More Than Human's front cover.
An in-progress Young Adult Urban Fantasy series by new novelist Rachel Macwhirter
. Currently only the first book, More Than Human, has been released.
More Than Human tells of a fifteen-year-old Emo Teen called Georgia Waratjiry who happens to be a weredingo. While browsing her older sister's internet history, she stumbles across a forum for paranormal folks such as herself. Intrigued, she signs up and unwittingly sets the ball rolling for more involvement with the supernatural community (no, not that one) than she's ever had in her entire life.
She befriends a girl who can fly, her telepath cousin and a ginger gargoyle and ends up heading to the Alterworld, a parallel dimension about which she knows nothing.
One thing leads to another and her best friend gets kidnapped by fairies.
Alterworld provides examples of:
- Badass Normal: Most of GPIA, though Agent Yukiko Sekemoto deserves an honourable mention.
- Battle in the Center of the Mind: Played with – though no one is outright possessed, a recurring theme throughout the first book is characters dealing with magical mental blocks imposed on them, grinding any actions the blocker doesn't want to halt and finding ways around them.
- Big Brother Bully: As much as he'd like to see himself as an Aloof Older Brother with a sprinkling of Big Brother Instinct, this is what Adam qualifies as.
- Big Damn Heroes: Referenced by Dillon at least once, then acted out by Sekemoto and her crew of agents right before Prince Mallen snaps Rain's neck.
- Blessed with Suck: Something is wrong with the off switch on Antonio's telepathy.
- Description in the Mirror: An unusual example as it occurs six chapters into the book, not at the beginning.
- Goth: From the first line of chapter one: "Georgia's going through a 'goth' phase."
- Internet Jerk: Adam is an inversion; he's really quite personable on the internet, but in real life is a different story.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: Tiff doesn't seem to remember cutting an innocent fairy nearly clean in two with a sword. Georgia, on the other hand, does.
- Magic Pants: Nina's chalk is crushed a bit in Georgia's jean pockets when she transforms to a dingo and back.
- Magitek: There are elements of this, such as GPIA's grappling harness, purportedly made from the same magic stuff as Celestine's plant powers.
- Masquerade: Heavily implied to be enforced by GPIA and SISA.
- The Men in Black: GPIA and SISA. Nina also mentions an organisation called PIPER, but she talks of it so dismissively that it's probably safe to assume it's ineffectual.
- Not Cheating Unless You Get Caught: Tiff decides there's nothing wrong with her discovering the [[Masquerade]] as long as no one finds out she did. They find out.
- Only the Leads Get a Happy Ending: Or, better put, only the leads get out alive, considering SISA's obliteration of Boroniaden in the epilogue.
- The Place: Alterworld is the main place where the story takes place.
- Sequel Hook: The end of the epilogue where Prince Deciduan Boroniaden swears revenge after seeing SISA firebomb his ten-thousand strong den, presumably killing all of the innocent citizens (and children!) inside.
- Telepathy: Antonio the telepath, obviously. Also his mother (his father's magical status is as of yet unknown) and his aunt, who is also Nina and Adam's mother.
- They Would Cut You Up: Firstborn Princess Fiola Wattleden of Wattleden heavily implies this when talking to Tiff about the reason Boroniaden kidnapped her, begging her not to tell GPIA. Though Fiola is known to be somewhat dramatic, so it's debatable how much stock you should put in her claims.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Most notably Georgia and her weredingo family, but this also applies to gargoyles when in the Alterworld. And, depending on your point of view, Nina and Adam.
- Wham Line: Macwhirter seems to be a fan of these.The sword slammed into his side.
"Mum read my mind and she called GPIA half an hour ago. Someone's coming to pick Rain up right now."
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Played with when Prince Mallen realises how much trouble his den is in even if they don't hurt Tiff.
