Please Don't Tell My Parents I'm The Queen of the Dead is another entry into the Please Don't Tell My Parents Young Adult Literature Capepunk series by Richard Roberts. It stars a new protagonist and some characters from the original series.
Avery Special has just moved to L.A. from her home in Kentucky. She's also the world's only living necromancer, being the great-great-granddaughter of notable supervillain and Queen of the Dead Alicia Blackheart, who wielded armies of zombies. Shortly after arriving in town, she's kidnapped by a superhero reality show. On the bright side, the other people trapped there with her seem friendly, even if their powers are a bit... dark. Avery doesn't have much power yet, but it seems that the universe is just dripping with mysterious benefactors who surely don't have ulterior motives for giving her access to more power, including, as it turns out, her great-great-grandmother.
What's a girl who can wield the very power of death to do? And why are two of her peers suddenly attracted to her?
This book exhibits the following tropes:
- Addictive Magic: Avery's conversation with Barbara and The Godchild of Despair reveals that this is a common problem with Dark Magic. The more you use, the more power you seek. None of them even want the power for anything, they just want to have it. Avery breaks her cycle at the end by destroying the MacGuffin instead of continuing to try to seize it for herself.
- Affably Evil: Alicia is extremely amoral, but doesn't seek out death and destruction for its own right. She just doesn't mind it in the course of seizing power and enjoying it.
- Alpha Bitch: Tiffany aspires to this role at Pepperidge Prep. Sue is much better at it, though.
- An Arm and a Leg: Literally the case with minor character Little Witch, who has prosthetics for her arm, leg, and one eye.
- Artifact of Doom: Avery keeps running into items that will empower her. At first, she (rightly) assumes they're traps. Soon, she learns that one of the quirks of black magic is that use of it tends to draw more opportunities to the user.
- Ascended Extra: Sue from the main series gets her chance in the limelight.
- Bad Powers, Good People: All of the main gang have powers more suited to villainy: Avery is a necromancer, Chris has mind control powers, Anne has fire powers, Sue has shadow powers, and Peggy controls insects.
- Big Red Devil: Chris and Anne have red skin, horns, pointy teeth, and forked tails. They're also extremely nice and well-behaved individuals. Still, even in a city as supernaturally cosmopolitan as LA, they get some glares and worse. Chris mentions that their mother used to be a devoted church-goer before she was kicked out for giving birth to two devil babies, and Tiffany spreads around rumors that Annie is the village bicycle despite her crippling social anxiety simply because she looks like a succubus.
- Dem Bones: Francis unleashes an army of undead super-powered skeletons in the last third of the book.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Miss Crate gives Avery the nickname of Redneckromancer and regrettably, it sticks. She gives similarly terrible names to the others, but those don't stick.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": The Godchild of Despair notes that her name is a title, given to someone who gains dark magic via attempted suicide. She sold her name as part of the suicide attempt.
- Fantastic Racism: Once again, certain powers are looked down as belonging only to supervillains, no matter what the person in question does with them. Avery meets her new friends when they are all kidnapped for a "young supervillains" show, and Barbara mentions that she is officially classified as a supervillain despite using her voodoo for nothing but healing. Because of this, Sue's parents get a slightly more sympathetic viewpoint, since they're afraid Sue's shadow powers will force her into villainy exactly like is happening.
- Funetik Aksent: Avery’s thick drawl, a mix of Kentucky and South Carolina, is constantly written out phonetically as a sharp contrast to the Californians she’s now hanging around with. At one point, a traumatic experience temporarily lightens her accent until it’s almost undetectable, which the dialogue reflects by suddenly following standard spelling and punctuation.
- Half-Identical Twins: Chris and Anne are genetically identical except for the difference in X and Y chromosome. They take it in stride, stating that stranger things have happened with superpowers in play.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Ms. Crate breaks the rule of getting too personal and weaponizes it to keep the kids in line by pointing out that if they reveal her, she will die. Indeed, Mourning Dove kills her for this offense, although she gets brought back by Avery.
- Insult to Rocks: Avery likens the social behaviors at Pepperidge Prep to a snake pit. When Alicia Blackheart possesses her, she decides that was an insult to the snakes.
- Love Triangle: Avery is pursued by both Chris and Sue, and eventually winds up in a stable relationship dating both.
- MacGuffin: the Mortizoar is officially an Amplifier Artifact that can greatly augment necromantic powers. In practice, it exists for Avery Special to fight with Francis and Eris T. Crate over it so the other two don't get it.
- Morality Pet: Sue sees Avery as this, someone that she wants to be good for.
- No MacGuffin, No Winner: The Mortizoar has no narrative role except to be the prize of a three-way fight, leading Avery to just destroy it so her two rivals for the artifact can't use it.
- Portal Door: Avery enjoys use of one of these thanks to Alice and the sarcophagus she's bound to.
- Powers via Possession:
- Alicia can possess Avery to give her access to Alicia's much greater knowledge of magic. The catch is getting her to leave...
- This is the source of Godchild of Despair's powers. She sacrificed her soul to dark powers to "never be alone" and now has an alien power she calls Neon Blackout attached to her.
- Punny Name:
- Avery Special is a very special girl, being the only current necromancer.
- Sue Perrier certainly does come off as feeling superior.
- Miss Stoic teaches mystic arts at the school among the other subjects.
- Ms. Eris T. Crate comes off high-handed, and eventually cracks and start yelling for people to call her "The Aristocrat".
- Reality Show: Shortly after arriving in L.A., Avery gets shanghaied onto a reality show meant to follow budding young supervillains, run by Ms. Eris T. Crate.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The undead necromancer Mad Scientist conquistador Francis was sealed in his sarcophagus because his enemies had no way to kill him. Avery notes that his enemies weren't necromancers, and she may very well be able to kill him or bind him to her will. Instead, she seals him back in the sarcophagus with the now-undead Ms. Crate.
- Spell Book: On her first visit to the library, Avery has several of these pushed on her by The Librarian, the most useful of which is one of the "Pudgy Bunny" series with the eponymous bunny enjoying dark rituals with his woodland friends. She later learns from Barbara that dark grimoires are typically how people get into Dark Magic.Barbara: If I have a superpower at all, it's finding magic books. Too many books. The unpleasant books. After a while, they give you magic.
- Stop, or I Shoot Myself!: When it's pointed out that Ms. Crate's disregard of the teens' secret identities is a violation of the rules about getting personal, she essentially blackmails them by informing them that if they turn her in, she will be killed, and that they don't want that on their conscience.
- The Underworld: Avery can travel through the Halls of the Dead, which seems to be a nearly infinite array of corridors leading to various gates to the underworld that pass through respective mythologies. Among others, she encounters Thoth weighing souls and a river where lost souls are carried over by large dogs if they are judged worthy.
- Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": Subverted; the Conquistador Francis is explicitly described as the "old-fashioned genocidal conqueror," so there's no chance of talking him down.
