Literature / Domain

The Domain trilogy is a Science Fantasy book series penned by American author Steve Alten.

Archaeologist Julius Gabriel devoted his life to studying the Mayan calendar, a 2500-year-old enigma that predicts the end of humanity. But when Julius dies before solving the prophecy, only one person can save the human race from annihilation: Julius’s son Mick, a patient in a mental hospital.

Meanwhile, on the fall equinox, a serpent's shadow appears on the northern balustrade of the Kukulcan Pyramid, just as it has done for a thousand years. But this time, a rare galactic alignment occurs, and a space transmission reaches Earth.

It is the beginning of the end and a trilogy full of serious Mind Screw, time travels and awesomeness.

There are currently three entries in the series, with a fourth and final book in development.

• Domain (2001)
• Resurrection (2004)
• Phobos, also titled Phobos: Mayan Fear (2011)
• Mayan Testament: Collapse (title given on author's site in December 2018)

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This trilogy contains examples of:

Domain

• Absurdly Cool City: The city of the Nephilim, which is shown to Mick in a vision and described as having lots of beautiful gardens and shining Futuristic Pyramid buildings.
• Ambiguously Human: The Xibalba spirits are implied to be either native demons or Earthly entities that were banished from our planet.
• Ancient Astronauts: Kukulcan, Quetzal, Viracocha, Osiris, Merlin and Vishnu were members of the Guardian come in the Balam ship.
• Ancient Conspiracy: Elías Forma and Ocelo, the Gabriel family's friends from Yucatan, are said to be part of Sh'tol, an ancient secret society that fought against the conquistadores.
• Anti-Hero: The members of the Guardian openly let the Tezcatlipoca ship's plans happen so the Hunahpu who defeated it could return the favor by going to save the Nephilim in Xibalba.
• Artistic License – History:
  • Julius once mentions The Spanish Inquisition right there with the Holocaust in numbers of deaths. Needlessly to say, this is an insane exaggeration even by the standards of the Black Legend told over the years about their supposed brutality. Actually, the Spanish branch was the least bloodthirsty of all Christian inquisitions (also including their Protestant counterparts) and it's estimated today that of all its trials and judges, only less than 1500 ended in executions, a trial-conviction ratio actually lower than any secular or religious justice system's at the time.
  • The book claims that when the Mesoamerican indigenous saw Hernán Cortés was a white bearded men, just like Quetzalcoatl, they laid down their weapons and were conquered despite their numerical advantage. In reality, the popular belief that Cortés and his men were mistaken by gods was a very posterior legend, disproven by Spanish and indigenous sources alike, and it also goes hopefully without saying that the Spanish Conquest of the Aztec Empire was not done through "Indians laying down their weapons." The point about numeric advantage is especially funny, because in real life, Cortés could only conquer the Aztecs because he was backed by massive armies of other indigenous states, like Tlaxcaltecs, Otomis and Texcocans, who at the end of the conflict outnumbered the Aztecs themselves.
  • The text claims that the Spanish priests converted the indigenous to Christianity under the threat of burning alive if they refused. In reality, those practices were considered barbaric and criminal by the Catholic Church itself, among other things because paganism was not a crime punishable by death. Only a Christian who voluntarily deviated from the Catholic dogma, that is, a heretic, would ever risk to be officially punished, and as said above, death was the least common sentence for them. Furthermore, natives were established to be uneligible to be accused of heresy by the Spanish Inquisition, on the basis that Christianity was not rooted enough on their lands to make them responsible. The Christianization of the Mesoamerican tribes was slower than it is usually believed, due precisely to the fact that there was no unified, ironhanded policy of conversion (preachers often complained about this and accused each other of not working hard enough). Some of the worst excesses at this point would be ironically committed by the first indigenous converts themselves, like the chieftain Hernando Ixtlilxóchitl, who did force his entire kingdom to convert in his eagerness to solidify his alliance to the Spaniards.
  • It's also poignant that the text claims all the Aztecs shamans were burned alive by the Spanish priests. Aside from it being untrue for the reasons explained above, there were cases of cadres of native priests that ended up becoming Catholic staff themselves.
• Artistic License – Space: It seems Orion's Belt has a Earth-like planet named Xibalba.
• Bald of Evil: Borgia is described to be almost bald.
• Big Bad: The intelligence residing in the Tezcatlipoca ship is one, while Secretary of State Pierre Borgia plays the same role in the human side.
• Dragons Are Demonic: In Michael's vision, the Tezcatlipoca seems to come out of the same whirlpool that caused the corruption of the Nephilim city, implying it comes from the same dark dimension as its lords.
• Greater-Scope Villain:
  • The Guardian claims that the Nephilim were enslaved by The Legions of Hell in Xibalba, and that a supposed God of Death is leading them. This comes up when Mick has to kill the two Lords of Xibaba before their god comes out, but otherwise he is basically The Ghost.
  • It is implied that Borgia's mentors, millonaires Joe Randolph and Peter Mabus, have been behind his political career for a long time.
• The Great Flood: Apparently happened when a glaciation started melting 115.000 years ago, and it took 2000 years for it to melt completely. It was then when the Guardian came to Earth.
• Grey Goo: A possibly literal and certainly similar example happens with the strange grey substance that appears in Xibalba's sea and invades the planet.
• Hate Plague: According to the Guardian, the two Lords of Xibalba inside the Tezcatlipoca ship have been telepathically influencing humanity for worse through millenia.
• Heroic Sacrifice: US president Mark Maller, having just lost his family, shoots himself in the head to show to his Russian and Chinese homologues that he has no hidden agenda. It finally convinces them to stop the ballistic missiles.
• History Repeats: The legend of Hun-Hunahpu really happened, and he was the first Hunahpu hero sent by the Guardian, only that he was deceived and lost the battle.
• Human Aliens: The Nephilim look like humans, only with very big heads.
• Love Triangle: Julius Gabriel and Pierre Borgia were both in love with Maria Rosen, Borgia's fiancee. Later it turns out that she was actually in love with Julius and they elope.
• Mayan Doomsday: The basic premise of the series.
• Mind over Matter: The Nephilim had those powers, or at least the evil spirits from Xibalba possessing them had them, as Mick's vision shows her levitating and telekinetically building the ship while brainwashed.
• Moon Base: The Guardian had one in Xibalba's moon, from where the Balam took off to chase the Tezcatlipoca ship.
• Neutral Female: A romantic example. In their background, Julius confessed his love to Maria out of desperation shortly before she married Borgia. She then surprisingly revealed she reciprocated all along, only that she was literally praying for him to confess to her instead of taking any action herself.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Apparently, the Tezcatlipoca ship was actually traveling to Venus, because the dark spirits were adapted to a carbon dioxide atmosphere. It only crashed in Earth because the Guardian gunned it down mid travel. The spirits later decided they could try Earth by terraforming it with explosive drones and a chemical spill, though.
• Nothing Is Scarier: We never see personally the evil spirits from Xibalba that possessed the Nephilim. In his vision, Mick only sees a strange grey matter appearing in the sea and a sort of psychic influence that attacks them. However, it is implied the baddies have human form, as a figure clad in a black cowl that doesn't seem to be a possessed Nephilim appears to control the Tezcatlipoca. Later, when Mick kills the two Lords of Xibalba, they reveal themselves as red-skinned humanoids with snake eyes, or at least this is their appearance after the disruption of their glamour.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The Tezcatlipoca is a sort of cyborg mutated snake.
• Phlebotinum Killed the Dinosaurs: The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was in fact a spaceship containing a Tezcatlipoca sent by the lords of Xibalba in order to create a dimensional door which lets them return to the earth.
• Pleasure Planet: Xibalba looked like one, with its silver seas and lush, green continents. However, it turned to be a trap, as it was inhabited by evil fourth-dimensional entities who wanted to escape.
• The Professor:
  • Marvin Teperman, the Canadian exobiologist, is shown to be a bit impressionable yet very enthusiastic about his field.
  • Julius is a deconstruction of this trope given his strained relationship with Michael.
• Pyrrhic Victory: The two Lords of Xibalba won a first battle by killing the first Hunahpu, but the Guardian seized their sarcophagus ship and left them stranded in the Earth, forcing them to take refuge in the Tezcatlipoca ship.
• La Résistance: The Guardian are this to the spirits who took over Xibalba.
• Subspace Ansible: A mysterious radio signal from deep space (actually coming from Xibalba) activates the Tezcatlipoca ship. It is not clarified if it comes from present or past Xibalba through some wormhole.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Michael says it to the Guardian, as they reveal they let the 2012 prophecy happen in order to have a chance than their chosen hero would return the favor and go to their own world to save its possessed inhabitants.
• You Have to Believe Me!: A surrogate example. In Michael's background, his father got his conference sabotaged by Borgia when he was going to reveal the 2012 prophecy he had discovered, and Mick then solidifed the impression that they were a family of nutjobs by assaulting Borgia and gouging his eye.

Resurrection

• Absurdly Cool City: The floating continent of Xibalba, which has a lot of beautiful gardens and shining silicon skycrappers under domes.
• Abusive Parents:
  • Virgil Robinson, Lilith's father. He tried to kill her as a baby, and many years later, after she has grown into a beautiful millonaire (and he has revealed to the reader he is still a douchebag), is willing to incestuously sleep with her in exchange for maintenance.
  • In Alejandro Rafelo's family history, it is revealed his ascendant Gregor became a Cathar out of horror about his experiences fighting along with Gilles de Rais. Unfortunately, his ascetic beliefs alienated his son Andre away from him. Andre would end up joining Gilles and becoming a Satanist with him.
• Action Mom: Dominique becomes one over the course of the book. The very prologue has her training in a quite hardcore kendo dojo.
• Alien Sea: Xibalba's seas and lakes are silver-colored.
• Alien Sky: The sky of Xibalba is red and has two moons, a regular one and a potato-shaped one, the regular being our Moon and the other being a wrecked transhuman transport. The dimensional Xibalba also has a red sky, as it is actually a volcanic cave ceiling.
• Ambiguous Situation: According to Mick, Lilith, Devlin and the Nephilim are all dead without knowing it and are basically classical poltergeists trapped by their past negative emotions. However, he claims Lilith and Devlin were the two Lords of Xibalba, so they died by his own hand. How did the rest of the Nephilim die it is not clarified.
• Ancient Conspiracy: A presumable one behind the Bible, as it contains a code detailing the Hunahpu prophecy.
• Anti-Hero: Again, the Guardian, who makes everybody believe Xibalba is a planet in the constellation of Orion when it is actually the Earth in the future and, despite their promise not to abandon Michael, they have openly done so in order to focus in the Nephilim. However, they are still working to save all of them.
• Arbitrary Skepticism: Despite all having taken part in an alien prophecy incident that almost destroyed the world in 2012, Dominique and the government staff assigned to the Gabriel family are now inexplicably unwilling to believe that the prophecy simply didn't end there and it is up to the twins to save Mick. They even seem to have forgotten that Mick's schizophrenia was faked by Pierre Borgia to get him jailed in a Bedlam House, because they come to believe that Jacob has inherited it and is making all of this up (granted, it is later revealed the Hunahpu gene has some tendency to schizophrenia, but they at the time didn't know it, and Jacob is not the case nonetheless).
• Artificial Gravity: The members of the Guardian helped to build the pyramids and Stonhenge by using staves, sceptres and wands that were actually anti-gravitatory tools.
• Artistic License – History:
  • As in the previous novel, the narrator wrongly claims that Hernán Cortés was mistaken by a god by the Aztecs, and it also adds some other wrong facts. It claims that Montezuma sent emissaries to Cortés to bring him to Tenochtitlan, when in real life he tried to impede him from coming to the city, knowing it meant danger for his reign, and it was needed a lot of pressure for Cortés to obtain permission. It also claims that Cortés feigned friendship before attacking them in Tenochtitlan, which is, again, nonsense; Cortés had no reason to start a war for what he could achieve diplomatically, and the war only exploded, much to Cortés' chagrin, because of political mismanagements and the Massacre of the Templo Mayor, which was even caused against Cortés' orders by one of his lieutenants.
  • The novel repeats the previous' popular belief about The Spanish Inquisition, but it adds that it played a big role in the Christianization of the American natives and the demonization of their pagan religions, with plenty of witch-burning included. In real life, aside from being literally barred from judging natives, the Spanish Inquisition did not have evangelization among its functions (which was done by other religious orders) and didn't even believe in the existence of witchcraft or Satanism (very few witches were ever burned by them in continental Spain, and possibly none of them in the New World). Inquisitorial presence in America was mostly meant to make sure than practicing Jews, Muslims or Protestants didn't leak there among the Spaniards during the conquest, something that was more of a formality than a real concern anyway.
• Artistic License – Religion: The novel claims that Mesoamerican religion did not have a concept of good of evil, basically because it lacked a Devil-like figure. This is odd, not only because it is blatantly untrue (as well as quite of a mental gymnastic, antropologically speaking), but also because the very Mayan mythological background of this trilogy should refute such claim, as it has the Xibalba lords as evil villains.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The original Xibalban transhumans divided into two factions, one who wanted to achieve this trope and another who thought of it as either blasphemous or dangerous. The Tezcatlipocas were whales mutated in order to serve as mystic portals for them to reach this plane (or at least for their souls to reach it, given that they left their bodies behind). Later, Lilith and Devlin attempt the same.
• Badass Family: The Gabriel family, or more widely the entire Hunahpu lineage, which was created to be such.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Lilith and Devlin, with any of them being the Big Bad and the other being The Dragon depending on the moment.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: There are large ones in Xibalba. Before that, Elías and Ocelo threaten Magiersky with making him swallow a big, venomous centipede (which is actually harmless and even edible).
• Blatant Lies: At one point, Dominique claims she has accepted that Mick abandoned her and died. However, she is keeping the same reclusive widow lifestyle, and just before that moment she was even watching a VR recreation of Mick.
• Brains and Brawn: Salt and Pepper. The former is a little ex-CIA Caucasian with a lot of lethal gadgets, while the latter is a huge ex-Green Beret with a lot of black belts.
• Cain and Abel: Jake and Manny, lampshaded in-universe. Who is who is difficult to tell, although Dominique believes Jake is Abel and Manny is Cain.
• Charm Person: Lilith, by virtue of being a superhuman seductress. Even a heavy metal musician who is now the US president (It Makes Sense in Context) blushes when she enters the room.
• Contrived Coincidence: The cave which Lilith visits to perform her Satanic ritual happens to be a special place tainted by the dark energy of the crashed Tezcatlipoca ship, allowing her to absorb this energy. As her guide, Alejandro Rafelo, is presumably a figment of her schizophrenic imagination, it is not revealed how she knew the cave was the right place for the ritual. At least until the next book reveals Alejandro was actually Seven Macaw.
• Cool Shades: Hunahpu characters use them to hide their azure eyes. Merchant also happens to wear pink-colored ones, although they are described to be more ridiculous than cool.
• Corrupt Church: Since the events of the previous book, Alabama millonaire Peter Mabus has founded a religious political party and become a televangelist. A stereotypically fundamentalistic, dishonest and corrupt one, in fact.
• Dark and Troubled Past: Lilith, abused and raped by her adoptive grandfather Quenton. Her mother Madelina qualifies as well, as she was (guess what) abused and raped by her adoptive father Quenton.
• Dead All Along: Lilith, Devlin and the transhumans in Xibalba, which doesn't exist in the physical plane.
• Deadly Training Area: Jake's training facility.
• Death World: The planet Xibalba is nasty, being a carbon dioxide-choked volcanic planet with Big Creepy-Crawlies. However, the hidden, dimensional Xibalba created by Devlin and Lilith is even worse, as it is Hell-like cave populated by tortured mutants.
• Deity of Human Origin: Devlin tries to use Mick' and Jake's energy in Xibalba, along with a nearby supernova's, to create a real life version of Lucifer.
• Demoted to Extra: Pierre Borgia and Joe Randolph. The former appears only to try to shoot Chaney in revenge (and is killed by Dominique for the troubles) and the latter only to introduce Adashek.
• Depraved Homosexual: Benjamin Merchant, the only homosexual in the story, is a greedy, gun-toting henchman who often flirts with other male characters.
• Devil, but No God: Inverted. In an interpretation that echoes the yetzer hara from Jewish philosophy, it is stated that God does exist and loves everybody, while the Devil doesn't and is just a human illusion born of our natural inclination to evil.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: The Guardian time-travels to 2032, with Michael and Dominique recovering, in order to stop the Yellowstone Caldera from blowing up. But nope, they end up in a completely different time and place due to a disturbance, and their ship promptly explodes by some unspecified accident, killing all of them and leaving Mick and Dominique stranded in stasis around Mars.
• Didn't Think This Through: As a 13 yeard old, Jake is told by Mick that Lilith will turn into an evil seductress and will have a pure Hunahpu son in the future. Jake is smart enough to go into hiding from Lilith when her turn to darkness is complete. However, he goes to her and not vice versa when she finds him, thus making her basically get into his pants, giving as a result the situation that her son is his. Also, if Mick was that afraid Jacob could become the father of Devlin (as if it were to change something in his battle, given that there were officially other male Hunahpus in the world, including Manny, who could have fathered a son with her to recreate the loop, and Jacob would still fighting his soulmate in that case), Jacob could have just got a vasectomy in order not to impregnate Lilith if she ever got
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: When Jake kills Devlin's guardian demon.
• Easy Evangelism: Most of New Eden is turned from Judeo-Christian people into Satanists in a surprisingly short amount of time.
• Everybody Has Lots of Sex
• Eye Colour Change: Manny gains the Hunahpu azure eyes at the end of the story without being born with them. Evelyn also apparently got blue eyes when she got her mediumnic powers.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Literally speaking, Merchant is once said to have a cherub-like face, although it is also said he is a fat, wizened middle aged man. In a more straight example, Lilith is very beautiful yet very psycho.
• Fat Bastard: Peter Mabus and Benjamin Merchant are both described as fat.
• Fate Worse than Death: Michael Gabriel is said to have to endure this.
• Floating Continent: There is a literal one the size of Texas floating over Xibalba, the New Eden, built by the original transhumans.
• For Want Of A Nail:
  • Lilith becomes interested in developing space travel, which will literally save mankind, only because she happened to hear a speech by Chaney talking about space exploration when she was a child.
  • Later, it is thanks to a random wormhole that her 12 space shuttles travel to Xibalba also known as future Earth instead of Mars, which allows for the Guardian to be born in New Eden, again saving mankind.
• Freudian Excuse: More or less everybody in the cast has one.
• Full-Frontal Assault: Both Devlin and Lilith in Xibalba. The latter one is introduced to the Nephilim fully naked to show his new genetic features, and apparently keeps streaking during the final battle, while the former firstly wears robes and gowns, but she discards them in order to fight in the nude.
• God Is Evil: Thoroughly discussed, with multiple character wondering why does the Christian/Jewish God allow evil to happen in the world.
• Good Counterpart: Kurtz and Beck are this to Solomon Adashek. They are all professional killers, but Salt and Pepper are nice guys working for the Gabriel family, while Adashek is a disturbed pederast who works for Randolph and Mabus. Kurtz himself is the most similar, as both he and Adashek are described as petite, middle-aged guys who don't look like assassins.
• Gone Horribly Right: After Lilith stops Quenton from raping her, he tells her the Jewish story of Lilith and accuses her of being her reincarnation, presumably in order to get her to seduce him so he has sex with her nonetheless. This causes her schizophrenia to create an elaborate scenario in which her uncle Alejandro tells her yup, she is the original Lilith, and now has all her power and evil. As a consequence, she seduces him as he wished, but only in order to kill him.
• Greater-Scope Villain: A weird variation where Alejandro Rafelo is presumably dead, yet Lilith hallucinates with a version of him (after discovering him in some old newspapers) who teaches her how to become the Abomination.
• Grey Goo: A variation. Grey dust covers the mutants in Xibalba, and it is said to be definitely supernatural and malign.
• The Greys: The bodies left behind by the posthumans are rather similar to those.
• Gun Nut: Merchant is a National Rifle Association activist and always carries a concealed gun in his ankle, although this never becomes a plot point.
• Heroic Seductress: Dominique plays up her charms in order to trap an incredibly dense (and horny) US soldier, Magiersky, who works for Mabus.
• Handy Feet: In Xibalba, transhuman Devlin restrains Dominique with his clawed toenails, in a way similar to a vulture's claws.
• History Repeats: Apparently, just like the first Hun-Hunahpu failed and died in Xibalba, there were an earlier pair of Twin Heroes who were also defeated.
• Hypocrite: There is a certain theme in the novel about characters who claim to represent good, only for them to alienate their supposed loved ones by hurting them in some form or another despite all their virtue, which eventually leads those loved ones to embrace evil (or egotism, or mere jerkassery) as a consequence of this perceived hypocrisy. Gregor Rafael did it to his son Andre, the fictitious Spanish Inquisition to the ancient Mayans, Quenton and Jake to Lilith, Dominique and Jake to Manny... It eventually reaches theological fields when it becomes about Yahweh and Lucifer.
• I Just Want to Be Normal: Manny's motivation through the book.
• Imaginary Friend: As a children, Lilith has one named Brandy. As a teenager, she has an imaginary evil mentor based on her knowledge of Satanist lore and her relative Alejandro Rafelo.
• Lightning Can Do Anything: Evelyn Strongin got her mediumnic powers after stepping on an electric cable in a post-hurricane zone.
• Mind Screw: The entire time travel thing.
• Minor Major Character: Jack Mclelland of Majestic-12 is hinted to be an important character with a lot of influence in the government, but he is dropped shortly after his only appearance.
• Ms. Fanservice: Lilith, of course.
• The Nose Knows: Apparently due to her Hunahpu senses, Lilith is able to perceive the ovulating period of another woman by the smell.
• No Social Skills: Samuel Agler/Manny is rather awkward at times as a consequence of his upbringing, which is called on him. Oddly enough, the even less socialized Jake is shown to have more emotional skills than him.
• Oddly Small Organization: Played with. The original Guardian was composed of 24 members, plus 13 that were murdered when they escaped Lilith and Devlin's clutches in New Eden. Around 114 years later, there are hundreds of them.
• Orphean Rescue: The Mayan Twins's mission is rescuing Michael Gabriel.
• Pedophile Priest: Quenton Morehead, the Baptist priest, rapes both of his underage adoptees.
• Plot Hole: Bill Raby is supposed to become Osiris after the Guardian travels to Earth in the Balam, but a flashback with Mick has him shooting himself in the head much earlier out of grief for the loss of his lover. Given that Michael's bond to him got cut in that instant, it is implied that he certainly died.
• The Professor: Dr. David Morh, Nobel laureate and future Kukulcan.
• Psychic Powers:
  • It's revealed the real life Stargate Project was continuned under the new name of Trinity in this universe. Jacob is almost recruited for it due to his Hunahpu powers.
  • The transhumans develop Telepathy as part of their new brains.
• Plant Person: A large, mucous white tree in front of a lake appears repeatedly in Xibalba's Hell. It is revealed to be the refuge of Michael, who has fused with it in order to protect himself from Lilith. At the same time, it acts as a seal as well, as Dominique has to stab it in order to free Mick.
• Red Baron: "Salt" for Mitchell Kurtz and "Pepper" for Ryan Beck.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Respectively, Manny and Jake.
• Reused Character Design: Xibalba's guardian demon is said to have an anvil-shaped head and long arms, just like the Nephilim drones from the previous book.
• Satan Is Good: Lilith believes so, citing existentialist and humanistic arguments to ilustrate how Yahweh is a hypocrite tyrant that tortures mankind while Lucifer offers freedom, knowledge, power and self-improvement.
• Spoiled Brat: Lucien Mabus is an almost pathetical example. He can be seen smoking with 12 years and later becomes a decadent playboy bored of his lifestyle.
• Spooky Séance: Evelyn performs one with Dominique to contact with Michael's mother and Evelyn's sister Maria.
• Stable Time Loop: Except that Manny unravels it at the end.
• Stalker with a Test Tube:
  • After turning evil, Lilith is instructed to get Jacob's seed in order to produce a pure Hunahpu offspring. She is succesful, and she gives birth to Devlin.
  • In the past, Alejandro Rafelo sought to marry Cecilia to his own nephew Miguel (as he was too old) in order to mix both Hunahpu lineages, Alejandro being from Quetzalcoatl and Cecilia (descendant from Moctezuma, by the way) being from Kukulcan. He then used black magic to give hereditary schizophrenia to her daughter Madelina.
• Stay in the Kitchen: What the Guardian thinks about Dominique, though she averts it at the end.
• The Stoner: Merchant is constantly smoking pot, and also takes cocaine, even after conventional drugs are replaced by artificial pleasure.
• Struggling Single Mother: Dominique, especially given that her kids are angsty superhumans. She also laments to be raising them without a father figure.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In the novel's universe, the Spanish Inquisition drove the Mesoamerican population to Satanism due to their constant labelling of their pagan beliefs as Devil-worshipping.
• Those Two Guys: The aptly named Salt and Pepper are most commonly seen together.
• Tongue Trauma: T'quan, a Tezcatlipoca cultist from Michael's past, had a ritually forked tongue.
• Urine Trouble: Devlin makes a point after his turn into an "achangel" in the future, when he (completely naked and showing off his new wings) urinates over his worshippers out of transhuman scorn.
• The Vamp:
  • Lilith is the queen of this trope, thanks in no small part to be a Hunahpu female, which grants her the adequate powers.
  • TV host named Dianne Tanner is also shown to have sex with many of her interviewed sportsmen thanks to some aphrodisiac perfume.
• Vampiric Draining: Lilith and Devlin are sucking Mick's light in the future to feed the Nephilim, though only whenever they want.
• Winged Humanoid: Devlin gains wings in the future thanks to his Hunahpu blood, which gives him genetic manipulation power when mixed with transhuman DNA.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: Lilith use this method to catch Jacob off guard in Xibalba, as well as Devlin to catch Dominique.
• Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: Yes, Mick and Dominique saved the world from a nuclear war and an alien terraforming in 2012, but it is revealed the Yellowstone Caldera will blow up around 2037 and cause a new glaciation in the planet. This time it is not up to the Hunahpus to stop it, but the Guardians, who travel to the past in order to impede it. Only that they end up traveling to the wrong time and planet, and die all of them when their ship explodes.

Phobos

• Advanced Ancient Humans: Balam and the 320 Mayans that got thrown to the wormhole ended up founding a settlement in the post-Yellowstone world that, after 1000 years and with the help of his (their?) Hunahpu powers, became a seafaring civilization.
• All Myths Are True: Relatively, though less than in the previous book. There is black magic aside from the Hunahpu stuff, but this time it is revealed that Jewish Kabbalah is right and this world is the Malkuth of the Sephirot.
• Amazon Chaser: Borgia might have been a racist (although a nuanced one), but he only likes dominant women.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • Lilith claims the purification of her soul reached her through time days after Jake and Dominique left the Earth. However, the prologue of Phobos shows her clearly being evil 13 whole years after that event, something that is never clearly explained.
  • Chicauah claims Alejandro was meant to be her soulmate before Seven Macaw possessed him, but the latter claims it was Alejandro himself who summoned him. There are hints of both versions through the story.
  • Is Adelina related to the Hunahpu lineage, considering she shares the surname Botello with Chicauah's mother?
• And the Adventure Continues: The story ends with Eve Mohr and a time-traveling Julian Agler-Gabriel being in a cruise accidentally transported to ancient Mars and being attacked by previously unknown Martians.
• Ascended Extra: In the previous books, Joe Randolph was a Texan millonaire that mentors Borgia. In this one, he is revealed to be actually an ex-CIA agent who is somehow in charge of the Area 51. Borgia himself is also ascended to main villain by revealing he is a reincarnation of Seven Macaw.
• Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: According to this, Jesus was not the son of God, but a student of mystic Rabbi Akiva.
• Cosmic Retcon: In this story there are a new cataclism previously unheard of (the Large Hadron Collider strangelet), a new role played by aliens (actually time-traveling original transhumans) and a cycle of reincarnations (which reveals a completely new Greater-Scope Villain that vaguely contradicts the plots of Domain and Resurrection), and it is claimed in this timeline the time travel of the Guardian and the Tezcatlipoca ship will not happen (which doesn't has much sense). None of this can fit in the previous plots without a heavy dose of retcons, but it is all handwaved as a consequence of Manny not traveling to Xibalba.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Seven Macaw, who is revealed in the third book to have been all the time the mastermind behind Lilith and Devlin.
• Blood Magic: Chicahua and the ancient Mayans practice it.
• Body Horror: In Manny's visions, Michael and Dominique are shown as giants bizarrely fused with a huge, flying sephirot.
• Break Them by Talking: At the end, Chilam Balam defeats Seven Macaw by talking him out of his mind.
• Child by Rape: Dominique.
• Depraved Homosexual: Merchant, as always. This time, he jokingly confesses United States president Heather Stuart (a lesbian) his Catholic priest molested him, and is interested on knowing whether she suffered the same. Stuart denies to be an example of the trope, although she is certainly a slimey villain.
• Determinator: Samuel Agler aka Immanuel Gabriel has to go through a ton of things, including amnesia, in order to save the world.
• Doing In the Wizard: Partially. Lilith's seduction powers are later explained to be based in pheromones (and good ol' hotness), but the rest of Hunahpu abilities remain as actual Psychic Powers.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: President Andrew Hiles speculates that the Yellowstone Caldera was a punishment by God because mankind was not church-going enough. His scientific consultant curtly points out that not being church-going enough is not big deal compared to causing wars, crime and famine.
• Eye Colour Change: Happens to Laura when her Hunahpu genes are activated. Manny and Mick also switch between black and blue eyes depending of whether the plot needs them with or without much of her powers.
• Fate Worse than Death: Mick and Dominique were frozen in Phobos without chance to escape or die, requiring Manny to free them. Possibly subverted because it is implied they were in control of the ship and could have destroyed it to die, only that they chose to keep it active knowing that Manny would need its antimatter engine to shut off the strangelet in the future.
• The Greys: Many of the aliens captured by MAJESTIC-12 (not all, as others are Human Aliens), which are actually original transhumans.
• Hero of Another Story: Julian Agler-Gabriel, who is Sophie's son and Manny's grandson.
• High-Heel–Face Turn: Lilith, as Jake purified her soul in the last book. Of course, she is the only villain to turn good.
• Luke, I Am Your Father: Dominique is revealed to be Alejandro Rafelo's daughter, as her mother Chicauah seduced him and got pregnant without him knowing it.
• Never Mess with Granny: Chicauah is 100 years old, yet she can kill a professional mercenary with just a dagger.
• Off with His Head!: Balam was beheaded by Seven Macaw after the latter sacrificed his lover.
• Psychic Powers: In this installment, telepathy can be learned, and both Julius and Teperman do it.
• Reincarnation: A key theme, introduced in this installment.
• Remember the New Guy?: It is revealed Maria and Evelyn had a third sister, Laura. All the characters are familiar with her despite she never appeared in the previous books.
• Retcon/Series Continuity Error:
  • In the previous book, Julius claimed to be a Christian turned agnostic, while in Phobos, he converted to Jewish Kabbalah thanks to Maria. Also, what he was going to reveal in the conference that ended his life was the existence of the 2012 prophecy, while this time it also included the existence of aliens held in Nevada. None of this can be attributed to the new timeline, given that his scenes set before the time travel of Sam already show him as a Kabbalist and aware of the alien stuff.
  • In Domain, Teperman reveals he decided to study exobiology after a speech given by Julius in college. They don't seem to have this relationship in Phobos, as he never mentions it despite he is put to work for a long time with Julius himself.
  • The wormholes, both in the past and the future, are now revealed to be a side effect of the LHC, despite Resurrection had stated they were harnessed natural occurrences.
  • Mount Weather was destroyed by a Russian hidden nuke in 2012, as portrayed in Domain. However, it is there to be destroyed again in this book, again in the same timeline. The first destruction showed the entire mountain crumbling due to the effect of the nuke, so rebuilding it would have been probably near to impossible, if not worthy of some mention in the text.
  • In the second book, Jake broke up with Lilith by himself after deciding she was becoming a distraction for him; it was right after that Mick told him she would become the Abomination. In Phobos, Manny tells her he did it because their father warned him. (This point could be justified as it being a second-hand account, as Manny might actually not know the exact story beyond the general lines.)
  • In Resurrection, Lilith becomes interested in space exploration due to having heard a speech about the topic by Chaney as a child. In this book, it is because she started having visions about the end of the Earth when she was 17.
  • Lilith also claims in Phobos that her soul was retroactively purified just after Jake and Dominique left Earth in the Balam. However, this very book shows her as still clearly evil fourteen whole years after that point. If anything, the moment in which she turns good appears to be immediately after those fourteen years, not in the instant the Balam traveled to the future as she claims.
  • In Phobos, it is claimed here Dominique didn't want sedatives while giving birth to the twins in order not to harm them (a bit of Artistic License – Medicine, by the way). Actually, she desperately asked for sedatives and only ended up without them because the hospital was badly managed. This is weird because the birth scene in the new timeline shows it again in this very book.
  • In the second book, Devlin was described as olive skinned, with dark curly hair and "iridiscent" but otherwise regular eyes. However, Phobos describes him as having straight white hair and bizarre, red-scleraed black eyes.
  • Alejandro Rafelo was described as having a white eye in Phobos. This time, he is described having a strabismic eye.
  • Kurtz's character changes totally from the second to the third book: in Resurrection, he is a highly capable, Genre Savvy bodyguard, while in Phobos is a Idiot Ball-loaded, comically lubric loon. Some of this is handwaved as having been injected with an aphrodisiac substance off-screen, but this new personality lasts the entire book, much longer than the effects of any drug.
• Stalker with a Test Tube: Alejandro started working for the Los Lenones cartel in order to find Hunahpu women he could inseminate. Ironically, he begot one and traded her away without ever knowing it.
• Transhuman Aliens: The grey aliens held captive in Area 51 turn to be the original transhumans from the future, specifically the ancient Mayans led by Chilam Balam through the wormhole created in the past by the present CERN.
• The Vamp:
  • Lilith again, although she turns into a Heroic Seductress after the prologue.
  • Arlene, the female agent that seduces Kurtz, is another example.
  • Adelina Botello, who lures Michael into a fake marriage.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Benjamin Merchant disappears after Lilith turns to the good side and his existence is never acknowledged again.