College kids with attitude! And Elder Signs.
Miskatonic University - Elder Gods 101 by Matthew Davenport and Mike Davenport is a Urban Fantasy story set in H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos.
It is a new school year at Miskatonic University, Massachusetts and the barriers between reality and other dimensions are breaking down. Deciding the only way to protect themselves is to use the Scion Cycle, they summon a fresh crop of students that are all tied to the most famous characters of HP Lovecraft's writing.
Ralph Allen - A Deep One Hybrid from Innsmouth who just wants to play football and not have to marry as his parents wants him to. It's hard enough being an alien fishman. It's even harder being a gay alien fishman.
Carlos Davies - The most seemingly "normal" of the children and gregarious, Carlos is cursed with visions of the future. He also possesses an ability to read people and know facts no one else can figure out.
Meredith Johnson - An archaeology student with an interest in the Cthulhu Mythos due to her family's long association with its dangers.
Sheryl Mason - A computer science major who loves gaming and is a mathematics prodigy. Unfortunately, she hates math and it is the gateway to nearly unimaginable power in the Mythos.
Stephanie West - A veterinary science student who has a particularly infamous ancestor that causes no end of problems for her in Miskatonic University.
It is set in the same universe as Matthew Davenport's Andrew Doran series.
This work contains the following tropes:
- Abusive Parents: Deep Ones are naturally tougher, stronger, and heal quicker than humans. As such, they use physical violence to intimidate their families into obedience.
- Academy of Adventure: Miskatonic University is not only an Ivy League school on the East Coast but also the lodestone for protecting Earth's dimension from being absorbed by other more hostile ones.
- Adults Are Useless: Played with. The staff at Miskatonic University have preserved reality against the forces of the Great Old Ones for a century or more but have been losing so they try a Hail Mary Pass with the Scion Spell. It works.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: This is the fate of Randolph Carter in the universe and he regrets it since his new status as a god makes it so that he can never return to the Earth. Doing so would result in the destruction of our dimension.
- Back from the Dead:
- This is what the reanimation fluid of Herbert West is supposed to accomplish but always resulted in Came Back Wrong.
- Herbert West tricks the protagonists into resurrecting him, thinking he's a witch capable of helping them save the world.
- Canon Character All Along: Dean Ward is actually Charles Dexter Ward from The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.
- The Chosen One: All of the teenagers were brought together by the Scion Spell that is designed to harness their ancestry in a (small) chance to save the world.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: A Downplayed Trope example as they haven't faced any of the Great Old Ones but have instead just managed to face down his cult. They do manage to survive against several lesser Mythos monsters, though.
- Does This Remind You of Anything?: Ralph's relationship is meant to parallel a gay kid with conservative Christian parents. Except they're willing to come around on the gay part but not the "hanging around with humans" thing.
- Dramatic Irony: Much of the book is spent focused on making contact with Keziah Mason in order to be able to control the magic needed to save the world. Not only do readers of The Dreams in the Witch House know that she's a Wicked Witch but she's also not dead. This is something that they could have learned just by talking to the faculty too.
- The End of the World as We Know It: What happens if the other dimensional horrors are let into our reality. Reality will collapse and the universe will cease to exist.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Levi bullies Ralph for being a Deep One hybrid relentlessly but draws the line at being cruel to him because he's gay. Probably because he's a gay man himself.
- Fantastic Racism: Ralph gets a lot of flack from his fellow students for the fact that he is from Innsmouth and a Deep One hybrid. Notably, he assumed he would get an equal amount from the student body because he was gay but everyone just shrugs that off.
- Formulaic Magic: Sheryl Mason discovers that her proclivity with mathematics allows her to wield powerful supernatural forces. Unfortunately, her attempts to combine them with occult forces leads to the resurrection of Herbert West.
- The Fundamentalist: Ralph's family back in Innsmouth want him to return home, worship Cthulhu, and take a bride before joining the others below the sea. Oddly, the Elders are not treated as especially villainous and are even Reasonable Authority Figure types compared to the Cult of Cthulhu.
- I Just Want to Be Normal: Ralph is a Deep One but wants nothing to do with worshiping Cthulhu or becoming immortal. He just wants to play football.
- In the Blood: All of the students contain a supernatural connection to the Cthulhu Mythos due to their heritage.
- Lighter and Softer: The supernatural is less sanity destroying and overtly hostile. It can be used for good or evil depending on who is doing the magic. Also, the inherent xenophobia of the setting is gone as one of the protagonists is a Deep One later joined by Yog-Sothoth's descendant.
- Lovecraft Lite: The protagonists are all Empowered Badass Normal types who are up against the Cult of Cthulhu and manage to emerge temporarily triumphant. It is notably Lighter and Softer compared to the Two-Fisted Tales of Andrew Doran and that was Lighter and Softer compared to HP lovecraft's original stories.
- Religion of Evil:
- The Cult of Cthulhu is shown to be completely unsympathetic and wants to destroy reality.
- Subverted by the Esoteric Order of Dagon, which is just mildly conservative and content to wait out the apocalypse.
- Sins of the Father: Stephanie West finds herself getting a lot of side-eye and even one in-class outburst from the faculty at Miskatonic University. She's confused about this until she finds out that it's because her ancestor (technically her great-great uncle) is a Serial Killer who murdered one of the faculty.
- Spin-Off Babies: All of the main characters are descendants of HP Lovecraft protagonists or related to them in some other fashion.
- Spirit Advisor: Carlos Davies finds out that he has one of these in Raldolph Carter who is willing to provide him vast knowledge seemingly out of boredom.
- Stealth Sequel: This is actually set in the modern day of the Andrew Doran series by Matthew Davenport.
- Tsundere: Levi's relationship with Ralph turns to be this as he actually is attracted to him. They eventually get a Relationship Upgrade.
- Urban Fantasy: The protagonists live in the world of the Cthulhu Mythos where all of Lovecraft's monsters are real and threatening to destroy the Earth.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Stephanie West believes that Herbert West's reanimation formula is probably only dangerous and prone to failure because the mixtures are wrong. Subverted when she is seemingly proven right when she raises a cat from the dead without consequence.
