History Literature / DanielFaust

* TheoryOfNarrativeCausality: The Enemy is the bad guy in some sort of cosmic cautionary tale that's been repeating itself over and over for millions of years. His goal is to break free from the narrative, which always ends with his defeat, but most of his powers are locked away by the plot of the play itself, so he has to enact parts of it to unlock the seals.

* IAteWhat: Anyone who wants to do business with Naavarasi has to dine with her first. Given that she's a rakshasi hunger-spirit who gleefully devours humans, the meat she serves probably didn't come from the local deli, but Naavarasi is also big on mind games, so she teases Daniel with the possibility that he ''[[SenselessPhagia might]]'' [[SenselessPhagia have eaten people]], but she'll never tell.

The Daniel Faust series is rather large, consisting of several different series intertwining into and out of eachother, including the Revanche Cycle.

** Doubled down on in The Living End, when Caitlin reveals two former U.S. presidents were placed in office after selling their souls. Her quick followup is "No, not that one. Not that one either."

* BigBadEnsemble: So many it will make your head spin: An unspecified number of demon princes, the Enemy, the Network and the Kings of Man, and Naavarasi are all working against eachother, in open or in secret, to either conquer or destroy all of existence.

* ReincarnationRomance: The Witch and her Knight, characters from the First Story, are destined to fall in love and then get killed. Since every character in the play reincarnates, they do to. In the series, they are [[spoiler: Vanessa Roth and Marie Reinhart respectively.]]

** As revealed in ''The Locust Job'', [[spoiler: Daniel's brother, Teddie}] is this for Naavarasi.

* GambitRoulette: Naavarasi's plan in ''Double Down'' involved a multi-layer XanatosGambit to manipulate a PhysicalGod and two arch-manipulators (Princes Malphas and Sitri). She sends Daniel to steal a Cutting Knife from the Enemy - knowing full well that he won't give it up once he finds out it's actually alive - allowing her to use the laws of Hell to demand it. This in turn provoked Caitlyn to file Daniel as her official thrall, which means that Daniel's crimes are Caitlyn's, and Naavarasi can demand Caitlyn's servitude. When Daniel challenges her for ownership of himself and Caitlyn she accepts, and when she loses is forced to give up both them and the knife. It's only at the end of the book that we discover her entire goal in the first place was to get the knife in Daniel's possession while making sure that the Princes were aware that Daniel has it.

The first three books form a rough trilogy as Daniel stumbles on a "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt" plot and tries to take down the bad guys. After that the MythArc kicks in, with The Revanche Cycle starting to cross over in ''Castle Doctrine''.

* MenInBlack: Vigilant Lock in Harmony Black's spin-off series is a black ops government agency that deals with magical threats under the table, though seemingly not very effectively before Harmony joined; they uphold TheMasquerade but aren't part of it, and are horribly out of their league with anything beyond the odd serial killer with an occult fetish. They didn't even know about the existence of the demon courts before "Harmony Black".

* MeaningfulName: Daniel Faust. Both Prince Sitri and Calypso find this highly amusing.

* OurAngelsAreDifferent: Angels are described in varying forms. Some are the classic winged humans, while others are [[EldritchAbomination giant flaming eye covered wheels]].

* FromRichesToRags: Calypso at the end of the Wisdom's Grave trilogy. He invested everything he had in getting Alton Roth into the White House, [[spoiler: but ultimately calls off the contract due to Roth breaking its terms, effectively destroying his own reputation.]]

* ArchEnemy: Daniel and Harmony, although they don't particularly hate each other, so much as they're just on opposite ends of the law. Daniel is often noted to be Harmony's "[[Literature/MobyDick White whale]]". Played for laughs in ''Detonation Boulevard'' where Daniel invokes TheOnlyOneAllowedToDefeatYou when they're fighting Nyx and thy have a brief argument over whether they're technically nemeses.

** Nadine to her daughter Nyx. Nadine makes a hobby of torturing people horrifically and is a great believer in YouHaveFailedMe, and [[TheWorfEffect Nyx has never won a single fight against a major character]].

** Subverted, in the character of the hopelessly corrupt Senator Alton Roth. At no point do we ever learn his political party, his views or his liberal/conservative slant, and when Pixie tries to discuss it, she's cut off before she can share any details.

** Demons of the Venerable Order of Bargainers turn this into an art form, and are basically Hell's rock stars ("except for the actual rock stars"). [[spoiler: Senator Alton Roth]] sold his soul to the bargainer Calypso for political power, and Daniel runs a short con involving a copy of his contract.

* AGodAmI: At the end of ''The Living End'', Lauren proclaims herself such, and renames herself Eve.
* GreaterScopeVillain: The "kings in the outer dark", of which there are at least nine, are behind The Network, an occult criminal organization that's got its fingers in more pies than you can shake a stick at. They're not demons, but are something from beyond the heaven/hell/Earth bits.

* SupernaturalBlueEyes: Cultists of the King of Wolves often have glowing blue eyes.

A spinoff series following the adventures of FBI Agent and HeroOfAnotherStory Harmony Black has also been released, with five books currently available, consisting of:

* AbusiveParents: Daniel's father was both an abusive alcoholic and an unmedicated schizophrenic who flew into a paranoid rage at the slightest provocation. Daniel occasionally wonders/worries how much of his father's madness is in his own blood. Which explains why seeing children get hurt is Daniel's rage trigger. At the beginning of The Long Way Down, it's mentioned that a previous target of his, a pedophile, is permanently institutionalized and [[AndIMustScream the doctors can't figure out why he shrieks in endless terror if he's not kept under heavy sedation]]. Likewise, when he's too late to save [[spoiler:Amber Vance from being sacrificed]], he tracks down [[spoiler:her father]] and [[spoiler:murders him in cold blood, kicking him off the edge of a skyscraper]].

%%* CoolCar: The Hemicuda

* InformedAttribute: Harmony Black is supposedly a rigidly ByTheBookCop, "so straight she wouldn't touch a bent nickle", but she makes several backroom deals with Daniel and lies on official reports in service to upholding TheMasquerade. And that's before she joins Vigilant Lock, an off the books black ops agency, which directly acknowledges she's broken numerous laws and [[ScrewTheRulesIveGotConnections gotten away with it solely because her boss covers for her]]. Thankfully she's an AntiHero at worst.

* GambitRoulette: Naavarasi's plan in ''Double Down'' involved a multi-layer XanatosGambit to manipulate a PhysicalGod and two arch-manipulators (Princes Malphas and Sitri). She sends Daniel to steal a Cutting Knife from the Enemy - knowing full well that he won't give it up once he finds out it's actually alive - allowing her to use the laws of Hell to demand it. This in turn provoked Caitlyn to file Daniel as her official thrall, which means that Daniel's crimes are Caitlyn's, and Naavarasi can demand Caitlyn's servitude. When Daniel challenges her for ownership of himself and Caitlyn she accepts, and when she loses is forced to give up both them and the knife. It's only at the end of the book that we discover her entire goal in the fist place was to get the knife in Daniel's possession while making sure that the Princes were aware that Daniel has it.

* BadassGay: Corman and Bentley, the guys who took Daniel in after he escaped from a cult and who taught him everything he knows about magic.

A spinoff of that spinoff, the Grave of Wisdom trilogy following NYPD Detective Marie Reinhart, has also been released, consisting of:

The Daniel Faust series is eight books long: ''The Long Way Down'', ''Redemption Song'', ''The Living End'',''A Plain-Dealing Villain'', ''The Killing Floor Blues'', ''The Castle Doctrine'', ''Double or Nothing'', and ''The Neon Boneyard''. The first three books form a rough trilogy as Daniel stumbles on a "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt" plot and tries to take down the bad guys.

A spinoff series following the adventures of FBI Agent and HeroOfAnotherStory Harmony Black has also been released, with four books currently available.

A spinoff of that spinoff, following NYPD Detective Marie Reinhart, has also been released, with one book- ''Sworn to the Night''- currently available.

* MenInBlack: Vigilant Lock, a black ops government agency that deals with magical threats under the table, though seemingly not very effectively before Harmony joined; they uphold TheMasquerade but aren't part of it, and are horribly out of their league with anything beyond the odd serial killer with an occult fetish. They didn't even know about the existence of the demon courts before "Harmony Black".

* MayflyDecemberRomance: Daniel and Caitlin. There's no indication of how long Caitlin's been around, but it's implied she's at least a few hundred years old. At least.
** Of course, their relative lifespans may not matter: Daniel's damned to hell anyway. One way or another, they're going to be together as long as she wants him...

The Daniel Faust series is seven books long: ''The Long Way Down'', ''Redemption Song'', ''The Living End'',''A Plain-Dealing Villain'', ''The Killing Floor Blues'', ''The Castle Doctrine'', and ''Double or Nothing''. The first three books form a rough trilogy as Daniel stumbles on a "TheEndOfTheWorldAsWeKnowIt" plot and tries to take down the bad guys.

A spinoff series following the adventures of FBI Agent and HeroOfAnotherStory Harmony Black has also been released, with two books (''Harmony Black'' and ''Red Knight Falling'') currently available.