The Migax Cycle is a young adult science fantasy series set on the fictional planet Migax, where humans and sapient dragon-like creatures coexist together. The main characters, Summer and Leafsong, attend a prestigious Boarding School but soon find themselves involved in the sinister workings of a movement set on transforming Migax into a fascist regime. The two students end up uncovering an underground organization trying to prevent the takeover, and deal with a mix of adolescent struggles and political terror.
The Migax Cycle provides examples of:
- Aerith and Bob: There's ordinary names like Summer, alongside names like Sayra, Usa, and Reema.
- A Nazi by Any Other Name: Much of Migaxian rhetoric is reminiscent of the Nazis, especially their emphasis on ridding Migax of squells and forcing them into ghettos.
- Animal Testing: The seserance is tested on rats at first.
- Applied Phlebotinum:
- Artrychar powers Gateways, which is what allows people to access betweenspace, and for manipulators to turn invisible.
- The seserance gives sentient beings psychic powers through unknown means.
- Big Fancy House: Reed's house has virtual simulators and a giant internal garden, and is all-around awesome.
- Boarding School: The first book's primary setting is Aksel, a large boarding school.
- Children as Pawns: Eeksa makes frequent use of Leafsong and Summer for her goals, despite them being teenagers.
- Convenient Slow Dance: Subverted. Summer and Leafsong dance through multiple songs, and not a single one is slow. Eventually, they give up and start slow dancing to a speedy song.
- Disposable Vagrant: The lower classes are often treated like they are worthless, and MiliLabshas no qualms about running experiments on them.
- Draconic Humanoid: The skeefers are described as looking like feathery, humanoid dragons.
- Fantastic Ghetto: Squell District is the place where many of the skeefers are forced to live, to keep them segregated from the rest of Migax.
- Fantastic Racism: Skeefers face constant discrimination in Migaxian society, from outright hostility to structural problems, and the story revolves around the gradual escalation of Migax into a Nazi-like regime.
- Fantastic Slurs: "Dreg" is used to refer to humans that are part of the lower class.
- Fictional Currency: People use virtual money called heks as currency
- Fictional Social Network: Moonwafer uses a social media website called Cavota
- Fictional Sport: Leafsong is a fan of a sport called geenball
- Flawed Prototype: Early attempts to make the seserance into a usable weapon result in the agonizing death of the test subjects
- Fugitive Arc: This is most of book two, with Summer having to be in hiding from the government
- High-School Dance: The Union Day dance.
- Interspecies Friendship: Between Summer, a human, and Leafsong and Moonwafer, who are skeefers.
- Interspecies Romance: Eventually, Summer and Leafsong start developing romantic feelings.
- La Résistance: Eeksa's underground organization is trying to stop a fascist takeover.
- Mundane Luxury: After months on the street, Summer views a simple piece of fruit and a shower as incredible luxuries.
- The Plague: Pink Decay is a disease that spreads through the wilder population and kills hundreds.
- Reduced to Ratburgers: Eeksa mentions eating rats while trying to survive.
- Running Gag
- Leafsong talking too much in Reema's class and getting reprimanded.
- Summer insisting she's not a hacker in the middle of hacking something.
- Screw the Rules, I Have Money!:
- Summer doesn't even try to sue Sylas for damages to her apartment, because she knows he'll be able to pay his way out of it.
- MiliLabsgets away with exploiting people and placing them in fatal situations due to their huge lobbying power.
- Sentient Phlebotinum: The seserance has a bit of a mind and will of its own.
- Switching P.O.V.: The story alternates between Summer and Leafsong's point of view, both in third person limited.
- Tested on Humans: MiliLabs does this all the time by luring desperate people into contracts with them.
- Two Girls and a Guy: Leafsong, Summer, and Moonwafer, although Moonwafer's role is minimal compared to the first two.
- Uplifted Animal: Played with. Skeefers were altered to make their brains function more closely to a human's, but they were sapient before and don't consider it uplifting.
- Urban Segregation: The lower class humans, lower class skeefers, social outcasts, middle class, and the rich all live in seperate areas of Migax.
- Wrong Side of the Tracks: The Spreads are the area where humans in poverty live. Squell District is an even worse form of this, as many skeefers are forced into it.
