History Literature / PilgrennonsChildren

* ABNegative: Dana shares the blood type B- with her genetic mother and 9% of the general population.

* ABNegative: Dana has a [[spoiler:rare blood type, which Jananin shares, allowing her to donate blood when Dana is found to be anemic spoiler:from the forcible blood draw in ''The Emerald Forge''.]]

* AdultsAreUseless: Dana's teachers show varying levels of incompetence, ignorance, overwork, and general apathy. Miss Robinson in ''Pilgrennon's Beacon'' in particular, is so ignorant that she makes an ableist comment to Pauline implying that Dana's autism is an act for 'attention' and is so incompetent that she fails to implement her own solutions to keep Dana safe from the bullies that have been reported to the school.

* AntiVillain: Ivor Pilgrennon. His former research is illegal and deeply unethical. Initially when Dana encounters him after a decade in hiding, he provides a highly curated and misleading version of events. When he does admit the truth to her, his attitude is somewhat self-pitying. On the other hand, he expresses remorse for his past behaviour and seems to genuinely care about Dana and the other children. Complicated further by a revelation of childhood trauma [[spoiler:caused by his abusive parents and sister's suicide]], and when it becomes apparent that he doesn't see autism as a disability, sees autistic people as a persecuted minority, and was motivated to some degree by the belief he was helping.

* DesignerBabies: Ivor [[spoiler:donated sperm from his autistic patients anonymously to a fertility clinic, which resulted in Alpha's conception. He created embryos by combining his own edited DNA with Blake's stolen ova and a number of other women's donated ova to create the other four children. Jananin refers to his efforts as "eugenics experiments."]]

* DramaticDrop: In ''Pilgrennon's Beacon'' Dana and Jananin are eating together when the TV starts showing a missing persons report about Dana. When a police image of Jananin appears on TV, Jananin drops her fork.

* {{EMP}}: 'Compton bomb' is a name popularized by the media for explosively pumped flux compression generators after Ivor first went into hiding and set off one that destroyed his research institute, using the resulting chaos to flee. In ''Pilgrennon's Beacon'' Jananin expresses concern that Ivor will set off a device that will destroy the devices in the children's brains, causing severe brain damage. In ''Pilgrennon's Gambit'' [[spoiler:Ivor sets off a Compton bomb on a building site in London to allow him, Jananin, and Dana to break in to the bunker where one of the Cerberus computers is concealed. Jananin and Ivor try to use a smaller Compton bomb to destroy the Cerberus computer in the bunker, which detonates but fails to generate an EMP, as a result of a broken fuse used as a component. The first bomb kills Alpha, who was outside Blake's Faraday-cage car thanks to [[NiceJobBreakingItHero a Good Samaritan who was concerned about children left unattended]], and sets off a wave of crime and destruction for miles around. Pilgrennon sets off another Compton bomb while being pursued in a helicopter, [[HeroicSacrifice destroying his pursuers and himself and saving Jananin and Dana.]]]]

* FullConversionCyborg: The villains of ''The Emerald Forge'' have used Jananin's technology to [[spoiler:place the brain and some of the body tissue of a dolphin into a mechanical wyvern body that spoiler:Gamma can control with her mind.]]

* HeroicFireRescue: While [[spoiler:the Emerald Forge is burning down, Gamma climbs a chimney to escape the flames. Dana flies to her on the wyvern's back and pulls her onto the wyvern. Too weighed down to fly, the wyvern enters a controlled descent and deposits both of them relatively unharmed on the ground.]]

* IaijutsuPractitioner: Jananin Blake is trained in iaido and carries and uses Japanese blades in several scenes, notably when she [[spoiler:attempts to execute Ivor with the kesa giri strike in an act of Revenge. HeroesPreferSwords, KatanasAreJustBetter, and the character has some ties to Japan as explained in the second book. On Fuyutoshi, firearms and explosives are strictly prohibited (which is later explained as a plot point) and the police as well as some civilians are allowed to carry blades, with this part of the book including a martial arts fight]].

* KidsAreCruel: Dana's classmate Abigail delights in tormenting her, and her 'henchgirls' do whatever Abigail wants. Early in the first book, Dana gets into a fight with Abigail and some of her cronies in the bathroom, falls, and suffers a concussion, which is how the device in her brain is discovered.

* MixAndMatchCritters: The villains of ''The Emerald Forge'' [[spoiler: conduct experiments on animals that include grafting a monkey's head onto a cat's body and grafting multiple cobra heads onto a Komodo dragon in order to satisfy Gamma's obsession with mythological creatures.]]

* ThePowerOfHate: During her BattleInTheCenterOfTheMind with[[spoiler: Cerberus, Dana draws on every horrible experience she's ever had, which causes Cerberus's two remaining heads to turn on each other.]]

** Prendick can see through the eyes of one of [[spoiler:Gamma's mind-controlled eagles, since both of them have transceivers in their brains. spoiler:Gamma uses this to ensure his loyalty, as she can take away his sight at a moment's notice.]]

* StalkerWithATestTube: Ivor stole Jananin's ova to create Dana and Cale because she had autism, and because he believed future generations shouldn't be deprived of her intelligence.
* TastesLikePurple: One effect of the titular beacon, which Ivor Pilgrennon set up to attract his children, is temporary synesthesia.

* {{Technopath}}: Because Dana could mentally interface to computers during the critical learning period of her infancy, she can interpret data from other computers as easily as information from her senses. She can use GPS data to navigate, copy test answers from school computers, and play a VR game without a headset, among other things.

* WhyCouldntYouBeDifferent: Ivor's professional and personal interest in autism seems to be rooted in childhood trauma from the abuse of his older sister Lydia, who had undiagnosed autism, by their parents. [[spoiler:When she regressed due to bullying, his mother tried to turn Ivor against her and claimed she was insane. She denied her access to her interests in the hope it would force her to be normal, but instead she just sat in her room and did nothing. After she was finally DrivenToSuicide at fourteen, their parents threw out her belongings and never mentioned her again. Ivor attempts to psychoanalyse himself and his family in ''Pilgrennon's Gambit'' and concludes that his mother was unintentionally re-enacting abuse of herself by her own father on Lydia, and that Ivor's unethical experiments were motivated by the subconscious fear that if he had a child naturally, and it was neurotypical and had a personality similar to his mother's, he would be unable to love it because of what she had done to Lydia, thereby perpetuating a cycle of emotional abuse.]]

[[quoteright:227:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pilgrennons_beacon.jpg]]

* DesignerBabies: Ivor [[spoiler:donated sperm from his autistic patients anonymously to a fertility clinic, which resulted in Alpha's conception. He created embryos by combining his own edited DNA with Blake's stolen ova and a number of other women's donated ova to create the other four children. Jananin refers to his efforts as "eugenics experiments."
-->'''Ivor Pilgrennon''': If 50% of you is Jananin, then 49% is me, and the other one is all bits and ends from other people.]]

* DesignerBabies: Ivor donated sperm from his autistic patients anonymously to a fertility clinic, which resulted in Alpha's conception. He created embryos by combining his own edited DNA with Blake's stolen ova and a number of other women's donated ova to create the other four children. Jananin refers to his efforts as "eugenics experiments."
-->'''Ivor Pilgrennon''': If 50% of you is Jananin, then 49% is me, and the other one is all bits and ends from other people.

* EnemyMine: In ''Pilgrennon's Gambit'', Ivor, Jananin, and Dana are forced to work together to take down the supercomputer Cerberus, which [[VoteEarlyVoteOften manipulates votes]] for the government]].