History Literature / Fragment

* CoolVersusAwesome: At the end of ''Pandemonium'' [[spoiler: the cave's lake spills into the underground city, which has become infested with Henders organisms, and the two deadly ecosystems battle it out (Pandemonium having a huge advantage - being immune to saltwater - so they easily won).]]

** For example, the wheel-like "ants" are actually thousands of individuals in themselves, carrying several generations of offspring in their.... something. If they trip, the offspring eat them.

* EverythingsSquishierWithCephalopods: In the sequel there are firebombers (flying, venom-raining, jellyfish-like animals), and ghosts (goo-shooting [[PuppeteerParasite puppeteer parasites]]).

* LongLived: Every life form native to Henders Island is biologically immortal because they get killed off to soon for aging to be required to prevent inbreeding.[[spoiler:Except the Hendropods.]]

* OlderAndWiser:[[spoiler: Both subverted and played straight by the Hendropods. Since they've spent centuries or more on the island, they're very knowledgeable about it, but totally clueless about everything off it.]]
* OldMaster:[[spoiler: The Hendropods. Each of them has lasted centuries on a miniature Deathworld, and don't get weaker as the age. An example is near the end of the book, where they lock themselves in with a group of Henders Rats, and casually pulp them.]]

* SuddenSequelDeathSyndrome: In Pandemonium, [[spoiler: both Otto Inman and Andy Beasley are killed off rather unceremoniously via gunshot midway through the book.]]
* SuddenSequelHeelSyndrome: In Pandemonium, [[spoiler: Kuzu turns out to be the book's main villain.]]

* KarmaHoudini: [[spoiler: Cynthea Leeds]], despite knowingly risking (and costing) several innocent lives for the sake of producing her reality show in Henders Island, gets no comeuppance whatsoever and even makes a cameo at the end of the sequel.

* JustPlaneWrong: At one point [[spoiler: in Henders cave]] a character suggests that debris from Amelia Earhart's plane may have washed up on the island, examining a life preserver labeled "Electra" and stating that was the name of Amelia's plane. In truth, the aircraft ''model'' was a Lockheed Electra 10E, and Earhart's was never given a name beyond the registration number NR16020.

* JustPlaneWrong: At one point [[spoiler: in Henders cave]] a character suggests that debris from Amelia Earhart's plane may have washed up on the, examining a life preserver labeled "Electra" and stating that was the name of Amelia's plane. In truth, the aircraft ''model'' was a Lockheed Electra 10E, and Earhart's was never given a name beyond the registration number NR16020.

* OldMaster:[[spoiler: The Hendropods. Each of them has lasted centuries a miniature Deathworld, and don't get weaker as the age. An example is near the end of the book, where they lock themselves in with a group of Henders Rats, and casually pulp them.]]

* InfantImmortality: Both Fragment (Copepod the bull terrier) and its sequel (Ivan the Samoyed) have a dog in it, and both dogs survive to the end.

* CoolVersusAwesome: At the end of Pandemonium [[spoiler: The cave's lake spills into the underground city, which has become infested with Henders organisms; and the two deadly ecosystems battle it out (Pandemonium having a huge advantage; being immune to saltwater, so they easily won).]]

** SpaceWhale: Well, kind of. They're not whales exactly, but whale-like and while they don't live in space, they can fly.

Turns out the island is a remnant of an ancient supercontinent from the Precambrian era, where everything has been evolving separately for 570 million years and the inherent savagery of life has been [[UpToEleven turned up to eleven]]; an orgy of violence where the food chain is thrown out the window and ''[[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou everything eats everything]]'' - the dominant lifeform being a land-going species of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mantis_shrimp mantis shrimp]] capable of single-handed(clawed?)ly shredding and devouring '''tanks.'''

* [[spoiler: [[ReallySevenHundredYearsOld Really 70 000 Years Old:]] The hendropods are really '''really''' old (their civilization dates back to at ''least'' the Late Jurassic), but you would never be able to tell because they don't really age.]]

Turns out the island is a remnant of an ancient supercontinent from the Precambrian era, where everything has been evolving separately for 700 million years and the ferocity of the island's inhabitants has been [[UpToEleven turned up to eleven]]. Terrestrial mantis shrimp roam the interior, while the island itself is in an orgy of violence as the food chain is thrown out the window, and ''[[EverythingIsTryingToKillYou everything eats everything]]''.

** To put it into perspective, if even ''one'' mite-sized animal got off the island, it would cause the extinction of '''all life on Earth'''.

* KillItWithWater: In one of the oddest plot-twists, it turns out that contact with salt water is tantamount to instant death for Henders Island creatures (it being the reason they've been unable to escape the island).

''Fragment'' is a 2009 s-f novel by Warren Fahy, described by one reviewer as "an eco-thriller with teeth."

Has a sequel called ''Pandemonium'', which deals with another isolated hostile ecosystem, this time in an enormous cave in Russia, as well as the survival of organisms from Henders Island in the underground city nearby.

** It's possible that the idea of mantis shrimp (but probably not ''all'' arthropods) having evolved from the Henders organisms is a ShoutOut to the first ever "alternate evolution" Mockumentary, ''The Snouters''. In that book, the author traces the origins of the perfectly-ordinary taxon of flatworms to its mythical Rhinogrades as a joke.