History Literature / TheActsOfCaine

* AntiHero: Caine.
* AntiVillain: Toa-Sytell.

* AscendedExtra: Raithe.
* AuthorTract: A few times, though it never goes on for more than a few pages at a time.

* BadassInDistress: Seems to still happen [[DistressedDamsel more often to the females]].

* BookEnds: in ''Blade of Tyshalle''.

* BrokenBird: Angvasse in ''Caine's Law''.

* ChekhovsGun: Toa-Sytell's poisoned dagger.

* CrapsackWorld: Earth.

* DepravedBisexual: Berne.

* DirtyCoward: [[spoiler: Lamorak]].
* {{Doorstopper}}

* {{Dystopia}}: Earth in a nutshell.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: Insomuch as there are happy endings.

* IndyPloy: Caine's speciality.

* InsufferableGenius: T'Passe.

* KnightInShiningArmor: The Knights of Khryl in ''Caine Black Knife''. They are good guys...but...

* TheMole: [[spoiler: Lamorak.]]

* NameOfCain: Obviously.

* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Oh man, poor Deliann...

* ProudWarriorRaceGuy: Orbek

* ShutUpHannibal: Caine gives one to [=Ma'elKoth=].

* UnspokenPlanGuarantee: Mentioned in ''Heroes Die''.

* WhatTheHellHero: Eventually, anyone who cares about Overworld asks the Actors this.

->''"I love the guy like a brother, but every time he comes to town we end up in another fucking war."''
-->-- '''Duke Toa M'Jest''' a.k.a. '''Majesty''' ''

The series's setting is an interesting combination of a [[{{Dystopia}} futuristic earth run by corporate governments with a strict caste system and loads of repression]], and a [[DarkFantasy parallel high fantasy world called Overworld]] that earth humans have learned to travel to and exploit. This exploitation initially takes the form of The Studio, a company that produces a sort of reality entertainment by sending "actors" to Overworld. These actors are trained in either magic or combat, implanted with a kind of video recorder and sent to Overworld to "risk [their] lives in an interesting way". On the SlidingScaleOfIdealismVersusCynicism, the series tends towards cynicism, although it's not without [[EarnYourHappyEnding bouts of idealism]]. [[http://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/137613/acts-of-caine-the-best-damned-fantasy-youve-never-read A more detailed synopsis here]], with minor spoilers from the first three books.

-->'''Caine:''' "He who lives by the sword can die by my knife."

-->'''Caine:''' "RuleNumberOne: You fuck with me, you die. No questions, no exceptions, no second chances."
-->'''Caine:''' "THEY TOLD YOU I WOULD DIE DOWN THERE! I TOLD YOU I'D BE BACK!"

-->'''Caine:''' (to a band of Black Knife [[OurOrcsAreDifferent ogrillo]] hunters, after killing one of their number in single combat) "Did anybody not UNDERSTAND what just happened here? Does anybody need it EXPLAINED? This place is MINE. You can go anywhere you want, but you can't come HERE. For you here is DEATH. Here is PAIN. He died EASY. You will die HARD. You will die SCREAMING. Your bitches will HOWL. Your pups will STARVE. I will FEED YOU YOUR FUTURE."
*** Later:

->''"You, as Actors, have a precisely defined role, irrespective of whether you swing a blade or throw a lightning bolt, joust or heal the sick. It is purely and simply this: [[BloodSport Your function in society is to risk your life in interesting ways]]."''

* StaringThroughTheSword: The cover of ''Caine Black Knife''.

''Blade of Tyshalle'' takes place seven years later, reintroducing Hari and Shanna in their later married, unhappy and semi-retired lives (along with the no longer divine [=Tan'elKoth=]). This tedium is of course shattered by plots set into action by the corporate leaders of Earth which Hari's friend, Kris Hansen/Deliann Mithondionne tries to avert. This novel turns the moral philosophizing [[UpToEleven up to 11]] or 12, adds questions of identity, resource usage, destiny (or lack thereof) and humanity's drive to exploit and use up everything. It also features the end of the world, in a way.

* KnifeNut: Caine.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters

* MoralDissonance: Caine's not a nice person.

* BadassBeard: Caine and Ma'elKoth.

* ArtisticLicenseMedicine: An InUniverse example in ''Heroes Die''. Hari complains to the guys at The Studio after playing their BloodierAndGorier version of one of his adventures that the wounds Caine took should have had him immobilized from pain and shortly dead of blood loss.

* ClaspYourHandsIfYouDeceive: Subverted in ''Heroes Die'', where Kollberg does this to try and keep calm while talking to the Board of Governors rather than trying to be cunning.

* AlwaysABiggerFish: In the end, [[spoiler:Kollberg]] is taken by the Social Police.

-->'''Caine:''' *to a band of Black Knife [[OurOrcsAreDifferent ogrillo]] hunters, after killing one of their number in single combat* "Did anybody not UNDERSTAND what just happened here? Does anybody need it EXPLAINED? This place is MINE. You can go anywhere you want, but you can't come HERE. For you here is DEATH. Here is PAIN. He died EASY. You will die HARD. You will die SCREAMING. Your bitches will HOWL. Your pups will STARVE. I will FEED YOU YOUR FUTURE."
--> Later, "I told you I'd feed you your future. Did you think I'd make you eat it raw?"

* DefiledForever: An interesting example. There's a religious sect of priestesses who are completely chaste virgins, to the point of dressing like men to stave off advances. If they ever give into temptation, they lose their power. If they are raped, however, they basically turn into a magic nuke. Unfortunately, they rarely survive the massive influx of power, not to mention the resulting destruction.

* Finger Tenting: Subverted in ''Heroes Die'', where Kollberg laces his fingers together not as a sign of deception, but to try and keep calm while talking to [[HeWhoMustNotBeSeen the Board of Governors]].
* FirstPersonSmartass: Justified. The protagonist is having his experiences as a particularly violent sort of adventurer in a fantasy world recorded for the entertainment of the masses on a dystopian future Earth.
* {{Foil}}: Berne to Caine. To summarize a lengthy spiel, while both are vicious and skilled fighters, Berne is TheHedonist, while Caine has a cold discipline.

* GaiasVengeance: Chambaraya [[spoiler: through Pallas.]]

* PoweredByAForsakenChild: In ''Heroes Die'', [=Ma'elKoth=] spends the life of his devotees when using combat magic. Unlike most, he is aware of the cost; when he gives Berne a smidgen of that power to use, he reminds the man of the human cost, and he uses this fact against [[spoiler: Pallas Ril]].

* SwordOfPlotAdvancement: Kosall, though a JustifiedTrope here in that Kosall just happens to do a lot of important stuff. Except it turns out it might also be the sword of a god that was also in possession of an order of knights for the past five hundred years ([[TimeyWimeyBall the timeline gets complicated when gods are involved]]).

* TheUnfettered: The series demonstrate how the Unfettered make setting right and wrong in your story very difficult. Caine, the protagonist, is a prime example of an Unfettered character (but not his alter ego Hari, interestingly enough). He manages to be both a genocidal murderer and the world's saviour, an amoral cutthroat and a loving father. Stover successfully pulls it off because the morality in his novels is more about how much control you are willing to exercise over events to bring around the right outcome and less about whether death is right or wrong. Other Unfettered characters include [[ActionGirl Talaan]], [[InsufferableGenius T'Passe]], and Tommy to a degree. Ma'elKoth is Unfettered [[spoiler:until the Blind God owns him]]. Berne comes close but loves infamy and [[TheHedonist pleasure (read: rape)]] too much. Raithe manages to be Unfettered for about all of two chapters in ''Blade of Tyshalle''.

* VasquezAlwaysDies: [[spoiler:Talaan]] gets hit by this in ''Heroes Die''.

* ThisIsGonnaSuck: TropeNamer. In the ''Blade of Tyshalle'', Har, is a paraplegic --and at the moment, he is trapped in a burning building thanks to an assassination attempt. His 200-lb. companion has been knocked unconscious and must be dragged along, the air is full of dust and smoke ([[CaptainObvious making it hard to breathe]]), his wheelchair is unavailable, and he has to bypass several stories of staircase anyways before he can find an exit. "''This'', thought Hari, ''is gonna suck''."

''Blade of Tyshalle'' takes place seven years later, reintroducing Hari and Shanna in their later married, unhappy and semi-retired lives (along with the no longer divine [=Tan'elKoth=]). This tedium is of course shattered by plots set into action by the corporate leaders of Earth which Hari's friend, Kris Hansen/Deliann Mithondionne tries to avert. This novel turns the moral philosophizing[[UpToEleven up to 11]] or 12, adds questions of identity, resource usage, destiny (or lack thereof) and humanity's drive to exploit and use up everything. It also features the end of the world, in a way.

* Dented Iron: Caine, who considers himself the sum of his scars.

* Disabled Snarker: Caine after ''Heroes Die''. "It's like having a pair of dead dogs strapped to my ass. Except that I can't eat them."

* TryingToCatchMeFightingDirty

* {{Deconstruction}}: Of a wealth of {{Fantasy}} tropes, being a LowFantasy take on archetypal ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'' settings like the ForgottenRealms.

* AnyoneCanDie

* ArmorPiercingQuestion: "What do you want?"

* BadassBoast: More than a few.

* {{Dystopia}}

* ForTheEvulz: Inverted. The bad guys always act out of self-interest, ideology, or pure hedonistic lust. The protagonist is the one who, for fun, escalates conflicts almost compulsively. So far, this includes "escalating" a verbal argument into a lethal fight, a skirmish with an ogrillo tribe into ethnic cleansing, and a minor political conflict into a civil war. And the bad guys are still worse.

* GodsNeedPrayerBadly

* MasterOfOneMagic: Lamorak in regards to his Dominate skill.

* OurOrcsAreDifferent: Ogrilloi

* PrivatelyOwnedSociety: Earth

* StopWorshippingMe: Caine really hates the Cainists.

* TheUnfettered
* ThisIsGonnaSuck: TropeNamer.

* WalkingDisasterArea: Caine.