead, they've been maimed and abused, and they have nothing to live for.
• The Mind Is a Plaything of the Body: When you change form, you body adjusts to this change. Played with in Aerie's case. She keeps a human mind inside a goose body, but thinks in inhuman categories, like nest and eggs instead of home and children.
• Missing Mom: Most notably the Mare herself, but motherless children are a common occurrence in this story, whether because their mother is dead, disappeared, or just emotionally unavailable.
• Moral Myopia: The Yi regularly kill sentient beings of every race or species, and see no reason why anyone would be upset at the sight of their loved ones' dead bodies walking around, possessed by a monster and decomposing. On the other hand, if one of their own is killed, they will tear the killer to shreds where he stands.
• Mythopoeia: SF Revu's review of In the Night Garden phrases it well: "Valente... has sown the seeds of an entire mythos, all her own." There's a Creation Myth and godlike Stars and explanations for the source of magic, but it's a humanist world — there are no primal gods of good and evil, just sapient beings making choices by their own lights.
• Neglectful Precursors: The Stars both resent and love the Mare that made them, and some of them are very bitter that they're apparently accidental by-products of cosmic creation and that the Mare doesn't care at all about their well-being. A step downward, the first Djinn were created by Star-fire touching the world — so the Djinn know that they're accidental by-products. They don't much like this either. Subverted with the Hsien, who also know that they're accidental by-products of the Moon's life cycle, but are totally fine with that, and love the Moon as their mother, while living their own lives.
• Nested Story: At points in the book, the story is as much as seven layers deep.
• No Name Given: More than a few characters, as is standard practice in a fairy tale. Most interesting, though, the boy's name is never revealed. The girl appears to be going the same way until the very end.
• North Is Cold, South Is Hot: Muireann (north, bordering the sea, and frigid) and Ajanabh (warm, southerly, and brimming with spice and color) are the most obvious example.
• Official Couple: There are many romantic pairs in the books, but Eshkol the satyr and Shroud the selkie are the most noteworthy. Star-Crossed Lovers whose story recurs in "The Book of the Sea" and again in "The Book of the Scald." They are even mentioned in the epilogue, in a way that strongly suggests they found a way to be happy after all.
• Omnicidal Maniac: The Hive Mind of the Kingdom of the Mice have nothing on their collective mind except for devouring the world and reducing it to dust, dust, dust!
• One-Gender Race: The Lamia, always female (if they want to have a child, all they have to do is drink a man's blood), also the Hsien, who are neither male or female and do not reproduce at all. Both races are functionally immortal.
• Orphan's Ordeal: The girl herself, as indicated in the series title, but there are a surprisingly high number of orphans throughout the story by all sorts of Parental Abandonment - including Scald, Knife, Captain Tommy, Seven, Oubliette, Snow, etc. etc. Stars, Djinn, and manticores, by their unusual creation myths, could all be considered orphaned races, contradictory as that sounds.
• Our Centaurs Are Different: Their hearts are divided into eight parts, and once they ruled the Eight Kingdoms.
• Our Dragons Are Different: Any goldfish can become one by jumping over a dam. However, its immature phase will look exactly like a young maiden — until they mature fully. Flying over the same dam will cause said dragon to revert back to being a goldfish.
• Our Genies Are Different: Genies can grant wishes, but are restricted by law to ones granted by Kashkash, their god. They also only live for about fifteen years at the most, and when they die their fires will go out. They also need fire to grant wishes.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: The Pra-Iti of Marrow. Their name derives from the Sanskrit term translated as "hungry ghosts". A hunger-demon consumed an entire city, turning the people into Pra-Iti. They're solid enough to take living children prisoners. Even when the whole city is waste, they're compelled to act out what was so important to them in life: feeding the city's Mint.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: One becomes the gate and walls around a whole city. The Arimaspians might be classified as giants, being described as looking like black-skinned men the size of elephants, and they have but one eye, and are at war with Griffins. Also, they don't like being called "Cyclops," as they consider the race of Cyclops to be drunken layabout sheepherders.
• Our Griffins Are Different: The size of elephants, often vivid in coloration. Their preferred diet is horses, their preferred material for their nests is gold, and their enemies are the Arimaspians.
• Our Mermaids Are Different:
  • Indeed, they're big, burly, poisonous, and will drink you under the table. And called magyrs. There are technically mermaids as well, but they aren't nearly as interesting.
    • There are also Lamia, whose tops are three-breasted women with blue skin, and whose bottoms are immense sea serpents. They are always female, live at the ocean floor (and have little lights in their hair, like anglerfish), and appear to be functionally immortal.
• Our Sirens Are Different: Unwittingly enthralling, the three siren sisters sing for pure joy of it, and have no idea the effect their singing has on sailors — which is, the sailors hear the voices of the women that they love best, and almost always jump overboard to be with "her." When the sirens do learn what their songs have wrought, they vow to be silent forever. Also, they are birds from the waist up and human women from the waist down.
• Parent–Child Incest: Averted. Ismail needs to marry the woman who fits a certain belt. The only woman it fits is his mother. He finds a way around this problem anyway.
• Parental Abandonment: The girl's parents are so ashamed of her mark that they leave her to raise herself in the Garden.
• Parental Substitute: Giota for Quri and Jin.
• Pirates: Tommy and her crew on board the ship Maidenhead. Only females (of many species) serve as crew members. They definitely fall into the "Rogue" category, as while they happily burn, loot, kidnap, and sell their services, they're gallant and charming, and have their own sort of moral code.
• Plant Person: Ravhija and later her seedling Ravhi. She lives in, and is connected to, a tree, but her body is compared frequently to pumpkin (which grows on a vine).
• Prematurely Grey-Haired: Snow becomes an exaggerated example. Originally black-haired and dark-skinned, after the death of her parents in snowy Muireann, the stress of life as a poor orphan bleaches the color out of her until she's the same color as the snow.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Knife. Years and years of living alone as a witch hasn't bred it out of her — she still remembers each detail of her tribe's customs and history, and is just as deadly as ever.
• The Quest: Deconstructed all over the place. Most adventures don't go as planned, and the actual travel is depicted as being extremely boring.
• Rags to Royalty: Ismail wasn't a peasant exactly, but he was the son of a backwater country baron.
• "Rashomon"-Style: Not present through the entire text, but at points within the story the same event will be told by different, and conflicting, points of view.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Zmeya. A king who is about to kill her and her fellow priestesses can't help but notice her flawless pale skin, dark hair with green hints, and large black eyes. She is so beautiful that he not only doesn't kill her, but he takes her as his wife, that day, and with the conditions she sets.
• Red Herring: It's easy to conclude that Solace is the daughter of Zmeya, having undergone a name change and given to Lantern to raise.
• Refused by the Call: When we meet Sigrid the Netweaver, she's a tippling nobody mending nets at the docks and taking pity on a poor waif. But a lifetime ago, in Al-a-Nur, she was sure that she was the prophesied orphan destined to rescue St. Sigrid. After years of searching, the realization that she had never had such a destiny utterly broke her.
• Religion Is Magic: Invoked, but never actually seen. The Papess of the city tells Ragnhild that if she harms a single dedicate of Al-a-Nur, that the heavens themselves will open and utterly destroy Ragnhild and all her troops. But things never end up coming to that extremity.
• Reluctant Warrior: Beast/the Leucrotta. In fact, when Leander just asks for his skin nicely, he agrees, much to the consternation of the Marsh King.
• Remembered I Could Fly: It takes Grog the Magyr a too-close scrape with death to remember that she has sacs of exceptionally potent venom under her breasts, and then put them to good use. She lampshades it by saying how forgetful she is.
• The Reveal: The girl is really Sorrow, daughter of two dead stars. The child Lantern took under his wings turned out to be the real daughter of the people Aerie left Sorrow with.
  • Sigrid the Netweaver is actually Ulla, the bear that Eyvind was in love with.
  • Knife is Leander's mother, and Aerie is his half-sister.
• Robot Girl: Hour
• Rule of Seven: Seven Stars made up the Marnikarnika, which became seven stars in the heavens (implied to be the Pleiades). According to the vague Star religion, if seven sons are born to a couple, then this is a gift from the Stars and the seventh son must be returned to them — exposed on a hill to die.
• Saintly Church: The twelve towers of the Dreaming City, Al-a-Nur, each serve as the center of a religious cult, with a Papess holding them all in balance. The people in the city don't compete with one another to see which is "Right" or prove dominance, but each respects their neighbor's path as another way to the truth, and the members abide by their vocations with love and devotion.
• Same-Sex Triplets: The Sorella, three daughters with oracular powers granted by the Stars. Knife mentions early in her tale that daughters always come in threes to her tribe of horse-people, and that her sister's names were Quiver and Sheath. (But her daughter, Aerie, is a single birth.) It turns out that this is because the Sorella's tribe eventually becomes Knife's tribe.
• Scary Black Man: Oluwakim
• Screw Destiny: Interestingly, even if some characters, like Zmeya, claim You Can't Fight Fate, the book as a whole seems to teach us that if you really want and try hard enough you may find your own path to follow.
• Sea Monster: The enormous Echeneis, so large it can swallow entire masted ships without noticing. It's described as having baleen, so it's a kind of Monster Whale.
• Self-Made Orphan: The entire Tower of Patricides is based around this, although they view it as a very serious religious ritual. In a more villainous example, Ismail kills his father. Leander also kills his father and later joins the Tower of Patricides.
• Seven Deadly Sins:
  • Greed: It is what led city of Shadukiam to its doom more than one time.
  • Lust: For power, from Indrajit, through the previous king of Eight Kingdoms to Ismail.
  • Gluttony: Golod, and by extension Shadukiam.
  • Envy: Magadin's stepsisters are jealous of their mother's love for her. So they conspire to sell her to a wizard.
• Selkies and Wereseals: Shroud, a genderbent version of the typical selkie legend.
• "Shaggy Dog" Story: Poor Eyvind finally manages to turn himself back into a bear, and find the bear he fell in love with that started his whole quest. She turns out to be more interested in becoming a pirate instead.
  • But Grog the magyr's consoling words to him, though gruff, suggest perhaps a subversion of this trope, eventually.
• Shapeshifting: Both involuntary and voluntary ones.
• Shapeshifting Lover: Shroud, although Eshkol only knows him as a human, and not as a seal.
  • Zmeya acts out the tale of Melusine, becoming the Raja's wife only on the condition that he leave her and her children one night of the month to herself.
• Shrouded in Myth: Recurs frequently. Sigrid's life story has become the subject of traveling show, opera, and a religion (Sigrid herself is not very pleased when she finds out.) Kashkash is said to be the first genie who ever lived, and feared by both his own kind and humans, even many years after his death. Turns out to be invoked by Kashkash himself. He was neither the first nor the most powerful.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Hind and Hadil.
• Sliding Scale of Unavoidable vs. Unforgivable: Leander's father, a wicked king, sums up the issue when Leander says that he wants to be a better king:
  "And so we all begin, determined to better our fathers’ performances... But then daggers strike in the night, and peasants revolt, and all manner of atrocities become a necessity as breakfast. Only Princes believe in the greater good. Kings know there is only Reign, and all things may be committed in its holy name..."
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: A human girl who was so beautiful that she caught the eye of Aukon, the Bull-Star. He finally took her without her consent and changed her into a cow to keep her for himself. All her children seem to inherit the same curse: Huldras are often objects of affection of these who care nothing about their willingness.
• Soiled City on a Hill: Shadukiam. Its citizens care about nothing besides money (their very religion seems to be centred around it) and they finally meet a rather karmic end.
• Stages of Monster Grief: Magadin. She goes through despair, because of what she has been turned into, continues with quiet resignation and at the end fully embraces her new nature.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: Shroud and Eshkol. They happily spend seven years together, but Shroud's instinct finally pushes him to leave his satyr lover and return to the sea. When he realizes they could have built a house on the shore and live there together, he spends several years looking for her to no effect. Unfortunately, during this time Eshkol remains imprisoned in a stomach of sea monster with the rest of her crew. The ending of the second novel suggests they finally reunite and live happily ever after.
  • Most literally, Eyvind and his beloved she-bear, Ulla, seek to marry at the time that a Star is murdered. As their whole culture is based around the Stars, this is a period of great mourning, including a prohibition on all marriages.
• Star Power: The Stars, again. Their magic is powerful but also drawn from their very essence, so that as time goes by, the Stars collectively grow weaker and weaker, and hide themselves away more often.
• Start X to Stop X: Early in the history of kappas (turtle-like beings who keep a reservoir of water in their skulls, that holds their strength) a brilliant gardener named Yazo became obsessed with proving to her people that they couldn't continue living a life where their water was in danger of spilling. So she regularly drained the water from her head (described by another kappa as a disgusting self-mutilation), becoming feeble and ill, until she finally died. The kappa learned from her example and moved to very cold climates, where their water froze and would never spill again.
• Stop Worshipping Me: Sigrid, later Zmeya.
  • While the other Stars are not as popular as Zmeya, they are also annoyed and perplexed about being treated as gods.
• The Storyteller: The Girl, who has read and memorized the stories on her eyelids. She tells the stories to the Boy.
• Switched at Birth: Sorrow is left in Solace's place. Solace is given to Lantern to raise.
• Theme Naming / Family Theme Naming: Frequently seen. For instance, Knife's sisters are named Sheath and Quiver, and her grandmother is named Bent-Bow. And all of the goldfish born at the river lock are named... Lock. As one fish explains, it only becomes confusing at mating season.
  • Edible Theme Naming: The Magyr we meet is named Grog (a type of rum served at sea) and her sister is named Tack (hard biscuits, eaten — you guessed it — at sea.)
• This Was Her True Form: When Leander kills a random goose, she turns into her true form — a young maiden that was shapeshifted shortly after birth.
• Three Siblings In One: Giota was born one of the oracular Sorella: Pangiota, Legiota, and Magiota. Before Legiota and Magiota died, they fed Pangiota their energy so that she could be the three of them in one, the single Giota.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: The Marnikarnika, and Diamond foremost among them. All that they wanted was to prove that humans and Stars could live in harmony and peace. And for their trust they were murdered in their beds. This might be justified in that the Marnikarnika never once speak for themselves, it is only their myth that spreads, and we hear their tale from a Star that mourns them — neither an unbiased source.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Kappas love their cucumbers.
• Uneven Hybrid: There is a girl, whose grandfather was a Djinn so she is a Three-Quarters Human Hybrid.
• Ungrateful Bastard: Citizens of Shadukiam towards Idyll. He gives them the Rose Dome, one of city’s most beautiful buildings, and they not only don't pay him but also impale him and leave him to die.
• Unicorn: We meet one in "The Book of the Scald," but this unicorn is not of the gentle peace and sanctity variety. Its tale is called "A Tale of Harm," to give you an idea.
• Unreliable Narrator: Many of the storytellers are revealed to have left out certain details, changed things, and been biased in their storytelling. Perhaps the most egregious case is Sigrid the Netweaver, who neglects to mention that she was originally a POLAR BEAR in the story she tells.
• Walking Wasteland: The Basilisk has the power to turn anything it looks at into stone— in the case of this particular one, into red sandstone. This power can be counteracted with weasel-skin. After a Despair Event Horizon, the Basilisk sets to work staring the fields of Ajanabh to death.
• Wandering the Earth: Many characters, but most notably Taglio, Immacolata, Hind, Grotteschi, Oubliette and Seven. They all meet at some point and wander the Earth as circus artists.
• What the Hell, Hero?: The first thing we see Leander doing is stealing and killing a goose, who turns into a girl, from an old woman. To make matters worse, the old woman is his mother and the girl his half-sister. His story is basically him trying to make amends for this.
• Wicked Stepmother: Lampshaded and subverted. Magadin makes a point of saying that her stepmother was wonderful.
  • Her stepsisters, though... well, they were certainly wicked enough to sell her out to Omir.
• Wicked Weasel: At least if you ask a basilisk.
• Wicked Witch: Knife seems so at first - an old, ugly widow who lives in a cottage all by herself, whose first act is to attack Leander - in retaliation for him killing her daughter. It turns out she has a strong sense of justice.
  • At the very end of the stories, another Wicked Witch archetype appears, a grey-haired crone with a long, hooked nose... but this is Aerie, Knife's daughter, who is powerful in magic but full of benevolence and love.
• Winged Humanoid: The Hsien.
• Wonder Child: Immacolata’s parents wanted a child, so her father gathered tea leaves (one of which was saturated with Zmeya’s light) and placed them inside a shoe. Thus Immacolata was born. Her father proposed this idea to her mother; she pointed out "This isn't the usual way of getting children," but he observed that the ways of the world are wondrous and strange.
• You ALL Share My Story: The stories are intricately connected, and the story that they end up telling is that of the girl in the garden — her parents and their lives and deaths, her midwife, the boy who paid her fare and the man who carried her to life, the djinn that sprang from her burned skin, and the girl whose place in the Palace she took.
• You Are Number 6: Seven.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Zmeya and the Sorella. Zmeya asserts that this is the case for the Stars, who even if they can see their whole destiny on earth unspooling before them, are powerless to stop it, just as they cannot change their course in the heavens.