Beautiful Creatures
| Written by: | Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl |
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| Central Theme: | |
| Synopsis: | |
| Genre(s): | Fantasy, Romance |
| Series: | Caster Chronicles |
| Followed by: | Beautiful Darkness |
| First published: | December 1, 2009 |
Beautiful Creatures, by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl, is a young adult fantasy book that was released in 2009. It is the first book in the Caster Chronicles.
The book introduces Ethan Wate, a teenage boy living in Gaitlin, a small town in the southern United States. Ethan cannot wait to graduate high school and get out of what he believes to be a boring small town where nothing ever happens. Then he meets Lena.
Lena Duchannes is a beautiful new girl with a dark secret. She is a member of a family of Casters, short for Spellcasters. Each child born into her family has special powers. Lena's family is unique among the Casters because they are cursed. Every girl in their family, on her sixteenth birthday, is Claimed by either Light or Dark. Lena's cousin and former best friend, Ridley, went Dark recently, and she is terrified that the same thing is going to happen to her.
She and Ethan also face the challenge of the impossibility of the relationship between a Mortal and a Caster. For the Mortal, every touch or kiss is an electric shock, and to "be together physically" would result in his death.
- All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Averted by Ethan, who couldn't want a cheerleader less.
- Alpha Bitch: Savannah Snow, with Emily and Eden as her Girl Posse.
- Can't Have Sex Ever: Lena and Ethan, Ridley and Link, any Caster/Mortal or Incubus/Mortal pairing.
- Caught in the Rain: Happens to Lena and Ethan several times. Justified because Lena has power over the rain and fire.
- Curse: In Lena's family, Caster girls are Claimed by Light or Dark on their sixteenth birthdays. They have no choice, unlike most other Casters. This is because Lena's ancestor tried to revive her dead lover.
- Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday: All the Caster girls in Lena's family.
- Dark Is Evil: The Dark Casters
- High School Dance: The Winter Formal in Book One. Ends up resembling a much tamer version of Stephen King's Carrie, but the mayhem's not actually Lena's doing.
- How Do I Shot Web?: Lena seems to experience this for a while in book 1.
- Light Is Good: the Light Casters
- Our Vampires Are Different: a Blood Incubus is basically the same thing as a vampire. A normal Incubus is similar, but it feeds off dreams and emotions instead of blood. Book 2 is very unclear about what a Succubus is, aside from being a female Incumbus.
Tropes used in Beautiful Darkness (which need to be moved to a page for that book) include:
- Break His Heart to Save Him: Lena tries to do this for Ethan in Beautiful Darkness
- Love Dodecahedron: In book 2. Ethan is in love with Lena, who he believes left him for John Breed, and is begining to be attracted to Olivia. Link is also attracted to Olivia, but at the same time he's still pining for Ridley. Ridley and John are often seen together, so subtext could lead to interpretation of them as a couple. Lila Jane Evers' first love was Macon Ravenwood, but he had to leave her because he was afraid of hurting her, so she met Ethan's father. She's still enough in love with Macon to save him from dying. He never stopped loving her.
- Token Evil Teammate: Ridley for a short time in Beautiful Darkness.