Literature / Apprentice Adept

"Know thyself!"

The Apprentice Adept series is a seven-book fantasy and science fiction series by Piers Anthony. The series takes place on two worlds occupying the same space in two different dimensional planes: Phaze - a Magical Land in Medieval Stasis and more or less ruled by the Adepts, the strongest magic users, each specializing in a separate aspect of magic, and Proton, a barren mining planet of high technology, ruled by the Plutocratic Citizens (who control the immense wealth of the Protonite mines). The worlds are divided by the Curtain, an energy field only visible to those capable of crossing it (i.e. someone whose counterpart on the other side is dead, or who never had one).

The first trilogy (Split Infinity, Blue Adept, and Juxtaposition) starred Stile, a Proton serf who, after a mysterious assassination attempt destroyed his career as a race jockey, becomes the central figure in an ancient prophecy to Save Both Worlds from destruction, or ensure said destruction. The first three books, a standalone series in their own right, were originally known as the Split Infinity trilogy, and only lost this title after the four sequel books were added.

The second trilogy (Out of Phaze, Robot Adept, and Unicorn Point) featured Bane and Mach, the sons of Stile and Stile's opposite number Blue, and their efforts to keep the previous impending doom from happening all over again.

The seventh and final book, Phaze Doubt sees both worlds dealing with an alien invasion, and the Batman Gambit meant to deal with it and prevent future ones.

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This series contains examples of:

• Accidental Rhyme: Stile discovers that he has magical abilities in Phaze after realizing that he keeps speaking in rhymes, which allows him to cast spells.
• The Ace: Rifleman, from Juxtaposition.
• Affably Evil: The Translucent Adept/Citizen Translucent is the de facto leader and spokesman of the Adverse Adepts/Contrary Citizens, and is much more polite and honorable than many of his peers.
• A.I. Is a Crapshoot: In this case, it's an Anti-Villain for the first two-and-a-half books, and indirectly responsible for most of the crap Stile goes through.
• All of the Other Reindeer: The unicorn Neysa is an outcast because of her small size and horse-normal black-with-white-socks coloration. Most unicorns are technicolor (Neysa's older brother, Clip, for instance, is blue with red socks).
• All Your Powers Combined: Anyone with the Book of Magic gains the ability to use every school of Phaze magic.
• Alternate Universe:
  • Phaze to Proton, and vice versa. Not quite a Mirror Universe (because morality isn't usually reversed; most good people's counterparts are also good and most villains' counterparts are also villains), but it otherwise fits the trope: people born on scifi Proton have a counterpart in fantasy Phaze that is as close to identical to them as possible while still being consistent with the genre change. In particular, magical power in Phaze translates as wealth and Game-skill in Proton.
  • In an unusual variation, it's possible for someone whose Alternate Self has died to get a new counterpart if someone else on the other side begins to parallel their role, like with Lady Blue and Sheen (married to Stile/Citizen Blue, mother of Bane/Mach) after Lady Blue's original Proton counterpart Bluette died, at least in the post-Curtain books. The paralleling only comes into effect with people living on Proton, even though there are other inhabited planets (by human colonists from Earth like those on Proton, or by aliens) in Proton's universe, but it can happen to offworlders who are there long enough (such as Agape the Moebite becoming the counterpart of Fleta the unicorn via being the respective love interests of Bane and Mach, who were born counterparts).
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Mach makes one towards Fleta at the end of Out of Phaze, via the the "Triple Thee". It's powerful enough to break the Shapeshifter Mode Lock enchantment she'd put on herself so that she could commit suicide without her survival instincts kicking in, allowing her to take her hummingbird form.
• As You Know: In Split Infinity Sheen reviews details of the Games and Stile's career — to Stile himself; he naturally quips "Thank you for the information." (The sarcasm goes over her head.)
• Attractiveness Isolation: Suchevane - see So Beautiful, It's a Curse.
• Author Appeal: Aside from Anthony's usual coercive and/or underage sexual dilemmas and an almost-entire planet of naked people (on Proton, only Citizens are allowed to wear clothing, and adorning the body with clothes is seen as exotic and interesting the same way nudity is on Phaze or Earth), Split Infinity really gushes on about horses, which the author adores and raises.
• Badass Normal: Stile, at least in Proton.
• Batman Gambit:
  • The Oracle uses the Red Adept's paranoia against her in order to make sure Stile enters Phaze at the right time.
  • Stile also uses such a gambit against her during the climax of Blue Adept: he hypnotizes himself into seeing Red as Lady Blue. His shift in attitude to love and passion freaks out man-hating Red enough to cause her to attack Stile, throwing their dance competition and causing her to wash out of the Tournament.
  • He has another earlier in the book, when he faces an obnoxious Citizen who relies on uncanny luck in a game of backgammon. Said Citizen seems to have knowledge of Phaze, and is fixated on the idea of sex with non-humans (implying he's fixated on them in their animal forms). Stile readily hints that he has indulged in such relations ^note He had, in fact, slept with Neysa at that point. But it was in human form., thus distracting the Citizen and enabling Stile to use the doubling cube over and over, allowing him to overcome the Citizen's massive point advantage to win the game in one fell swoop.
  • He does it again in Juxtaposition: Newly minted Citizen Stile loses a bet to a more seasoned Citizen, who admits he stacked the odds to get the win^note They made a bet over whether or not more men or women would emerge from a corridor in a certain time frame. The Citizen owned property nearby and sent word to his people to send serfs through to tip the scale. Stile then reveals that he made a secret side bet with another Citizen^note Stile was forced to make the bet in exchange for access to the Citizen's property, which he needed for an important data trace. The side bet was that someone would cheat to win the main bet. That win more than made up for the previous loss and bolstered Stile's growing rep as a mover and a shaker.
  • The master plan in Phaze Doubt depends on finding the agent the Hectare would send down to try and disrupt said master plan. Lysander (a Hectare brain in an android body) knows they're onto him fairly early, but plays along, since they're trying to win him over to their side. The resistance knows (thanks to prophecies) that Lysander will play an important role in the master plan, but not how. So they just want to keep him on their side until the moment comes, keeping him tantalizingly close enough to the full plan that he doesn't just turn in his handlers and look elsewhere.
• Best Her to Bed Her: Brown (though it's only a crush), Merle, Neysa, Tania.
• The Big Guy: Hulk. He's neither green-skinned nor super-strong, but he is heavily muscled and about as strong as a normal human can be.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: The Moebites are gelatinous masses who eat through their skin in their normal forms. They also have Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities which they can use to look like humans.
• Blessed with Suck: Al - a half-vampire who's allergic to blood.
• Career-Ending Injury: Stile is employed as a skilled jockey, but during the first novel his knees are shot with a laser. He's no longer able to fully bend them without pain, meaning he can no longer ride competitively. This puts him in a tight spot, as losing employment may see him deported while going under anesthesia fix the damage will leave him vulnerable to assassination. We find out during the second trilogy that Citizen Blue, who inhabits Stile's original body, still has the damaged knees. He considers the bad knees a minor inconvenience and not worth the (admittedly now reduced) risk of surgery.
• Charm Person: Stile does this to himself in the climax of Blue Adept, putting himself into a trance that made him think he was with Lady Blue, instead of Red.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: Rifleman after Juxtaposition.
• Les Collaborateurs: In Phaze Doubt, many Phaze/Proton citizens support the new Hectare regime to save their skins or profit, most notably Tan and Purple.
• Color-Coded Wizardry: The wizards, called Adepts, each pick a color, which matches their personality & type of magic.
• Commonality Connection: One of the things bringing Stile and Neysa together is that they're both smaller than average.
• Cool Horse: The book strongly features unicorns, which are portrayed very favorably.
• Cyborg: Proton has robots, cyborgs and androids. Cyborgs are defined as a human brain in a robot body, and androids are defined as a robot brain in a lab-grown human body. Fully inorganic robots that look human, like Mach and Sheen, are still called robots and not androids.
• Defeat Means Friendship:
  • Stile with Neysa, Hulk, Rifleman (who also becomes Stile's mentor in the ways of Citizenship) & Clef.
  • After the Hectare's invasion of Phaze/Proton is foiled at the end of Phaze Doubt by the heroes shifting the planet into the magical universe and cutting them off from their main forces, the Hectare who are left stranded on Phaze/Proton quickly give up the fight and join the new society. It was indicated they were somewhat Punch-Clock Villains anyway, just vanguards doing the bidding of more formidable alien races in a larger coalition.
• Deliberate Under-Performance: Stile is careful to avoid performing too well in the Game, in order to avoid reaching the top five places on the ladder which would automatically enter him into the citizenship tournament. This is implied to be standard practice for top Gamesmen, who prefer not to enter while they have tenure left, as (with rare exceptions) a loss before the money rounds means instant loss of tenure and deportation.
• Depraved Bisexual: Tania in the second trilogy (at first), & a good chunk of Proton's Citizens.
• Diabolus ex Machina: Stile loses a random game (a single pull on a slot machine) in the Tournament to a child with nothing to lose (his parents' tenure was up, so he entered the Tournament on a lark). It meant one more loss and Stile would lose the Tournament and have to leave Proton for good.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Purple, the geomancer Adept.
• Does Not Like Men: The first trilogy's Red Adept.
• Dragon Rider: One chapter in one of the books features the POV character ending up in a game of dragon combat as part of the Great Game. Narration makes it clear that the dragon (a cyborg dragon with some animal's brain installed, since this was on Proton rather than Phaze, where there are real dragons) is not amused to be carrying a passenger.
• Dungeon Master: The rules, conditions and physical environments of each stage of the Great Game in Proton are laid out by the planet-spanning Game Computer, which is probably the most advanced AI in the setting next to the Oracle.
• Enemy Mine: An aversion happens when Stile and Red get together and compare notes. They realize that someone's been playing games with them, but by that time Red's kicked too many dogs for them to work together. Instead, they agree that whoever's left standing will find out who was yanking their chains.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Purple ensuring Brown was treated fairly in Phaze Doubt, as she treated him and Tan fairly as their jailer.
• Evil Sorceror: The majority of Adepts in Phaze are this and are Dreaded because of it, in parallel to their Citizen counterparts on Proton being callous, self-serving plutocrats. Before the events of the series, Stile's countepart Blue was pretty much the only good Adept, and still suffered isolation due to the fearsome reputation of the Adepts in general. During the series, young Brown and the new Red (Trool) join Stile in averting this trope, with Yellow being more of a True Neutral who's initially counted as one of the Adverse Adepts (albeit a Friendly Enemy) but ultimately sides with Stile's faction when it seems the more favorable course. invoked
• Fantastic Racism: Among Phaze unicorns — any of them who have what could be normal horse coloration are looked down upon by other unicorns (who come in all shades of the rainbow).
• Fat Bastard: The Purple Adept and Citizen Purple are quite venal.
• Fictional Sport: Proton's options in the Game include some very bizarre possibilities, although it's mostly Real Life games or variants of them that Stile winds up playing. The Dust Slide from Split Infinity is an exception: essentially a waterslide race with multiple channels, using near-frictionless particles in lieu of water.
  • The fifth book names some magical games, one of which (Transformation Chase) is played out during Mach and Bane's contest. The Game Computer takes the inspiration to create Proton equivalents when it learns of them.
• Finger in the Mail: The villains kidnap Clip, one of the protagonist's unicorn allies, and send him Clip's horn as proof. Clip is rescued, and the protagonist uses his magic to reattach the horn.
• Flowery Elizabethan English: Standard dialect of Phaze.
• Foreshadowing: In Juxtaposition, Stile's final round in the tournament involved a poetry contest, which mandated the use of several randomly chosen words. Each of the words turned out to reference events of the battles to come. Later, when he learns the true nature of the Game Computer (i.e. that it's self-willed), Stile suspects the words were anything but random.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: Mach and Bane's accidental swap which sets off the events of the second trilogy. They continue to do this on purpose throughout the trilogy, since it's the only way they can spend time with Fleta and Agape and their eventual children (ex. with Flach being the son of Fleta and Mach-in-Bane's body, Bane is technically Flach's biological father but Mach is considered his real father). Until the Merged Reality.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Every fight scene involving Proton serfs, unless they've been dressed up in costumes on a Citizen's orders or are wearing protective gear.
• Fusion Dance: Happens at the end of Unicorn Point, in a BIG way.
• Gender Bender: Alternate selves are usually the same gender, but not always, ex. Flach (male human/unicorn crossbreed) and Nepe (female Moebite alien), Sirelmoba (female werewolf) and Troubot (male robot), or Weva (female werewolf/vampire crossbreed) and Beman (male human/robot/Hectare alien crossbreed). Which makes things more interesting once they're Sharing a Body thanks to the Merged Reality and their shared body changes form based on which one is driving at the moment.
• Geometric Magic: White, the Adept of runes and sigils.
• Great Big Book of Everything: The Book of Magic, which is Phaze's counterpart to Proton's supercomputer the Oracle. They spend most of the first trilogy in each other's worlds, having been swapped long ago to limit their power.
• Green Rocks: Phazite, used to power the various spells.
  • Which, when taken to Proton, becomes the energy-bearing Protonite.
• Half-Human Hybrid:
  • Thought to be impossible. But no one thought to check the Book of Magic for cross-species fertility spells. Once they do, along come Flach (human father/unicorn mother) and Al (vampire mother/troll father). By the last book, we have Heinz Hybrids like Weva (werewolf/vampire, thus human/bat/wolf) and her alternate self Beman (human/robot/Hectare alien).
  • The fact that these are usually impossible without magical intervention means that humans, vampires, werewolves and unicorns (all capable of assuming human form) often indulge in a deal of sexual experimentation with each other in their youth, since unwanted pregnancy won't be an issue, which is seen as a harmless and expected "sowing of oats" phase. Actual marriage between species, on the other hand, was fairly taboo until Mach and Fleta paved the way.
• Happiness in Slavery: Many Proton Serfs will do anything they can to stay on Proton rather than be sent offworld.^note Justified in that as long as they're employed, in their free time they have access to free food and housing, plus the Great Game for entertainment. Plus sex between serfs is basically there for the asking.
• Her Heart Will Go On: Subverted. A prophecy foretells that Lady Blue will give birth to Stile's child, so he puts off romancing her until after the big battle to ensure his safety, since logically he can't die before they conceive without invalidating the prophecy.
  • Then double subverted when Stile learns Lady Blue has conceived before the true final battle, removing that particular piece of You Can't Fight Fate.
• The Hermit: The Orange Adept, of the hostile variety.
• Hero Antagonist: The Translucent Adept in the second trilogy. Mach even more so, due to Honor Before Reason.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Stile's other self, Blue, though we don't know it until much later.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Phaze Tania. Although she doesn't end up with Bane, her love for him makes her change her character completely, over several years, condensed into a couple of paragraphs. For example, she used to enjoy torturing frogs, and now she doesn't. The same thing happens with Proton Tania from working with Mach, though she gets less focus.
• Hoist by His Own Petard: Tan and Purple's Starscream-like power grab (after their side had basically won) gave the good guys the opening to play their trump card.
• Honor Before Reason: A common problem in Piers Anthony works. Comes up so regularly, the bad guys start to count on it.
  • Becomes the major third act conflict of Phaze Doubt, where Lysander won't turn over the algorithm he's created that will allow the resistance's master plan to succeed. He knows the resistance will enact the plan anyway and without his algorithm, the planet will be destroyed and everyone (native and Hectare alike) will die. But he considers that outcome a faithful execution of his mission (infiltrate and thwart native resistance efforts). However, by this time he's become sympathetic enough to the natives that he suffers from Conflicting Loyalty and agrees to accept a challenge and turn the algorithm over if he loses (which he does).
• Humans Are Special: Most species on Phaze have some level of innate magic. However, only humans have the sheer power needed to become an Adept. A nonhuman with the Book of Magic becomes functionally somewhat stronger than a human Adept, with an Adept's mastery over a branch of magic (hence Trool, a troll, becoming the new Red Adept and master of talismans after being appointed caretaker of the Book); a human with the Book has unlimited power. Subverted somewhat when Sheen in the first trilogy and Mach in the second trilogy get access to the Book; it turns out robots are even better at making use of it to its full potential because of their ability to memorize large amounts of information at once.
• Hybrid Power: Flach's dual heritage - human magic potential and a unicorn's innate shapeshifting magic - give him Voluntary Shapeshifting abilities above and beyond any other unicorns. We see him having mastered a bat and a wolf form to blend in among vampires and werewolves (along with his natural human and unicorn forms) before he was five years old.
• Innocent Fanservice Girl: Serfs on Proton are not allowed the privilege of wearing clothing. (There is an exception for safety gear.) This has made them indifferent to nudity and enhanced the appeal of sexy clothing.
• Hypnotic Eyes: The Tan Adept possesses the magic of the Evil Eye, which grants him the power of Mind Control. His two children, a son who becomes the next Tan Adept, and daughter, Tania, also have this power.
• Inevitable Tournament: Nearly every major conflict between characters is settled, once and for all, via Proton's Great Game (or by playing a variant of it, in Phaze).
• I Have Boobs, You Must Obey!: The version of Tania in Proton doesn't have her Phaze counterpart's Hypnotic Eyes, so when she desperately needs to convince a man to do something at a plot-critical moment, she tries the closest thing she can think of: flashing her breasts. It works.
• It Only Works Once
  • Any specific Adept spell can only be used once per person, then slight variations have to be used.
  • The Oracle will only answer one question per person.
• Lawful Stupid: Piers Anthony's definition of "good." This is subverted whenever the good guys take advantage of Exact Words.
• Let's Get Dangerous!: The virtuoso musician Clef is also a master fencer. When he borrows the Platinum Flute to enter Phaze, he seems helpless... until it transforms into a platinum rapier.
• Living Lie Detector: Unicorns can test the truth of a person's words by spearing them with their horns. If the person spoke truly, they are left unharmed.
• Love Confessor: Adept Trool doesn't believe a woman as beautiful as Suchevane would enter a romantic relationship with someone as ugly as he is except out of fear or pity, and refuses to take advantage of her. Suchevane, on the other hand, is so used to being seen as a concubine that she takes Trool's failure to make a move as a lack of interest in someone so far out of his class, power and status-wise. They confess their feelings, separately, to Agape ^note at the time Freaky Friday Flipped with her Phaze counterpart, Fleta. She, in turn, gets Suchevane to approach Trool in such a way that negates both their objections. Later, they name their son Alien (shortened to Al) in Agape's honor.
• Love Redeems: Tania's Heel–Face Turn begins when she falls in love with Bane while assigned to work with him to locate Flach/Nepe by the Adverse Adepts, finding herself acting in a good person way like he would want instead of a bad person way, even though she knows he'd never reciprocate her feelings.
• Magical Accessory: The talismans of the Red Adept - anything from a simple charmed trinket to an Artifact of Doom.
• Magical Incantation: Stile's magic.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Phazian magic has some very specific rules. For example, each magic user can only use any given specific spell once in their life (or in the case of the Evil Eye, only once in the user's life on any given person), though they can get around this by using minor variations.
  • Mutually Exclusive Magic: But those rules are pretty much the only thing the various Adepts have in common.
  • Subverted by Mach, the Robot Adept, whose ability with the Book of Magic is bound by virtually no rules, and in fact explicitly breaks several pre-existing rules (such as the impossibility of crossbreeding). To be fair, the Book of Magic is described as the nuclear age of magic whereas the normal Adept magic is like cavemen using tools.
  • The biggest rule is the one-use rule. The Blue Adept needs a different rhyme for each new spell. The Tan Adept can only use the Evil Eye once on a given person (ex. if Tan has already used it to compel someone to tell the truth, he cannot later use it on that same person as a love spell or to make them commit Psychic-Assisted Suicide - but could still call in his sister to do that). The Yellow Adept has a different appearance each time she takes a youth potion, etc. Even the Book of Magic adheres to this, but its wielder can use spells that are just a little bit different to reproduce the same effects with a little imagination, and another wielder can still use a spell that someone else has.
  • To sum up: the Blue Adept uses rhymes, the Green Adept uses hand gestures, the Yellow Adept uses potions, the Red Adept uses talismans, the Orange Adept has a Green Thumb, the Purple Adept has power over earthquakes and Dishing Out Dirt, the Translucent Adept has the power of Making a Splash, the Brown Adept animates golems, the Tan Adept has the Evil Eye, the Black Adept uses lines (which come out of his body), and the White Adept draws glyphs.
• The Magic Goes Away: In the backstory, this happened on Earth a long time ago. With the rise of humanity, the various magical creatures like unicorns, harpies and so on fled the planet in a magical ship called the Coracle, settling Phaze. After human colonists in the far future finally settled there as well and called it Proton, the magical Curtain was erected, dividing one world into two.
• Magic Music: Stile's magic must be invoked via rhyme and is strengthened by the use of music.
  • Clef's ability with the Platinum Flute allows him to do something that none of the other Adepts can: manipulate the Curtain that separates Proton and Phase.
• Magic Versus Science: Magic doesn't work in Proton. Technology more advanced than a horse-and-carriage doesn't work if ported over to Phaze. Stile was able to get around this in the first trilogy by having the Brown Adept animate Sheen the robot as a golem, reviving her after she'd gone inert when she crossed the Curtain to Phaze.
• Make Games, Not War: The Great Game, where disputes between the Citizens are settled by wagering on games that are played by serfs. As serfs are considered quite valuable, and care is taken not to endanger them unduly, this is one of the few non-Blood Sport examples of this trope.
• Making a Splash: Translucent, the Adept of water.
• Maligned Mixed Marriage: Both Mach and Fleta (robot from Proton and unicorn from Phaze) and their counterparts Bane and Agape (human from Phaze and Moebite from Proton) suffer from this at first.
• The Man Behind the Curtain: Brown in her first appearance, where she hides behind a golem made to look like her predecessor, an older man who has recently passed away. Being only a young girl bereft of her mentor, and with most of the other Adepts being ruthless and power-hungry Evil Sorcerers, she is naturally wary of visitors.
• Mating Dance: Invoked by Stile in the second book. During the Grand Tourney, he finds himself pitted against his nemesis, the Red Adept, in a dancing contest based on a tale of old Arabia. Stile knows Red hates men and hates the idea of having sex with a man, so he turns the dance into very explicit foreplay. The notion of having sex on stage drives her berserk, and she tries to kill him instead, disqualifying herself and giving him the win.
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Several characters choose their names from events and objects of personal importance (Stile, Rifleman, Clef).
  • Werewolf naming has four stages: first syllable given at birth, second when pups are made official pack members (around age 6), third after a first successful solo hunt, and fourth after First Mating (traditionally taking their partner's first syllable as their last). A werewolf isn't considered a full adult until they gain the fourth syllable.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Hulk, which was a Shout-Out.
  • Mach and his mother Sheen (both from "machine").
  • Suchevane the vampiress's counterpart is a human woman named Batgirl.
  • Agape named herself after the Ancient Greek word for the concept of love after coming to Proton from Moeba and taking on a human form, since she was there to investigate that particular emotion.
• Merged Reality:
  • The two worlds are eventually merged into one where both science and magic work at the end of the second-last book, and remain that way from that point on. As the characters are explicitly paired across both worlds (mirror-universe twin kinda thing), each pair merges into one being, and each pair has to time-share their body, which takes the form of whichever of them is in control at the moment. Substantially easier for the heroes than for the villains, since heroes are used to putting the needs of others on par with or ahead of their own, while the villains are initially paralyzed fighting for dominance (though they've gotten over this by the time of the last book). It's also a lot harder on people whose alternate is a different species or sex.
  • Proton was round and Phaze was flat. When they fuse, the result is an hourglass shape. The pollution that rendered Proton uninhabitable outside the city-domes has been pushed to the other side of the world, and it's now agreed that inside the domes is Proton and outside the domes is Phaze, with merged pairs assuming the form appropriate to where they currently are.
  • Gets even more complex at the end of the last book when the merged planet is moved from the scientific universe where it ended up originally to the magical one in order to prevent more invasions like the Hectare (since the characters note that if there are other inhabited planets in the magical universe, they haven't bothered Phaze/Proton up to this point), gets tilted differently, and all the alternate selves now manifest each other's bodies when they're in control instead of their own. And also swap physical natures, if they were different. For example, one pair that were originally a cyborg (which in this series means a human brain in a robot body) woman and a flesh-and-blood harpy, are now a flesh-and-blood woman and a cyborg harpy.
• Mind Control: See Hypnotic Eyes, above.
• Morph Weapon: The Platinum Flute.
• Never the Selves Shall Meet: During the first trilogy, only people whose counterpart is dead (or who never had one, such as offworlders) can cross the Curtain from one world to the other. Stile is able to cross it because his counterpart, the Blue Adept, has recently been assassinated (Blue's spirit is still hanging around, though, and is resurrected in an artificial body on Proton at the end of the trilogy, while Stile remains on Phaze). In the second trilogy, with the Curtain gone, the only way to get to the other world is by "Freaky Friday" Flip, with the events of the trilogy being kicked off by Mach and Bane doing this accidentally. This ceases to be an issue when the Merged Reality comes about, since everyone now shares a body with their alternate self.
• New Body, Old Abilities: We see variants with Mach and Bane: Mach retains his robot brain's logic and processing power while in Bane's body, allowing him to work out and process spells and spell combinations far faster and effectively than Bane could. Bane, on the other hand, has his more abstract human mind in Mach's body, allowing him to use Mach's machine nature in more creative ways than Mach (like using Mach's modular components to hack systems and create sensor decoys).
• New Powers as the Plot Demands: Shades of this trope apply to the unicorns, which seem to pull out a new magical knack every time their mission is in jeopardy in the first three books. Need a disguise for a companion on short notice? Eh, they can share their "socks" with people. None of the Stallion's three forms are suited to the job? Hey, why not whip up an (unprecedented) fourth?
• No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. Shapeshifting creatures who can assume human form can have sex with humans and with each other easily, but it takes strong magic to make Half Human Hybrids possible.^{The Reason...}When the female enters her fertile phase, the couple must spend a day mating in each of their different form, one day per form, to make a pregnancy possible. For example: Mach and Fleta took three days (one day each in unicorn, hummingbird and human forms), with Trool the Troll providing Mach with transformation amulets for each form.
• No Name Given, Only Known by Their Nickname: The real/birth names of most of the human cast are never revealed. Many serfs on Proton go by nicknames that are either self-given or given to them by their Citizen employers, and may change them if they manage to become Citizens. Also, serfs are required by Proton law to call Citizens "Sir", unless given explicit permission for other forms of address. Similarly, the Adepts in Phaze adopt their titles as their names: the Yellow Adept is called "Yellow", the Red Adept is called "Red", the Green Adept and his wife are "Green" and "Lady Green", and so on. Even Stile's counterpart is only ever referred to as "Blue", both as the Blue Adept and when he ultimately switches lives with Stile as Citizen Blue, and his widow who marries Stile is only ever referred to as "Lady Blue"; even when she tells Stile the story of how she met Blue as an ordinary village girl, she does not mention her original name.
• Non-Human Head: One of the tribes of Phaze are the Animal Heads, who live near Orange's territory.
• No-Sell: One Adept can resist the magic of another, even if caught off-guard. But they can allow the spell to take hold^note It adds a layer of mystery to Adept Blue's death, when Stile realizes Blue should've been able to fight off Red's booby trap., and they can only fight off one Adept at a time.^note In Juxtaposition, Stile gets ambushed by Adept Tan, and while he's resisting Tan's Evil Eye, Green turns him into a frog. Thanks to Sheen and the Book of Magic, he gets better.
• The Olympics: The unicorns of Phaze have a series of competitive games called the Unilympics, with unicorn-relevant events like musical duets (every unicorn's horn produces the sound of a specific instrument), which Stile participates in at one point. It's mentioned that there are also Werelympics and Vamplympics.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Stile and Blue tend to slip into their native dialects (i.e. modern English and Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe, respectively) when speaking seriously or stressed, while now living in each other's worlds.
• Our Vampires Are Different: The vampires of Phaze are not undead at all; they are fully living were-creatures who change between human and bat forms at will (with no in-between), and have to drink blood every so often to keep their shifting powers active. They reproduce biologically and do not infect people they bite.
• Our Werewolves Are Different: Phazian werewolves can change at will between human and wolf forms, and like vampires they have no in-between form and reproduce solely by having offspring with each other, not by infecting anyone.
• Playing with Fire: Green, the Adept of fire.^note This is from the second trilogy onward. In the original trilogy, he used gestures and hand signs to make magic.
• Portmanteau:
  • Flach and Nepe's names are derived from the names of their parents (Flach from Mach and Fleta, Nepe from Bane and Agape).
  • Weva's name is derived from Werewolf and Vampire, while her counterpart Beman's name is derived from BEM (a popular nickname for the Hectare arrived at by abbreviating "Bug-Eyed Monster") and Android.
• Precocious Crush: Brown, towards Stile.
• The Promise: Several, made via oaths or the Splash of Truth.
• Prophecies Are Always Right / Prophetic Fallacy: In Juxtaposition, Stile was told he would be betrayed by "a young-seeming woman" and concludes it already happened, when Merle turned him in to the Citizen coalition. It turns out, however, that the true traitor was Brown...except in a Double Subversion, not only did she not know she was a traitor (she accidentally cast the spell wrong to switch the cardinal directions, thereby reversing everything—though considering her crush, this may not have been accidental after all), but the betrayal actually ended up helping Stile in the end—since it allowed Stile to stay in Phaze by reversing where his spirit lay, putting it in the golem's body and Blue's in Stile's. This last was another Prophetic Fallacy—everyone assumed "Blue must leave Phaze forever" meant Stile since he had taken up the mantle of the Adept after his death. But once Blue's spirit was taken out of its Soul Jar and put in a golem body, he was the one who had to leave Phaze, and did.
• The Power of Love: The most powerful oath possible in Phaze is a profession of love, capable of breaking enchantments and binding people together forever.
• Psychic Link: Mach and Bane, Flach and Nepe (Stile and Blue presumably can do the same but choose not to find out).
• Rape as Drama:
  • In Split Infinity, the hero, Stile, forces a robot to show him a printout of her program, and they both agree afterwards that it was a form of rape. Annoyingly, though, it's not because of the tone of violation or because the robot didn't want to - it's because Stile got the printout by inserting a cord into an access port (so in other words, because it vaguely resembled sexual intercourse).
  • One of the sections of Unicorn Point's Tournament Arc pitted Tan against Agape in a "Seduction by Proxy" match,^note Two volunteer serfs were selected and placed in a social situation where they took turns trying to initiate sex, with the players nudging them along as a voice in their head. Their memories of the game would be wiped afterward. where rape was allowed to "ensure a finish." Tan's proxy ended up raping Agape's proxy. Though the rape was treated with less drama than the fact that the good guys lost.
• Rejecting the Consolation Prize: Clef implies he's going to pass on the special prize of a year's tenure after losing his Tourney match to Stile, saying that with the lessons he learned from Stile, his music could let him live like a Citizen.
• Renaissance Man: Stile is this for the Game, having attained proficiency in so many varied branches of competition that he can usually manipulate the Game Grid to find an option which favors him. This is stated to be true for all of the highest level Gamesmen.
• La Résistance: When the Hectare invade in Phaze Doubt, the protagonist Lysander is a Hectare agent tasked with joining the resistance to figure out their plans and foil them. Subverted in that he falls in love with another resistance member and faces a conflict of honor.
• Retcon: The third-generation protagonists got their nature and power level changed radically between when they were background and major characters.
• Rhyming Wizardry: All of Stiles's spells have to be in rhyming verse. Slightly complicated by the fact that each incantation only works once, ever. It's also suggested that the better the verse, the more effective the spell, but he rarely has time to come up with more than doggerel couplets.
• Rich Boredom: It's revealed in Juxtaposition that much of the Citizen class uses gambling as a major source of entertainment. From a spontaneous game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" to betting on whether more men or women emerge from a corridor, nothing is too petty to drop massive amounts of money on (though safeguards are in place so no Citizen can go broke on a bet).
  • Stile himself was a major source of entertainment, as new Citizens generally took a year or two to learn the ropes before mingling with the established Citizens. Stile jumping in to the deep end and making waves from the start was enough of a novelty that Citizens far above his rank, wealth and status-wise, were willing to play along, just to see what happened next.
• Ridiculously Human Robots: Intentionally so.
• Rhymes on a Dime: How Stile's magic works.
• Sacrificial Lion: Hulk. This, and the death of the equally innocent Bluette, led Stile into a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Sadistic Choice: In Blue Adept, before Stile intervenes on her behalf, Neysa is left with the choice of answering the Herd Stallion's summons for breeding season (leaving her oath friend Stile without her help on his quest) or defying the summons and sticking with Stile (and risking going from "outcast" to "exile" and giving up any chance of a foal of her own).
• Science Fantasy: Aliens, robots and space travel are real, and so are unicorns, fairies and dragons. Most of the time they're real in different dimensions, but the dimensions become one near the end of the series and started off as one in the first place hundreds of years ago.
• The Scottish Trope: Saying "thee" to another person three times in a row (the Triple Thee) is a binding and powerful love-oath in Phaze.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: The Red Adept only tried to kill Stile because the Oracle said that Stile would destroy her, but Stile only fought her because she struck first.
  • In a more series-wide sense, the Oracle does its best to make sure all its prophecies come true, aided by the fact that it is a magical computer which can therefore work across both frames, and that it has contacts with the self-willed machines, including the Game Computer.
• Serious Business: In a world where losing a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors can mean getting booted off the planet, everything that could possibly be included in the Great Game is treated as Serious Business. Also, oaths on Phaze (which are magically enforced as an inherent property of the world itself).
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: A werewolf gains adult status only after a ritual First Mating. They usually don't end up with their First Mating partner long-term, however.
• Sex by Proxy: Agape and Citizen Tan's "Seduction by Proxy" Great Game match.
• Sex Equals Love: Fleta falls fully in love with Mach after he makes love to her "[his] way" (lovemaking rather than just a quick rut).
• Smug Snake: The Purple Adept is the singularly most obnoxious and appalling Adverse Adept, but not as competent as he thinks he is. The same goes for his Proton counterpart, Citizen Purple, and the Tan Adept/Citizen Tan, who often works with Purple.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Suchevane the vampire. She's so beautiful that the only ones with the nerve to approach her were ones who wanted her just as a sex object. Adept Trool had too much honor to exert his power on her while she was employed as his housekeeper (cavekeeper?), despite his genuine feelings towards her, figuring that was the only way a literal troll like him could be with one such as she.
• Soul Jar: Stile's harmonica, which contains the soul of the original Blue Adept.
• Spoiler Cover: The cover of the original run of Blue Adept depicts Stile confronting the maker of amulets, who's dressed in that Adept's signature color. This not only gives away the fact that Red is the hidden enemy, but it renders the scene where that character appears at the Unilympics disguised as a male fairly pointless.
• Story-Breaker Power: Mach has no limits on his powers as the Robot Adept. He's kept in check solely by Honor Before Reason; while he personally supports Team Stile, he's agreed to play by the rules that the Adverse Adepts set instead of simply blasting them off the map by force majeure.
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: In Blue Adept, Stile intentionally uses these to harass White, as the non-rhyme caused his spells to immediately fizzle out. Though that effect is immediately spoiled by White revealing that Adept powers negate each other, one-on-one, so his full-power spells would have done little more damage.
• Take a Third Option: In Stile's duel with the Herd Stallion in Blue Adept, Stile uses the Platinum Flute's power to ensure a fair fight between them, rather than using the power of the Flute to curb stomp the Stallion (humiliating him and making things even worse for Neyssa) or fight him without magic (resulting in Stile's stomping/humiliation).
• Take Our Word for It: In Robot Adept, Agape the Moebite alien (in Fleta the unicorn's body) plays matchmaker with Suchevane the vampiress and Trool the troll (the new Red Adept), hence their naming their son Al for "Alien". In Unicorn Point, it's assumed that something similar must have happened with Citizen Red and Suchevane's Proton opposite Batgirl, hence their naming their son Corn for "Unicorn", but Fleta doesn't recall anything like that.
• Technician/Performer Team-Up: In one key round of the Tourney (a game in which serfs on the planet Proton can try to win Citizenship), the hero Stile (the Performer) is matched up against another competitor, Clef (the Technician) in a duel of musical performance; Clef wins for technical proficiency but Stile wins for audience engagement. Unusually, they are then assigned by the planetary Computer (the referee) to perform a duet together before a panel of judges. While the panel is being assembled, Stile explains to Clef what Clef's technical brilliance lacked; Clef then promptly picks up Stile's knack of audience engagement during the duet and outplays him. However, to his own surprise, Stile wins the Tourney round anyway, despite Clef getting the votes of both the audience and the Computer as the better player — because the judges evaluated the performance on cooperative expertise rather than individual ability, and since Clef improved more than Stile did, the judges consider Stile to have contributed more to the overall performance.
• Technician Versus Performer: Stile (Performer) versus various other Technicians, most notably the musician Clef.
• There Can Be Only One: Established Adepts (read: any adept who isn't Stile or one of his allies) tend to protect their positions by wiping out anyone who shows any real power within their specialty.
  • The Tourney itself, although non-Citizens who lose are deported from Proton rather than killed.
• Took a Level in Badass: Clip (from exiled male in Juxtaposition to Herd Stallion in Out of Phaze)
• Tournament Arc: Most of Blue Adept and part of Juxtaposition involves Stile's journey through the Great Game.
• Transforming Conforming: Transformation spells work this way. Stile shows a character the spell to turn into a bee and then has to recite the reversal spell in "bee buzz" to turn back into a human.
• Trial by Ordeal: Unicorns have the power to detect when a person has spoken falsely — by putting their horn through the person's chest. If they were honest, they are unharmed.
• Trilogy Creep: There are seven books.
• True Companions: The concept of "Oath Friends".
• Truth Serum: When someone swears something's true in Phaze, and they really mean it, a wave of rainbow light radiates from them.
• Tyke Bomb: Flach and Nepe
• Unicorn: A significant sapient species on Phaze. They are led by the Herd Stallion, are shapeshifters who can each learn to assume two other forms in addition to their natural one, are usually technicolor with "socks" of a different color from the rest of their coat (ex. green with orange socks), and the horn of each can produce sounds in the voice of a different musical instrument, allowing the herd to become a symphony on special occasions.
• Unobtainium: Phazite/Protonite, the all-important power source of both worlds.
• Unknown Rival: The Red Adept, who tries repeatedly to kill Stile without showing herself or revealing her identity and motives.
• Upgrade Artifact: The Book of Magic and the Platinum Flute. The Book lets anyone who possesses it cast magic spells at an Adept's power level (it let a troll with no inherent magic become the new Red Adept). The Flute enhances the innate magic of anyone who holds it (allowing Stile to use his magic within the Anti-Magic influence of a unicorn circle). Anyone who can actually play the damn thing gains Adept-level magic. A master musician? Becomes stronger than all the other Adepts put together.
• The Vamp: Merle, Yellow (while she's using one of her youth potions).
• Villain Ball: The Contrary Citizens/Adverse Adepts threatened Flach and Nepe with harm to their mothers should they go rogue again, something that explicitly violated their agreement with their fathers, Mach and Bane... an agreement which kept the most powerful actor in each world on their side.
• Villain Protagonist: Lysander in Phaze Doubt, though in actual deeds, he comes across as a Minion with an F in Evil.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting: A unicorn can take up to three forms - their natural unicorn form and two others of their choosing (usually human for the second form and usually a bird or some sort of predator for the third)^note Belle, however, eschewed a human form and chose heron and mountain lion. Similarly, werewolves can voluntarily change between human and wolf forms at will, while vampires have human and bat forms.
  • The original Herd Stallion takes this a step further, and succeeds in mastering a fourth form after Stile persuades him that it would be uniquely helpful in getting them out of their current situation: the cockroach.
  • Moebites from the planet Moeba in Proton's universe can do this as well, and without a set number of forms, as they are giant amoebas capable of reshaping their protoplasm to look human or like virtually anything else. Though, unlike magical shapeshifters, they are limited to forms with the same amount of mass, and it takes them a moment or two to remold from one shape to another whereas Phaze denizens do it instantaneously. When Fleta the unicorn and Agape the Moebite have a "Freaky Friday" Flip, they have an interesting time figuring out each other's modes of shapeshifting.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Yellow mentions a Gray Adept in passing early on, but this individual is never referenced again.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Tan's Evil Eye grants absolute mind control; nifty, but other Adepts with more versatile powers can create spells to duplicate the effect^note although they need a new spell each time; see It Only Works Once in addition to the many, many other things they're capable of doing.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: The unicorns, werewolves and other shifters on Phaze; the self-aware machines, androids and cyborgs on Proton.
• Why Am I Ticking?: In Blue Adept, Stile is forewarned that the villain will try to force a magic bomb that will destroy him if he returns to Phaze with it. The bomb turns out to be a bullet, which the villain shoots into the hero, who realizes Just In Time what it really is.
  • Subverted in Split Infinity, when Sheen and Stile suddenly realize she might unwittingly have a bomb implanted inside her. Stile's employer has her dismantled and searched, but fortunately the Citizen grants his best jockey's request and has his security crew re-assemble her when they find no bomb.
• Wise Beyond Their Years: Flach and Nepe.
• Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The dialect of Phaze. In the Merged Reality, this is one way to tell which self is in control at the time, since Proton people speak modern English.
• You Can't Fight Fate: Stile uses other people's Oracle prophecies to ensure his own survival.
  • This is made worse by the fact each person only gets one.
  • Serrilyan, who was prophesied to die after seeing the Sidhe three times. Clef then proceeds to pipe her soul to Heaven, despite her belief she didn't belong there.

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