Mr. Hook's Big Black Box is a novel by Angel Wedge. It revolves around a group of university alumni at a reunion, meeting up and recounting their adventures with the titular mysterious box, as well as helping their friend Destinee recover her memory.
The novel is still being edited. New chapters from the rough first draft are released every Saturday on Google Plus
, while chapters from a slightly-more-polished second draft are being posted on Wattpad. The G+ version of the first chapter was posted on the day it was written, so that version has a hundred-instalment head start, but the Wattpad version is probably easier for readers who want to catch up and don't like having the newest chapter at the top.
Mr. Hook's Big Black Box provides examples of:
- Accent Slip-Up: Happens with the gunman in the Brassic. Kris's narration mentions that he tries to sound like a British film gangster, but his accent occasionally slips into something more rural.
- Action Girl: Ferrari knows martial arts and how to use a sword. In fact, of all the heroes, she's the one who does pretty much all the fighting.
- Acquired Error at the Printer: The university's name is deliberately misspelled as "Lanchester Universitay" on pamphlets for the reunion, in reference to the same typo having been present in the information packs they received when they joined as students.
- Ambiguously Brown: Ferrari. She has mixed ancestry and was originally born in an unspecified foreign country, and is described as having a deep Mediterranean tan.
- Berserk Button: The only thing that makes Destinee genuinely angry is being called Monty.
- Body Horror: Rasputin fused with the Creation Engine at the end of the story. Hope too, but to a lesser extent since she isn't fully absorbed yet.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Dwayne mentions fighting giant spiders, robot spiders, and giant robot spiders.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Monty and Destinee both embody this trope. Martin Cheese is one too, but in a different way.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: All that crazy stuff Martin Cheese mentioned in his narration? Turns out it actually happened.
- Deadpan Snarker: Ferrari is the most snarky, but all of them can be this to a certain extent (even Destinee).
- Deconstructed Trope: Happens a lot regarding any time Ferrari fights, occasionally being lampshaded with her pointing out that a real life fight is very different from an action sequence in a movie.
- Did You Die?: Destinee asks this of Kris after the latter narrates being beaten up by some goons.
- Final Boss: Rasputin fused with the Creation Engine. Dwayne, being a gamer, even refers to him as the Final Boss in his narration though Marco is the one who actually defeats him.
- Foreshadowing: The main characters are recounting a story that happened to them fifteen years ago, so they all know what's going to happen. They say a lot of things that will mean something different if you know about later events.
- Fun with Acronyms: LUSARS, which stands for Lanchester University Samurai Appreciation and Re-enactment Society. Only Martin Cheese actually pronounces it as "losers", though, and that's only to show his disrespect for the group.
- Gratuitous Japanese: The main characters refer to the leader of their student council as "kaityou", a shortening of "seitokaicho", Japanese for "student council president".
- Groin Attack: Kris does this to a gunman in the Brassic bar.
- Ham-to-Ham Combat: Marco and Rasputin at the end. Marco admits in the narration that he was doing it deliberately to distract his opponent, but Rasputin does it genuinely.
- The Lancer: Ferrari.
- The Leader: Kris, being the leader of the LUSARS, fits this role.
- MacGuffin Escort Mission: Pretty much the entire thing is the main characters trying to get the Box to a safe place, without letting it fall into the hands of Russian soldiers, fake CIA agents, real CIA agents, or the Greek mafia.
- Meaningful Rename: Hope changing her name to Destinee.
- Non-Indicative Name: The titular Box itself. The only parts of its name that fit are "Mr. Hook's" and "big" - it's not black, and it's not really a box either, though it is a kind of container.
- Not a Morning Person: Dwayne. He takes ages to wake up, even when there's an emergency.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Many of the characters and organisations in the story think that there's something really, really bad inside the Box. Subverted when that turns out to not actually be the case.
- She-Fu: Subverted. Marco recalls Ferrari doing this in one of her fights, but she shoots him down, claiming that all those fancy flips and acrobatics aren't practical in real life.
- Take a Third Option: The characters do this at the end of the story in order to let Destinee stay free while keeping the Box closed.
- Uncanny Valley: In-Universe, Hope's teenage form due to matching different features from magazine photos but not paying attention to whether or not they go together themselves. Dwayne refers to her as "photofit girl".
- Unreliable Narrator: Pretty much all of them, to a certain extent, but Martin Cheese is the worst - his "recollections" (to use the term loosely) frequently veer off into wild fantasies that have little if any basis in reality. Then later on, it turns out his stories might have been more accurate than people initially thought.
- Wham Line: One happens very early on.Destinee: (looking at their club room, which is completely wrecked with part of the roof missing and rubble everywhere) Oh wow, everything's just how we left it!
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: Whoever gave Ferrari her name must have been really into cars.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Dwayne is heavily implied to be arachnophobic, so having to fight hordes of giant spiders can't have been good for his mental health.
