Subject: Books with Lots of Tropes
Author:
Posted on: 2018-12-28 20:01:00 UTC
This is my first real post (I'm not counting my introduction post or the Boarders according to Willis thing), so yay! Now that I've been introduced to the PPC I've been noticing tropes in the books I read a lot more than I did before, and thought it might be fun to see what books Boarders have found that contain a lot of tropes.
If you want to add a book full of tropes, please start with the title of the book so others can avoid unwanted spoilers, and list some of the plot and the tropes in the book.
For me, one of the most trope filled series I have read is the Summoner series. It starts out with an orphan being left outside a remote town and adopted by a kind yet stern man, who helps him grow into a good moral boy. This trope often occurs so that we feel empathy for the protagonist but they still have a guiding figure. The boy, named Fletcher, is very hard working and kind. He is fairly poor and is enemies with the son of the richest man in town. This is a huge trope; sometimes it seems that every poor child in a novel has a rich enemy. The rich kid tries to murder him after Fletcher beats him in a tavern brawl with the help of a tramp that the rich kid mocked, but Fletcher discovers he can summon demons in this moment of need. He is forced to flee town and goes to a magic academy where he learns to cast spells and summon more demons. He makes a friend group from other unpopular kids, and they are often picked on by the snotty nobles, because there's no such thing as a nice high-born person. Oh, except the elf Fletcher has a crush on but the nobles hate. So here we have the tropes of the rich and the poor at odds AND a forbidden love type trope. They work hard and catch up to the nobles despite their advantages, and Fletcher manages to win the final magic competition at the end of the year despite the judges cheating and showing favor to the nobles. Another example of the rich vs poor trope, where the hard working poor boy beats the nobles in a "surprise turn of events". He also learns that the demon he owns is very rare and slightly more powerful than average, and one that has only ever been wielded by their enemies. This is another trope, where the protagonist has unusual and slightly dark powers that no one really understands. My summary here is obviously biased towards showing the tropes, but they're apparent at every turn in this novel. (Also, this book has a similar plot and similar tropes to Harry Potter, but I won't go into that)
Another novel with an even more unbearable trope for me is The Ship of the Dead, the last book of the Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard series. In this book, Magnus has to defeat the god Loki, and challenges him to an insult contest that shrinks the loser down to the size of a powerless bug. But Magnus doesn't win the insult contest through insults, oh no, he does it through telling Loki about how wonderful Magnus's friends are and about the power of friendship, and telling Loki that he is all alone. This is a lovely message, but very, very common. It's also much too in-your-face. Magnus is quite literally saved by "the magic of friendship". Not even by his friends themselves, but by essentially the concept of friendship. If this was through a sacrifice or finding strength in his friends this would be fine, but it's not. It's quite literally a speech/rant that defeats a god.
Well that's all I have, I look forward to learning about other tropes filled books!