The Obernewtyn Chronicles/YMMV

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Atthis is a Magnificent Bastard who has cunningly manipulated people and events, playing off of the fears and hopes of entire species to warp any respective mythologies within a one hundred mile radius of Elspeth, in order to make her their Chosen One, and hence make sure that the believers of said mythologies will sacrifice both their own lives and that of their followers for her sake.
• Magnificent Bastard: Ariel, who runs the gauntlet for this. His ability to manipulate people is the primary reason he has consistently managed to rise quickly through the ranks of any organization to positions of power.
• Nightmare Fuel: The shadows in The Stone Key blind the One and try to cut his tongue out. While it's not like he didn't deserve it, it's still scary.
• Unfortunate Implications: Many Sadorians want to breed out the inherent brutality in their blood, and abandon their savage language. But it eventually becomes pretty clear that the Sadorians are Arabic speakers and probably the descendents of Arabs or North Africans. Whoops.
  • It's said in-book that Mericanda (which is supposed to be America) shares a land-based border with Gadfia. So, in terms of geography... no... that doesn't really make a lot of sense. That said, there is a lot of bizarre geography described throughout the series.
    • It is stated in Book 1 that the Great White changed the shape of the land...
      • That much is a bit hard to believe, given that it'd require relocating one piece of the land across a rather large percentage of the globe's circumference. That degree of changing shape would require warping reality--and in turn mean the Great White couldn't have been caused by nukes. But see:
• You Fail Geography Forever: Carmody has admitted she cut up a map of the world and shuffled it up to create her mental map of the Land. But it's not the kind of series where this is hugely concerning.