Her friends are getting married and Constance Verity — savior of the universe several times over — is considering doing the same with her long-term bo Byron. Unfortunately, the constant adventures that permeate her destiny have taken a dark turn and now everyone is out to kill her, convinced that her continued existence will lead to the sudden end of the universe.
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe is the thirteenth novel written by A. Lee Martinez published in 2022, and the third and final installment in the Constance Verity trilogy after The Last Adventure of Constance Verity and Constance Verity Saves the World.
Constance Verity Destroys the Universe contains the following tropes:
- A God Am I: Ajaw Cassowary believes himself so superior from others that he likens himself to a God, a delusion he attempts to make real by absorbing The Key's cosmic power into himself.
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot:
- Played for Laughs. Doctor Malady expresses that he regrets programming his robot wife Automatica with free-will when she helps Connie keep Malady from falling back into his super-villainous ways.
- Played for Drama when any computer system that tries encoding Malady's entropy tracking-device goes crazy and tries to kill Connie, seeing her inherent link to The Key and its entropic effect on the universe.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Foundation is the "foundation of all reality, of all possibilities", being the sentient awareness of the nothingness that predated creation and the Void Between the Worlds.
- Apocalypse Cult: In the first chapter, a scientist working on a deadly virus is discovered poisoned in a restaurant and Connie deduces that it was the work of a Cult that believed that the Mayan Doomsday was meant to happen, didn't, and now they're out to course-correct as a terrorist organization.
- Apocalypse Maiden: The Inciting Incident of the book shows that various parties with access to precognition believe that Connie will destroy the universe in the near future, though no one knows how, when or why she accomplishes this. In the third act, it's revealed that the Caretaker Mantle is a manifestation of The Key's pure entropic energy, and that by thwarting disaster and saving lives, the Caretaker has been absorbing and accumulating all of that entropy. After countless generations of heroics absorbing all of that unused destructive potential, Connie absorbing it from Hiro has caused it to reach critical mass, all that destructive potential ready to go off and take the universe down with it.
- Artifact of Attraction: The book starts with aliens asking Connie to look after the glurbakashah, an Evil Weapon that's the cause of an interstellar war. It takes the form of a blade that she is physically unable to put down as it whispers promises of glory and conquest atop a throne of skulls into her mind. Having dealt with Artifacts of Doom all her life, Connie having been established to be Immune to Mind Control in the last book and her having Seen It All, she barely acknowledges its negative qualities when it becomes apparent to her. The only way to alleviate these symptoms is with a blood offering, one she manages to provide in a Duel to the Death with a Galactic Conqueror that came to take it for himself.
- Artifact of Doom: The Key is an ancient device that predates the universe that acts as an "entropy amplifier", its existence slowly but surely destroying the universe, the Great Engine having been created with the express purpose of redirecting and inhibiting its effects. It's revealed that the device itself is nothing more than a Leaking Can of Evil created in a vein attempt at containing it, The Key itself a remnant of oblivion before the universe spreading pure entropy.
- Bad Boss: Ajaw Cassowary's Establishing Character Moment opens with him breaking one of his scientists' neck with his bare hands for "stifling [his] greatness" by suggesting that using The Key without testing it first.
- Benevolent Abomination: On one adventure, Tia and Connie encountered an Eldritch Abomination named Zyrothruactholhar the Recondite. He's apparently a real down-to-earth guy for a god-emperor.
- Blessed with Suck: While the Caretaker Destiny is this from a certain point of view, Byron was "lucky" enough to only inherit the part of the mantle that ensured its host would have a Glorious Death. It's later revealed to be a Chekhov's Gun when The Foundation tries and fails to make Connie explode because without Byron's piece, she's "a bomb without a trigger."
- Call-Back:
- When Connie comes to Tia's pre-wedding party, all of Tia's other friends are noticeably wary of Connie considering she had to beat them all up when they were possessed by the evil roquefort in Constance Verity Saves the World.
- Tia's first wedding — the one where mobsters crashed it — was mentioned in The Last Adventure of Constance Verity and is brought up again here. While Tia is fine with it, Zoey still blames Connie by association.
- It's mentioned more than once that Tia and Byron had inherited a fraction of Connie's caretaker destiny in the climax of Constance Verity Saves the World.
- Connie's honorable epitaph to Yars mentions "The Hungry Earth", the name of the Eldritch Abomination present at the beginning of the first book.
- Connie's intense hatred of Kansas is brought up again, though she admits she has no love for Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Missouri either because they're the states that surround Kansas.
- The Cameo: In chapter 22, Agent Lucas Harrison (who's been absent since the first book), Larry Peril and Apollonia make an appearance, having run-ins with Connie after her merging with The Key fragments her across reality.
- Chekhov's Gun: Shia gives Connie the Strand of Hemsut, a bracelet that makes her invisible to those who can read fate, in order to keep the attempts on her life to a minimum while she sorts it all out. She then takes it off when Patty attempts to kill Hiro, resulting in the assassination attempts coming full-force, breaching containment of the facility as a distraction.
- Chess with Death: Connie once played a game of chess with a Mountain God to keep it from sinking all of Asia into the ocean.
- The Chosen Many: One of the ways Connie manages to prevent Phlebotinum Overload is by evenly distributing the excess entropy across the multiverse, essentially creating countless new Caretaker Destinies in the process. It's implied that Risky, the girl Connie and Byron consider adopting at the end of the book, is one of them.
- Counterpart Artifacts: It's revealed that The Great Engine was designed as a counter to The Key, having been built to inhibit its entropy-accelerating effects on existence itself.
- Entropy and Chaos Magic: While Doctor Malady first theorizes that the Caretaker Destiny is an accumulation of negentropic energy, it's later revealed that the opposite is the case. The Caretaker Destiny is actually a fixed accumulation of entropic energy left by The Key, and that when its host prevents disasters and saves lives, it is actually absorbing potential entropy, snatching triumph from the jaws of tragedy by absorbing cosmic decay. Having accumulated so much entropy through countless hosts, it has reached a point of Phlebotinum Overload which will destroy the universe.
- Expert Consultant: Patty Perkins works as a "supervillain consultant", an indepenent contractor helping "wealthy idiot" mastermind put their operations together, whether it's designing logos and uniforms for their henchmen, to designing death traps and Death Rays.
- Go Mad from the Revelation: Any computer Malady puts to the task of creating a device to find The Key sees something in the calculation that turns it into a Murderous Malfunctioning Machine with a single-minded obsession with killing Constance Verity. His robotic wife Automata goes into kill bot mode and deactivates her own off-switch, while one of the computers Malady tried putting to the task jury-rigged itself a WiFi connection and tried launching missiles in her general location. Malady deduces that because The Key is the ultimate source of entropy and the Caretaker Mantle is the ultimate source of negentropy (the diametric opposite of entropy), them colliding would be so incomprehensibly disastrous that the AI's inability to comprehend it drives it mad. This is also implied to have an effect on prophets and seers, resulting in various agents being sent to kill Connie under the presumption that she will destroy the universe.
- Grandfather Paradox: According to Doctor Malady, Archimedes Lovelace accidentally killed his own father using his time-machine, Malady's temporal anomaly field generator being the only thing keeping him from being erased from the timeline because of it.
- Gratuitous Animal Sidekick: At some point between this book and the last book, Connie had picked up Chestnut the Wonder Dog, a dog that was trained to steal and infiltrate. He was apparently trained by a larcenous animal trainer that worked for a Performer Guise group called the Circus of Crime.
- Handy Man: Les Newsmith runs a home-repair business that Connie has on speed-dial to fix the apartment whenever someone or something wrecks it. Not only does he do quality work, but he's a laid-back kind of guy that doesn't give her hell for the steady workload. It also helps that his services came with complementary lollipops.
- Hardboiled Detective: Among many of the unusual people living in Connie's apartment complex is Azalea Slate, a hardboiled PI who's accumulated a lot of enemies in the criminal underworld.
- I Minored in Tropology: Patty Perkins claims to have minored in child psychology, something she managed to use to great effect to "sooth more than a few egos" whenever one of her supervillain clients comes to her to complain.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Connie fakes getting a text message from the CIA to get out of an awkward conversation with Tia's mom over Hiro.
- It's Quiet… Too Quiet: Not having gone without something weird or suspicious happen within the span of a few hours, it becomes rather worrying when days pass by without a call, text or Random Encounter whisking Connie away on some grand adventure.
- It's the Principle of the Thing: Hiro admits that a part of him resents Byron because he feels a sting to his pride that Connie ultimately chose Byron over him. He's in a loving relationship (and new marriage) with Tia and he knows that he and Connie would never have worked out, but being a self-admitted narcissist, he feels cheated that someone as ordinary as Byron would out-do him on this one thing.
- Ki Manipulation: There are forms of chi manipulation that can be used to disperse ectoplasm on contact. To put it simply, Connie can literally punch ghosts, an ability she demonstrates when The Guardian — who is nothing more than a ghost itself after its temple was destroyed — gets uppity.
- Kung-Fu Wizard: While Hiro's ninja skills seem to be all stealth, his sister Sayuri on the other hand knows magic, being able to transform into smoke, redirect lightning with her sword and even offers to turn Tia's mother into a cat as a favor to Connie.
- Man of Kryptonite: Because the caretaker destiny is itself a manifestation of The Key's entropic energy, those who possess it (Connie, Tia and Byron) are immune to The Key's malignant effects. They only manage to get Hiro, who becomes The Key's host, to Patty's facility without the output of energy destroying everything around them thanks to Tia's constant physical contact.
- The Meaning of Life: Not only does Connie know the meaning of life (or 90% of it, at least), but apparently it isn't as interesting as you would think it is. Simply telling The Guardian counts as fulfilling its Unfinished Business and allows them to move on into the afterlife.
- Missing the Good Stuff: It has become a habit for Byron to go off momentarily, only for something to happen with Connie and resolve itself by the time he comes back none the wiser. On a supposedly quiet day, Connie and Tia had to deal with harpies while he was at the bathroom. Later that day, she had to prevent an Alien Invasion remotely while he was getting them churros. More recently, Connie just barely avoided having to deal with an art thief scoping out an art gallery in disguise.
- Mundane Utility: Connie and Tia enlist Doctor Malady's Weather-Control Machine to ensure perfect weather for Tia's wedding.
- Mythology Gag: Having encountered a lot of divine enemies, Connie keeps a god-killing axe on-hand.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: While Connie and Byron were at Tia's wedding, Chestnut the Wonder Dog (who, aside from being smarter than the average pooch, is just a regular dog) somehow managed to beat and hogtie a commando sent to kill her.
- Parents as People: Tia's mother Zoey disapproves of her friendship with Connie, seeing her as a bad influence and the role of sidekick being no place for a grown woman. She even admits that she and her husband tried to keep the two of them apart for her own good, only for the caretaker destiny to involve Tia anyway. Though the trope can be Zig-Zagged by the Fantastic Indifference common with muggles in the series, Zoey treating the adventures the two going on as no more worrying than shenanigans any other child goes through.
- Power of the Void: The Key is a force of pure entropy that manifested naturally in the dawn of the universe (and possibly before that), indiscriminantly wiping out entire galaxies before a reptilian race of Precursors found and contained it. Well, barely contained it, bits of entropic energy gathering and eventually manifesting as the Caretaker Destiny.
- Precrime Arrest: The Invisible Scythe are an assassination agency that employs seers and other psychics to locate people who will eventually endanger the world and then sends someone to kill them. Naturally, they send a sniper to kill Connie, only for Duke Warlock to incapacitate him.
- Punch-Clock Villain: Patty Perkins herself isn't an evil mastermind, but more of a "supervillain enabler" (as Byron describes her), making a living helping wannabe masterminds become a genuine threat to world peace. She doesn't even mind Connie constantly thwarting their plans all that much, seeing her as beneficial to an industry that would crumble if any of her clients actually succeeded in their endeavors.Patty: A megalomaniac spends millions building a criminal empire only to have someone like Connie waltz in and bring the whole thing crashing down. If that megalomaniac survives, they often come back to me with renewed ambitions. If they perish, there's always someone else eager to fill the void. Connie and her heroics are great for my bottom line. I'm the very best in my field, but it's a speciality that wouldn't be much use if any of my clients actually succeeded.
- Resolved Noodle Incident: In The Last Adventure of Constance Verity, it was mentioned that mobsters had crashed Tia's first wedding. Here further details are given; they had crashed the reception, not the ceremony, and they were after one of the waiters who was in Witness Protection. Granted, Connie's caretaker destiny made something crazy happening inevitable, but Tia doesn't blame her for it.
- Set a Mook to Kill a Mook: Having cloaked herself from fate's eyes on her with the Strand of Hemsut, she takes it off when it becomes apparent that Pattty plans on killing Hiro, causing all of the assassins who think she's an Apocalypse Maiden to show up and clear out Patty's goons in an attempt to get to her and using the chaos as a distraction to get Hiro away from there.
- Shout-Out: Agent Ellington calls the cursed blade Connie has in the first chapter a bat'leth.
- The Singularity: Doctor Malady admits that Automata's learning code has become so complex, even he doesn't know how it works anymore.
- Sticky Fingers: Having been trained to steal things, Chestnut the Wonder Dog is a master of pick-pocketing and running off with valuables despite being an otherwise normal dog. Connie has been trying to wean him off of this since adopting him.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: In the first chapter, Ellington asks what "that smell" is (ox, raw fish and general B.O. from Connie's latest adventure), Connie merely answers "destiny." An investigation and brief car-chase later, Connie makes it to a gathering with Tia, Hiro, Byron and their families and Tia remarks that she "smells like destiny."
- Stupid Evil: Like so many other self-proclaimed evil masterminds, Ajaw Cassowary fits this too a tee. We're officially introduced to him having his lackeys try to destroy The Key's container with the intent on absorbing its entropic power into himself, killing one of them with his bare hands when he insists that they should runs some tests for the danger first. The resulting explosion destroys his castle and The Key's power (which bonds itself to Hiro) destroys him.
- Swapped Roles: At the beginning of Constance Verity Saves the World, Connie calls Agent Ellington to ask for a cleanup involving an alligator woman in her apartment, only for Ellington to dismiss the favor owed. Destroy the Universe opens with Ellington calling Connie over matters of international importance, citing their agency cleaning up after her adventures as Connie owing them a favor, only for Connie to brush her off.
- Take a Third Option: Since Connie is destined to destroy the world with the power of The Key, it's either "allow her to destroy the universe" or "have her die a Glorious Death before that happens. Except her Glorious Death with release all that entropic energy anyway, as The Foundation planned all along. When Connie figures this out, she uses The Foundation's connection to the wider multiverse and disperses all that energy through small, harmless acts of entropy (small bits of bad luck, the destruction of unpopulated worlds, etc) and infusing individuals with the power, creating countless Caretaker Destinies in the process.
- Totally Not a Criminal Front: Ajaw Cassowary's Supervillain Lair happens to be a conspicuous castle in the middle of Nebraska.Connie: Masterminds. Most can't help themselves.
- Toxic Phlebotinum: Being a semi-physical force of cosmic entropy, The Key's powers has an inherently destructive effect on those exposed to it. When Hiro become its vessel, it slowly kills him, nothing but his "ninjaly" willpower keeping it from destroying him immediately, and every car they take to get him to Patty Perkins' headquarters suffers from some type of catastrophic meltdown. When Patty's men try extracting it, gazing upon it directly causing most of her men to go mad. The only ones who are immune to its effects are Connie, Tia and Byron by virtue of possessing the Caretaker Destiny.
- Vampire's Harem: Parodied. Duke Warlock, the vampire that lives in Connie's apartment, has six ex-wives that he has to deal with and has given up Unholy Matrimony for the foreseeable future. When he needs "comfort", it usually involves brief flings with modern goth girl vampires.
