| abstract
| - A trilogy by Tanya Huff, which consists of:
* Summon The Keeper: Claire Hansen is a Keeper, a woman of magical Heroic Lineage who fixes the holes in the fabric of reality by using magic. She's accompanied by a Loyal Animal Companion / guard cat named Austin. She gets summoned to a Hell Hotel with a Hell Gate in the basement and an evil Keeper immobilized in room six...and then the site babysitter/DirtyOldMan owner takes off and leaves her holding the bag. Unable to fix the stalemate situation, Claire realizes that she may be stuck running the hotel for life and waiting on the supernatural clientele that visit. Currently living in the hotel are a friendly French ghost named Jacques and the hunky jack-of-all-trades employee Dean. One's too young and the other's too dead, Claire says, but... And then there's her sister and fellow Keeper Diana, a girl who's not too uptight about making sure that situations don't explode.
* The Second Summoning: Claire and Dean see if they can juggle a Keeper/Bystander relationship, but after they have Their First Time, all kinds of metaphysical consequences spring up. Specifically in the form of a teen angel and teen demon. Diana comes to the rescue in her own unique way, and gets a pet.
* Long Hot Summoning: Diana's first summons after graduating from high school is to try and save a mall from becoming a portal to the Otherside. Claire joins her, along with Sam and a bunch of street kids turned elves. And she meets a girl. Meanwhile, Dean and Austin are at home dealing with troublesome guests. The series ended due to Muse Existence Failure: the series was inspired by Huff's geriatric cat Austin, and after he died she couldn't bear to continue the series any more. These books provide examples of:
* Adventurer Archaeologist: Lance is convinced that he's one. Dr. Redik thinks this is poppycock...but then again, he's the one sleeping with a mummy.
* Air Vent Passageway: This only gets used because it's on the Otherside, where everyone can end up a Reality Warper.
* Always Lawful Good: Dean. He has one brief moment of hesitation about saving someone he thinks is abusing his girlfriend, and immediately thinks he should go to Hell for it. Later he actually kind of lies in order to keep Lance away from the paying customers.
* Annoying Younger Sibling: Diana. Adding to the fun, thanks to Youngest Child Wins logic and all other Keepers being only children, she's the most powerful Keeper in the world.
* Blank Book
* Bottomless Bladder: Averted. "There's a demon loose in the world and we're waiting by the side of the road for a cat to pee."
* Canada, Eh?: Claire travels all over.
* Cats Are Mean: Occasionally, when they are in the mood or pissed off.
* Cats Have Nine Lives: Austin seems to be on his last.
* Chaste Hero: Dean in book one. After losing his virginity, he finally becomes aware of other women checking him out.
* Cultural Stereoypes: Dean is from Newfoundland, something that's very much emphasized (not just in his Canadian Accents dialogue that Claire doesn't always comprehend) in the series.
* Dirty Old Man: Augustus Smythe and the mall security guard.
* Zeus in his guest appearance, but that probably goes without saying.
* Egyptian Mythology: Bast, Anubis, and Osiris make an appearance.
* Everyone Can See It: Dean and Claire
* Evil Gloating: it's a requirement for any villain to do this...while the heroes stall.
* Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Sasha, mostly.
* Good Witch Versus Bad Witch: Regular Keepers vs. Sara the evil Keeper.
* Half-Human Hybrid / Our Elves Are Better: the street kids are morphing into elves on the Otherside. Pointy Ears and You Gotta Have Blue Hair seem to do it.
* I See Dead People: in this universe, everyone seems to be able to see ghosts, regardless of magical ability.
* Hell Hound: Baby
* Heroic Sacrifice: Dean was entirely willing to make one. Ditto Kris.
* King Arthur
* Laser-Guided Amnesia: Keepers frequently wipe/mess with memories of Bystanders.
* Love Triangle: Claire, Dean, and Jacques
* Magic Mirror
* A Man Is Not a Virgin: Subverted in book one, but spectacularly played straight with explosive results in book two.
* May-December Romance: Not really, but Claire is only 7 years older than Dean, and she is totally disturbed by that.
* Meaningful Name: Elysian Fields Guest House, especially when nine retired Greek gods from Classical Mythology come to stay.
* Muggles: Known here as Bystanders.
* Mummy: Meryat, who's after Life Energy.
* My Card: Claire's magical business card changes slogans with the situation.
* Neat Freak: Dean
* No Name Given: entities from Hell before they've earned a name.
* No Periods, Period, averted: Diana has to make multiple trips to a public restroom in order to close down a hole. Two teenage boys notice this and comment on it. Diana then claims to be menstruating and explains how that works in great gory detail. Then there's the time the evil overlord finds her tampon and she and Kris elaborate in gross detail as to what it's for.
* Not Good with People: Claire. When Hell tells you, "YOU'RE NOT A PEOPLE PERSON, ARE YOU?", you know it's bad.
* One Degree of Separation: Any time Dean talks to someone, they seem to have a connection to someone he knows from playing hockey.
* One-Gender Race: the "meat minds."
* Our Angels Are Different: Especially if they manifest as human teenagers. Or cats.
* Our Demons Are Different: Especially if they manifest as human teenagers.
* Our Ghosts Are Different: Jacques can only manifest in rooms that hold an object that was in the room with him when he died. Keepers can also give ghosts flesh for a night, for sexual purposes. Jacques is all too aware of this fact.
* Painting the Fourth Wall: Hell TALKS IN CAPITAL LETTERS to itself a lot.
* Precognition: Diana has it.
* Single Woman Seeks Good Man
* Schoolgirl Lesbians: Zigzagged around. In the first book Diana claims that she is one and Claire's reaction is basically 'Since when?' Come the second book Sam takes advantage of his higher knowledge to reveal that her one limited sexual experience was with a guy and 'it wasn't his fault that it turned out so badly.' Yet in the third book her attraction to Kris seems to be genuine (and reciprocated) but by this stage Diana is out of high school so doesn't quite fit the schoolgirl half of the equation.
* Snarky Non-Human Sidekick/Talking Animal: The cats.
* Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs: now they play basketball.
* Taken for Granite: Dean finds a basilisk at the mall.
* The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Lance, for Meryat.
* The Power of Love
* There Is Only One Bed
* Unresolved Sexual Tension: Claire and Dean. "You could cut the unresolved sexual tension between you two with a knife, and I, personally, am tired of it."
* Virgin Sacrifice: Sara's evil plan goes awry the first time because the 15-year-old neighbor next door turned out not to be one. The second time she finds the right virgin...Dean.
* Werewolf: The triplets.
* What Measure Is a Non-Human?: the main debate of book 2. Diana thinks that killing/releasing Samuel and Byleth is wrong now that they've become human and have personalities. Claire thinks that a demon needs to get eliminated from the world, period, and if the angel has to go in order to do it, then that's the case.
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