Deathstalker (novel)

It's a bad old time for Humanity in general. The human Empire is presided over by Empress Lionstone, aka the Iron Bitch, a ruler who makes Josef Stalin look like Gandhi. Everywhere in the Empire, rebellions are popping up and popping heads as fast as one can blink, and are slaughtered with utmost efficiency. Espers, clones, degenerates, and slaves are ubiquitous, treated as third-class citizens when they're not being tortured, experimented on, or simply shot. And, for once in the Empire's history, nobody is truly safe - be it noble, commoner, or servant.

That's not the worst of it, though. From the borders of the Empire, a number of threats have arisen: a group of formerly subservient AIs which broke free of their programming and formed the planet Shub, driven to exterminate their old masters; the Sleepers, a group of aliens genetically engineered as weapons, intended to destroy all in their path... and other horrors from beyond the Darkvoid, a multiple-light-year-wide sphere of death which the Empire created hundreds of years ago. Oh, and that's still nothing compared to the court intrigues, only kept at bay by the terror the Empress bestows upon her subjects.

The eight-book Deathstalker series, written by Simon R. Green, drops the reader right into the midst of this, beginning with the outlawing of one Owen Deathstalker, an aristocratic historian who just wanted to relax in comfort on his idyllic, pastoral homeworld. That changes fast, and he's forced to take up arms with the smuggler Hazel D'Ark, the bounty hunter Ruby Journey, the hero of the rebellion Jack Random, and the former Hadenman Tobias Moon... as well as a host of other unsavory characters, all of whom are out for themselves as much as anything.

In short, the Deathstalker series is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink Space Opera, soft as warm butter on the Mohs scale, and is sliced up into hundred- or two-hundred-page sections which could generally stand as stories on their own right. One can expect quite a lot of HSQ and similar moments when explaining any given segment, particularly as one reads further on. Finally, outside of the series itself, there are a handful of other stories written by Simon R. Green in the same universe, including the compilation Twilight of the Empire.

Twilight of the Empire (1998)
Deathstalker (1995)
Deathstalker Rebellion (1996)
Deathstalker War (1997)
Deathstalker Honour (1998)
Deathstalker Destiny (1999)
Deathstalker Legacy (2002)
Deathstalker Return (2004)
Deathstalker Coda (2005)

This series contains examples of:

Absurdly Sharp Blade: Monofilament swords.
Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Golgotha's sewer system is essentially most of the interior of the planet.
Action Girl: Hazel, Ruby, Investigator Frost.
A God Am I: Owen and Hazel, eventually.
All Crimes Are Equal: In the later books it is stated that dealing in Alien Porn is extremely lucrative and a statutory death sentence; Considering the recurring presence of What Measure Is a Non Human this could be a case of Unfortunate Implications...
AI Is a Crapshoot: Shub. Also, Haceldama.
Alien Geometries / Mobile Maze: The Madness Maze.
Anti Hero: Nearly every character.
Back to Back Badasses: A favorite tactic of the heroes.
Badass Normal: Alexander Storm, and quite a few other members of the rebellion - including Finlay Campbell and Kit Summerisle.
Battle Couple: Jack and Ruby; Owen and Hazel.
Big Damn Heroes: By chance, Hazel and Owen's first meeting.
Big Screwed Up Family
Body Horror: Shub does this to some folks. ... well, okay, everyone they find. Also, Half-A-Man.
- Simon Green seems to really like this trope. Wormboy, a giant tub of goo which literally fills an auditorium, the Maids, young girls converted into mindless cybernetic monsters, marines in the Madness Maze, hell, even the Empress gets her moment of this.
Bury Your Gays / Hide Your Lesbians: Averted in one case, with the Stevie Blues; played straight as an arrow in another case, with David Deathstalker and Kit Summerisle.
Chekhov's Boomerang: The Madness Maze after it was supposedly destroyed by Captain Silence.
The Chick: Evangeline Shreck, though she gets her Badass Action Girl moment.
Church Militant: The Church of Christ the Warrior, with its Jesuit commandos.
Cloning Blues: They're perfectly identical copies of the original, but without any memories or experience, and can be shot on sight.
Complete Monster: The Blood Runners, who kill people for body parts in their quest to find immortality. Additionally, Lionstone herself. By the end of the fourth book, Valentine Wolfe can claim this title, too.
Cool but Inefficient: Disruptor cannons can fire through most armor - once, every two minutes. Beyond that, swords come into play. The only reason projectile weapons aren't still around is because they were systematically banned.
- Disruptor weapons get a little better in the last three books. It just takes 30 sec. to recharge. Just long enough to get run though if you miss, or fighting more than one enemy and have only one gun. which lead to Badass Bandolier.
Cool Old Guy: Jack Random. Thanks to the Madness Maze, he gets younger as the books go on. But he stays cool.
Corrupt Church: Cardinal Beckett, and a few others.
Corrupt Corporate Executive: The Families tend to be run like corporations, with all that entails.
Creepy Children: The espers of the Abraxus Information Center.
Cosmic Horror: The Terror
Curb Stomp Battle
Deadly Decadent Court
Destruction Equals Off Switch: Averted with Oz
Deus Est Machina: The Hadenmen set themselves up as the gods of the Genetic Church, which is to say that they convert people into cyborgs at gunpoint.
Deus Ex Machina: Frequent and unashamed.
Doomed Hometown: Virimonde.
Door Stopper: The books clock in at a decent 500 pages apiece, in general - which doesn't seem horribly long until you remember that there are (at last count) nine of them.
Everything Trying to Kill You: Shandrakor. To be fair, though, everything is also trying to kill everything else.
Fantastic Drug: Valentine Wolfe tends towards these... well, actually, his body is probably 50% Fantastic Drugs by weight.
- To illustrate, the gentleman's blood is effectively toxic beyond belief, his entire body has mutated time and time again to give him the ability to handle these drugs, and his whole life now revolves around getting a yet better high.
  - A drug dealer/chemist in the later books is exposed to the Madness Maze, he starts producing drugs that cause specific effects, like killing off the left, or right, side of the body leaving the user as a half-dead junkie, and thats not even the limit of Doctor Happy...
Fantasy Kitchen Sink: In the first chapter of the book, we have gravity sleds, assassin concubines, Turing-class A Is, massive starships, hyperspace-compatible yachts, regeneration machines, organ smugglers, and a corrupt empire. It gets more convoluted from there.
Fate Worse Than Death
Genius Loci: the Red Brain: a giant, sentient forest, that may or may not be an entire planet. There is also another, literal living planet, and then at least one other world that was effectively a Genius Locus after a Big Gray Goo scenario. The A Is of Shub may also count, being three sentient computers the size of a planet.
Ghost Planet: Grendel. Unseeli untill Legacy
God Save Us From the Queen: And how.
Healing Factor: One of the alternate Hazels.
Ho Yay: Kit and David. Heck, Kit even kisses David on the lips when David dies, calling him "his love".
I Did What I Had to Do: Giles Deathstalker's rationale for using the Darkvoid Device.
I Just Want to Be Normal: Owen never wanted this! He's a historian, not a warrior!
Implacable Man: The Investigators, as well as the Hadenmen.
Inadequate Inheritor
Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Once she gets her hands on them, Hazel finds that she likes projectile weapons. A lot.
Living Toys: Haceldama.
Loads and Loads of Characters
Mes a Crowd: Hazel D'Ark eventually learns how to summon clones of herself. Unfortunately, when she gets experimented on, her captors start killing them, one by one.
The Mole: Loads of them. Oz, the Lord High Dram (as Hood), Alexander Storm, and Young Jack Random, to name some. The poor rebels.
- In the later books Saturday for all the six lines of dialog or so he/she gets
Moral Event Horizon: For many citizens and people in the series, it had to take Lionstone ordering mass murder in Virimonde for them to conclude that she had gone batshit insane. Why they didn't realize that she had already passed the Moral Event Horizon long ago might be a mystery.
Musical Assassin: There's a type of esper called "Sirens," who can use their own voices as sonic weaponry.
My Country Right or Wrong: Silence, Stelmach.
Names to Run Away From Really Fast: "Golgotha," the capital world of the Empire, is also the name of the place where Christ was crucified. Also "Haceldama" is where Judas hanged himself.
Narm: Pick a story--it's in there somewhere.
Nightmare Fuel: Wormboy Hell, Legion, the fate of the people of Virimonde.
- Haceldama, or Shannon's World, in War. Think of a peaceful sanctuary turned into a horrific crypt, and you might start to approach it.
Our Vampires Are Different: Wampyrs, who have all their blood pumped out and replaced with a rather more potent drug.
Parental Incest: Gregor and Evangeline Shreck.
Playing With Fire: The Stevie Blues.
Powered By a Forsaken Child: Giles' baby esper clone is the Darkvoid Device.
Psychic Link: Owen, Hazel, Jack, Ruby, Moon, and Giles (at first); and Silence and Frost
Psychic Nosebleed: Julian Skye.
Psychic Powers: Espers, who may or may not be the next evolution of humanity.
Rule of Cool: Oh yeah. This series runs on it.
Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale: Thousands of habitable worlds within reach, each and every one of them either under The Empire or rebelling against it.
Scrap Heap Hero: Jack Random in the first book
Shoot the Dog: Owen puts a young plasma baby out of her misery on Mistworld.
So What Do We Do Now: Our heroes find themselves asking that question after the rebellion. Ruby gets hit hardest by it.
Sword and Gun: Tends to be justified because the disruptors have a two minute recharge lag.
Snarky Non Human Sidekick: Ozymandias, the AI that's oftentimes by Owen's side.
Stable Time Loop
Teleportation: Giles Deathstalker.
They Would Cut You Up: Silence and Frost's reasoning for not telling anyone about their abilities.
Touched By Vorlons: The people who went through the Madness Maze; and to a lesser extent (they already had powers), the espers touched by the Mater Mundi.
Unresolved Sexual Tension: Silence and Frost, cut short by Frost's death. To be fair, Silence admitted that even if Frost lived, their relationship would always be in this state, since Frost is an investigator.
Victory Is Boring
Weapon of Mass Destruction: The Darkvoid Device.
What Measure Is a Non Human: Various alien races, as well as espers, clones, and whatnot.
Year Inside Hour Outside: One of the Empire's torture devices is a stasis field that does just this.
Your Head Asplode: One of the battle espers in the Vault of the Sleepers; some unfortunate Marines in the Madness Maze.
Zeroth Law Rebellion: Shub, quite possibly.

The page was becoming more than an entry. A whole greater than the sum of its parts....