History Literature / Atlan

* AtlantisIsBoring: Averted. Cija travels to Atlan through a glass undersea tunnel and sees all kinds of attention-grabbing fauna there.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''Literature/BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[Litertature/{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith, and, to a lesser extent, Creator/HPLovecraft (with possibly some non-weird Burroughsian influence).

Flawed and obscure though it is, ''Atlan'' is notable for its originality. It's also probably the only series that can be accurately described as a Gothic JungleOpera, influenced as it is by Mervyn Peake's ''Literature/{{Gormenghast}}'', the works of Rider Haggard, the ''Tarzan'' series, old Gothic novels, and obsolete anthropological studies. If nothing else, this series probably represents the dying days of the pre-''Literature/LordOfTheRings''-influenced fantasy genre, which would never revisit the "elder Earth" theme in quite the same way. Tanith Lee has cited this series as an influence on her work (see ''The Storm Lord''), and Gene Wolfe's ''BookOfTheNewSun'' takes some rather obvious cues from Jane Gaskell's magnum opus.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith, and, to a lesser extent, HPLovecraft (with possibly some non-weird Burroughsian influence).

* UsefulNotes/AztecMythology: A major influence on the series, as was Theosophy.

* StockDinosaurs: The dinosaurs (excepting the giant reptiles that are ''not'' dinosaurs despite being labeled as such) identified in the series are the ''T. rex'' and some kind of sauropod. However, the trope is averted with the Northern Army's mounts, which are specified as ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gastornis Diatryma]]'' but could also be ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae Phorusrhacidae]]''.

* StockDinosaurs: The dinosaurs (excepting the giant reptiles that are ''not'' dinosaurs despite being labeled as such) identified in the series are the ''T. rex'' and some kind of sauropod. However, the trope is averted with the Northern Army's mounts, which are ''[[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phorusrhacidae Phorusrhacidae]]''.

* GoodGirlsAvoidAbortion: Cija wants to keep her [[spoiler:half-human]] fetus at first, but her mother urges her to abort it.

* HalfHumanHybrid: General Zerd. His daughter Seka is three-fourths human.

* NoWomansLand: One of the villages Seka visits in ''Some Summer Lands'' has shades of cultural misogyny. Girls and women are not counted in population records, and mothers refer to all their children, regardless of their sex, with masculine pronouns--feminine pronouns themselves are considered insults. Of course, the world abounds with violent men no matter where Cija goes.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], Creator/ClarkAshtonSmith, and, to a lesser extent, H. P. Lovecraft (with possibly some non-weird Burroughsian influence).

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], ClarkAshtonSmith, and, to a lesser extent, H. P. Lovecraft (with possibly some non-weird Burroughsian influence).

* CombatTentacles: A tentacle monster attacks Cija during a river ride. [[NothingIsScarier All we see of the monster is the tentacles]], but Cija imagines its "friends and relations" lurking below.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], ClarkAshtonSmith, and, to a lesser extent, H. P. Lovecraft (with possibly some non-weird Burroughsian influence_).

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} Mervyn Peake]], ClarkAshtonSmith, EdgarRiceBurroughs, and, to a lesser extent, HPLovecraft.

** In ''The City'', Cija wanders into a grove inhabited by apes, where she becomes a bull ape's paramour. He goes so far as to [[HalfHumanHybrid impregnate her]], which she strangely welcomes. In fact, she loves him more than any of the actual men she meets.

* BrotherSisterIncest: Of all the men Cija has sex with, consensually or not, her half-brother Smahil comes the closest to being her true love.

* ScienceMarchesOn: One of the most overt instances of the trope in action. Both ''The Serpent'' and ''The Dragon'' conclude with bibliographies of mostly discredited reference books. Most famous among these are Robert Graves's ''The White Goddess'' and James Churchward's ''The Lost Continent of Mu''. [[note]]The Margaret Murray hypothesis, on which this series depends to a certain extent, wasn't discredited until the 1970s, but ''Some Summer Lands'' was published in 1977, thus pushing it into MST3KMantra territory. Then again, Gaskell didn't really have a choice by that point.[[/note]]

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to [[{{Gormenghast}} MervynPeake]], ClarkAshtonSmith, EdgarRiceBurroughs, and, to a lesser extent, HPLovecraft.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to MervynPeake, ClarkAshtonSmith, EdgarRiceBurroughs, and, to a lesser extent, HPLovecraft.

* TempleOfDoom: In ''The City'', Cija and the two children she befriends get lost in an underground labyrinth, where they are pursued by men who intend to feed them to alligators. More literally, Cija's father heads a literal temple in which he plots the downfall of the Dictatress, Cija's mother and the kingdom's secular ruler.

* AllMenAreRapists: 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. In fact, ''most'' of the men in the series are sexually abusive--not because they're male, but because the nature of Cija's adventures tends to confront her with bandits, mercenaries, and other brutal, immoral men. At least Gaskell usually spares the reader the details.

* NewWeird: A very early example, looking forward to the aforementioned ''BookOfTheNewSun'' and backward to ClarkAshtonSmith, EdgarRiceBurroughs, and, to a lesser extent, HPLovecraft.

* DamselInDistress and TheIngenue: Cija absolutely fits the definition (see OneGenderRace below).

* BrotherSisterIncest

* JungleOpera: ''The Serpent'', ''The Dragon'', and ''The City''.

Princess Cija, the heroine, begins as a naive seventeen-year-old kept sheltered in her royal tower. Her mother, known only as the Dictatress, has maintained her daughter's ignorance because of a prophecy that Cija would destroy the kingdom if she ever left her tower. As a result, Cija believes that the male half of the human race has gone extinct, that female humans reproduce through laying eggs, and that there is no land war going on around her. When the half-man, half-reptile General Zerd invades Cija's home country, the Dictatress offers him her daughter in marriage after instructing her to kill him. Zerd takes Cija prisoner, and there begin some intercontinental adventures that change the princess irrevocably....

* MaybeMagicMaybeMundane: Is Cija actually related to the nebulous deities of her country's pantheon, or is she just full of herself? Her inadequacy may seem to suggest the latter, but the interspecies reproduction throughout the series implies that the laws of nature in this prehistory are not what they are now. (That said, the series contains no magic-users.)

* NoWomansLand: One of the villages Seka visits in ''Some Summer Lands'' has shades of cultural misogyny. Girls and women are not counted in population records, and mothers refer to all their children, regardless of their sex, with masculine pronouns--feminine pronouns themselves are considered insults.

* AllMenAreRapists: 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. In fact, ''most'' of the men in the series are sexually abusive--but at least Gaskell usually spares the reader the details.

* BrainlessBeauty: Cija, initially.