Anne Logston. The Shadow books (Shadow, Shadow Hunt, and Shadow Dance) have an adult woman main character who is a lovable rogue. Her best friend is a female fighter. Her other books have also active female characters and usually there are at least two of them per book.

Robin McKinley has also good female charcters.

Steven Brust’s world is gender-equal even though the main character is male. But the most fearded and powerful sorcerer on that world is a woman and all of the female nobles are just as hot-headed and quick to anger as the males and fight their own duels.

Bujold’s fantasy books have as good female characters as her SF books. The main character of Paladin of Souls is a middle-aged, widowed woman.

Thanks for the Dave Duncan recommendation.

So many characters have been ruined for me over the years (some only ruined recently, by my feminist-thinking-of-late) by starting out so strong and wonderful and turning out so… blah! Ending up with the ‘true love’ who is always male and not doing a thing afterward! (or not near as much).

I wanted to BE Eowyn when I was younger, to play her in the movie if they made one (kudos to Miranda Otto, she was fantastic!) — and she still ended up in the Florence Nightingale syndrome with Faramir. She was as atypical as women got in Tolkien’s world and STILL she ended up with in a typical situation.

There are so many more: Hermione Granger. Ginny Weasley. Anne Shirley (especially Anne!). I recently finished reading a heretofore promising webcomic (Inverloch) that did the same thing. Great female characters (three! Out of six!) and none of them could do it without a man, in one way, shape, or form.

Jeff Smith’s BONE is so far delivering on it’s promise — both Grandma Ben and her granddaughter Thorn are fantastically strong and proactive characters. They’re heroes, plain and simple. So far, no one has ended up in a boy-girl-true-lurve episode, and I continue to live in hope.

Troubling thing is, I can’t think of any others.

So where are the rest? You heard me, authors: get writing. Write a novel, just like everyone else does. Write rangers, magi, healers, warriors. THEN randomize the pronouns used for each character, not basing profession on gender. REALLY mix it up. Let the warrior be a woman who kicks the ass of a would-be-rapist, or better yet, who doesn’t get threatened with rape at all.

Sounds fair to me.

Nw tht s srs flght f fncy.

wmn wth slf-rspct? Nt vn th wldst thr cld drm tht p.

-Dck

Bujold’s Cordelia remains a strong character in all the Barrayar novels, and the various women that her son Miles encounters are always fully rounded characters, not just ciphers and sexual fantasies (although Miles often fantasises about women, it’s always presented that his fantasies are interfering with the important business happening, and the women are busy sorting out the important business just as much as Miles).

Same thing you are saying! Interesting.

Just came back from Dragon*Con last week, and I loved it, but too many slave-Princess Leias and not enough women in creative costumes, compared to the guys. :( Women specialized in faeries and angels, men in super-heroes. (Some exceptions of course, but generalizing.)

Nice to find your blog!

I haven’t read MZB’s stuff since I started really thinking about these issues, so I hadn’t noticed any of the stuff you talked about, but it’s certainly something I’ll think about. I may give it another read.

There were a lot of suggestions on my LJ entry, but it really felt like “Look, there are exceptions!” without really talking much about where these ideas come from and what to do about them.

But, on MZB and The Firebrand–I wrote my undergrad thesis about four modern novels about Cassandra, and this was one of them. And I’d suggest that MZB wasn’t actually doing the all-men-suck thing so much as she was taking one extreme (gynarchy, Amazons, men who’re considered, say, incapable of rule) to make a point about our patriarchy. As you’re reading it, it seems silly. Imandra’s thinking it’s nuts to have a male ruler seems absurd. But, of course, we (OK, the unexamined we, but you know what I mean) find female rule absurd, QE2 notwithstanding. The “extremes” of Bailey’s gynarchy and goddess worship are really just the norms of our patriarchy and god worship; the fact that they seem extreme highlights our societal realities.

Or I BSed a quarter of my thesis, which is entirely possible and wouldn’t bother me too much, as I’ve graduated and moved on. ;)