History Literature / TheChroniclesOfAncientDarkness

* {{Foil}}: The female Soul Eaters Seshru and Nef. The Viper Mage is lithe and beautiful, while the heavier Bat Mage is squat and bow-legged. Seshru desires to subjugate all under her service and enjoys causing discord and pain. Nef in turn wants power [[WellIntentionedExtremist to unify everyone for a better future]] and doesn't do cruelties for the sake of sadism. Both turn out to be parents, but different kind of parents. Nef misses [[OutlivingOnesOffspring her deceased son]] and acts like a demanding yet caring mother towards Torak. Seshru in turn is revealed to have [[spoiler:abandoned Hord to join the Healers, given birth to Renn only to try to make her newborn a tokoroth, and actually managed to do that to Naiginn. Discovering her teenaged daughter years later doesn't awaken any maternal instincts in her]].

* SlapSlapKiss: Torak and Renn. Twice.

** In ''Ghost Hunter'', Wolf and Darkfur lose two of their cubs to Eostra's eagle owl. In ''Skin Taker'', they lose two more cubs when the Thunderstar strikes.

** ''Skin Taker''

* OutlivingOnesOffspring: Losing one's child too early is expectable in a stone-age Europe.

* AStormIsComing: At the ending of ''Viper's Daughter'', the characters see signs that a specially bad winter will come up, foreshadowing the setting of ''Skin Taker''.

* WhatHappenedToTheMouse: Aki, Sialot and Poi get the shadow sickness in ''Ghost Hunter'', as part of Eostra's spell, and we never find out if they get better.

** In midwinter, the Forest is hit by a shooting star called the Thunderstar. With the hibernating animals woken up, multiple animals, trees and people killed, the surviving clans struggling to survive, and the First Tree (the northern lights) gone, chaos rules. Learning of a rite that's their only chance to bring the First Tree back, Torak, Renn and Wolf brave in the Deep Forest

** ''Viper's Daughter'': [[spoiler:Naiginn.]]

* BearsAreBadNews: The main antagonist of ''Wolf Brother'' is a brown bear that has been turned into an AxCrazy monster by the demon trapped within its body. In ''Soul Eater'' and ''Viper's Daughter'', the heroes are several times troubled by polar bears.

** After Renn and Hord's father died when Renn was seven summers old, their parternal uncle Fin-Kedinn took them in.

In 2019, Paver decided to write three sequels set after ''Ghost Hunter''. The first sequel, ''Viper's Daughter'', is set two summers after ''Ghost Hunter'' and was released in April 2020. The second one, ''Skin Taker'', is scheduled to be released in 2021.

A series of books by Britain-dwelling writer Michelle Paver. It is set in northern Europe -- most likely Scandinavia -- six thousand years ago and widely concerns the hunter-gatherer clans that live in the Forest, but specifically concerns Torak [[note]]Not related to the BigBad in Literature/TheBelgariad[[/note]] of Wolf Clan, as well as his wolf "pack-brother" [[ADogNamedDog called Wolf]] and his friend Renn of Raven Clan. The books follow the three companions as they stop a group of evil Mages (shamans) gone rogue, called Soul Eaters. The series takes place over approximately four years.

Even if Stone Age-set adventures aren't your cup of tea, these are worth reading for the worldbuilding. Ms Paver has done a ''lot'' of research into the world she writes about.

* HollywoodPersonalityDisorders: The Walker is a decent match for [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizotypal_personality_disorder schizotypal]]. He's more paranoid than even his situation warrants, speaks and acts in very bizarre manners, and the ThirdPersonPerson tendencies might indicate chronic depersonalization. It becomes slightly FridgeHorror with the thought that any of these symptoms displaying earlier would have made him easier prey for the Soul Eaters.

* CallForward: While saying farewells to Torak in ''Spirit Walker'', Bale says that he might visit the Forest after all one day; since Wolf has traveled in a boat, why couldn't a Seal visit the Forest? This eventually happens in ''Outcast''.

--->'''Seshru''': ''She'' [[spoiler:(Renn)]] ''is'' [[spoiler:''my daughter'']]!

** In ''Spirit Walker'', Torak draws his clan-tattoo in great detail (including the small scar cutting through it) on a white pebble and leaves it for Renn to tell her that he's left so search for a cure to the sickness. In ''Outcast'', Seshru gets the pebble in her hands and uses it to work her magics on him.

* ChekhovsGun: Fa's knife. While it's a beautifully made thing, it's also unwieldy for a boy of Torak's age when he first gets it. [[spoiler:It holds a fragment of the fire opal.]]

* {{Foil}}: The female Soul Eaters Seshru and Nef. The Viper Mage is lithe and beautiful, while the Bat Mage is more plain-looking, thickset and bow-legged. Seshru desires to subjugate all to serve her and enjoys causing discord and pain. Nef in turn wants power [[WellIntentionedExtremist to unify everyone for a better future]] and doesn't do cruelties for the sake of sadism. Both turn out to be parents, but different kind of parents. Nef misses [[OutlivingOnesOffspring her deceased son]] and acts like a demanding yet caring mother toward Torak. Seshru in turn is revealed to have [[spoiler:abandoned Hord to join the Healers and given birth to Renn only to make her newborn a tokoroth. Discovering her teen-aged daughter years later doesn't awaken maternal instincts in her at all]].

** In ''Soul Eater'', Seshru mocks Nef when the latter defends Torak from Thiazzi's bullying, claiming that she's always eager to play the mother. The Bat Mage retorts by asking what does the Viper Mage know about mothering. In ''Outcast'' it turns out that [[spoiler:Seshru abandoned her son Hord in order to join the Soul Eaters and later got herself pregnant with Renn only so that she could have her own Tokoroth. And later in ''Viper's Daughter'', she's revealed to have birthed Naiginn and actually succeeded in binding a demon in her infant]].

* OutlivingOnesOffspring:

** Nef the Bat Mage's son starved when the prey fled their part of the Forest. She tried to commit suicide, only to be saved by Torak's father.