Cayal, the Immortal Prince and one of the most powerful of the near-divine Tide Lords, was over eight thousand years old and very, very, bored. So he decided to get his head chopped off. His powers were at an ebb, so there was a slight chance it would actually kill him, but even if it didn't it would erase his memories, which was good enough as far as he was concerned. He killed a few people in a country known for its harsh justice system and love of beheadings, confessed to the crime, ate his last meal, and...
The executioner was on vacation. So they hanged him instead.
So begins a fantasy quartet by Jennifer Fallon set on the world of Amyrantha and focusing on the exploits of a group of magic using immortals known as the Tide Lords and especially Cayal, known as the Immortal Prince who wants to try and kill himself. The books in the series are:
- The Immortal Prince
- Gods of Amyrantha
- The Palace of Impossible Dreams
- The Chaos Crystal
Do not confuse with Time Lords
This series contains examples of:
- A God Am I: Kentravyon and to a lesser extent all the other Tide Lords.
- Age Without Youth: Many of the Tide Lords think they are frozen in time biologically and point to the fact that they can only breed with mortals as evidence. The really old Tide Lords know differently. Tide Lords actually age extremely slowly, it takes tens of millions of years to equal a decade of aging for a Tide Lord. Unfortunately some Tide Lords are rather vain and that's what starts the whole mess in the first place.
- Ancient Conspiracy: The Cabal of the Tarot. The real ancient conspiracy are by the first Tide Lords who aren't even native to the planet. It's their schemes to get one of their oldest members a new body that starts the creation of a new generation of Tide Lords and much of the life on the planet in the first place
- Apocalypse How: The Tide Lords cause Class Twos with surprising regularity. Opening a portal with the Chaos Crystal causes a Class-X
- Artistic License – Space: The last part of the fourth book contains several tropes that have been discredited by
the march of science. Wouldn't have been so bad if the books hadn't been written well after these advances had been made. - Beware the Superman: The Tide Lords are very powerful, completely unkillable, and unimaginably bored. Words cannot describe how terrified their subjects are.
- Big "NO!": Lukys gives one after Warlock takes the Chaos Crystal near the end of the ceremony. Not that it mattered, Lukys and his group succeed 100% while Warlock ends up ensuring the destruction of the planet
- Can't Spit It Out: Both Arkady and Declan
- Damsel in Distress: Arkady lampshades it herself, noting that she has rarely been in control of her life. Much of the series has her as prisoner of some kind and even did a stint as a slave. Even in the end as an immortal 65 million years later, she still needs to be rescued...from NASA
- Deadpan Snarker - Maralyce, at times.Arkady: Do you really think Cayal is immortal?Maralyce: Thought so when I first met him. He hasn't done much in the past eight thousand years to dissuade me of that opinion.
- Depraved Bisexual: Jaxyn
- Who is perversely known as the Lord of Temperance, the only Tide Lord with any form of self-restraint (Cayal and Brynden gave him that reputation as a prank).
- Distant Finale: Very distant. 65,000,000 years distant.
- Earth All Along: Amyrantha is an alien world, but at the end of the story the remaining Tide Lords have gated to a new world and lived 65 million years there. The new planet is our Earth
- Elemental Powers: If they were only immortal, they'd be envied or regarded as freaks. Unfortunately all the Tide Lords have elemental magic to varying degrees ranging from making a strong breeze or small fire to obliterating continents with tsunamis and earthquakes. Besides the 4 traditional elements, the human senses are considered part of the elemental group, so a Tide Lord can make a person blind or destroy their equilibrium.
- "Everybody Dies" Ending: Oh yeah. There are only seven survivors of the final battle. And this isn't from the people participating in the battle, it's from the planet that the battle took place on.
- Failure Hero: Declan may be an experienced spymaster but it seems his real talent lies in failing most of the time through a combination of bad luck, ignorance, and his own stubborness. His failures include the 'last battle' where the enemy win without even throwing a punch
- Fantasy Gun Control: Lampshaded at the end of the series, the Tide Lords don't like to have their business pried into so they deliberately limit the technological development of the world. They do this through starting fake religions or blasting nations back into the stone age at the end of the series, which takes place on Earth sometime in our near future, the Tide Lords are weary of the constant destruction and have allowed the Earth to progress without their interference. Technology reaches a point where books no longer exist and asteroid mining is viable.
- Go-Go Enslavement: Happens to Arkady and what she ends up in, makes Princess Leia's slave outfit look like a nun's habit
- Grand Theft Me: has a role in the plot of The Chaos Crystal. Among other things, Lukys needs the Chaos Crystal to transfer his lover's consciousness into a more suitable (as in "not a rat") body. Cayal uses the promise of a new body is as bait to get Elyssa's cooperation in their plans.
- Half-Human Hybrid: The Crasii come in several flavours with canine and feline being the most common.
- Happiness in Slavery: A Crasii has one of three reactions to immortals: Fawning and willing obedience, hatred that becomes fawning and willing obedience (since they are magically compelled to obey), and hatred that stays that way (since these ones are immune to the compulsion). They are also naturally subservient to humans in general, though their feelings on that vary far more.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: Elyssa has her soul planted inside Arkady in order to take other Arkady's far more beautiful body. This backfires when Elyssa loses a contest of wills between the two and Arkady ends up getting her immortality
- Holier Than Thou: Brynden's attitudes towards the other immortals.
- Immortality Immorality: Kentravyon especially but all the immortals tend to be shockingly callous when it comes to the lives of mortals. They consciously do get better about this when they reach their new world, Earth. Though some of them still do things like start the Black Plague
- Immortal Procreation Clause: Immortals cannot reproduce with each other, but they can father or bear the children of mortals. These children are mortals known as Tidewatchers. New immortals are created by a person with an extreme will to survive is burned by the Eternal Flame, which Cayal had long since extinguished.
- At least, that's the official story. The truth, as Lukys revealed after Declan accidentally became immortal, is that anyone more than half-immortal by blood—that is, having an immortal ancestor as well as an immortal parent—(will to survive is irrelevant) who is burned alive (any flame will do) will turn immortal.
- Love Makes You Crazy: Or at least rather obsessive in Lukys's case.
- The Magic Goes Away: The Tide ebbs and flows for centuries at a time, hence the name.
- Mineral MacGuffin: The Chaos Crystal/Bedlam Stone.
- Parrot Pet Position: Coron the rat, Lukys' Loyal Animal Companion (well...sort of: 'Coron' is actually Coryna, Lukys' immortal love, trapped by accident in the body of a rat in a Grand Theft Me gone wrong.
- Person of Mass Destruction: Any Tide Lord during High Tide. They destroy civilzations on a regular basis.
- Psychopathic Man Child: Pellys, especially after he was beheaded
- "Shaggy Dog" Story: Well over two thirds of the actual text in the series is about building political conflict between two neighboring nations that various Tide Lords are helping along. All of this ultimately becomes irrelevant when the entire planet explodes, killing everyone on it other than a handful of the more rational Tide Lords.
- Who Wants to Live Forever?: Cayal's problem. Strangely, though he was suicidal at eight thousand, he seems to have gotten over it at the age of 65 million. It turns out to be a phase some Tide Lords go through
- With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Truest of Kentravyon but to a lesser (or at least less obvious) extent with most of the Tide Lords.
