Looking back, this week I had another look at some great heroines of SFF I’ve encountered over the past three years, with More Great Heroines Part 1 on Monday, and More Great Heroines Part 2 on Thursday.

In addition to my 10, commenters also suggested:

• Persimmon Gaunt in Chris Willrich’s Scroll Of Years series (Genre: Sword & Sorcery)

• Breq in Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice & Ancillary Sword (Genre: Science Fiction)

• Zuleika in Mike, Linda & Louise Carey & Nimit Malavia’s The Steel Seraglio (Genre: Fantasy)

• Drozde  in Mike, Linda & Louise Carey’s The House of War and Witness  (Genre: Fantasy)

• Isyllt Iskaldur of Amanda Downum’s Necromancer Chronicles series (Genre: Fantasy)

• Samarkar-la in Elizabeth Bear’s Eternal Sky series (Genre: Epic Fantasy)

A nice list to be going on with, but I am happy to hear more suggestions if you want to keep ’em coming. 😉

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As for my own heroines, it was put to me on Twitter that I needed to include Malian, Rue, et al on my great heroines list. But I guess I was thinking more of books I’d read by other writers—especially as, looking a little further back, I did take a look at my own heroines fairly recently:

Celebrating My Women Characters: The Heir Of Night

Celebrating My Women Characters: Thornspell

Celebrating My Women Characters: The Gathering Of The Lost

Celebrating My Women Characters: Yorindesarinen

And yes, I shall have a similar look at the heroes too, by’n’by, but am in heroines mode right now… 😉

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Looking Ahead: A Guest Post From Ashley Capes, Plus More…

Coming up on Thursday this week, I’m very pleased to be featuring a guest post from Ashley Capes, a fellow poet and Fantasy author from Australia. Ashley has been a regular “…on Anything, Really” commenter for a few years now and interviewed me a few months back so with his own debut novel, City Of Masks, recently published I felt it was time to return the hospitality—and give readers the opportunity to find out more.

Also coming up this week (warning: what follows may be subject to change without notice!) I’ve been thinking a bit about what makes a SFF heroine great, about the recent blood moon and the moon in Fantasy, and also about whether “story” is greater than the sum of its constituent “craft” parts…

If the posts flow on into next week then that’s all to the good, right? Righto! (Or should that be, “write on”… ;-))

This photo was taken on a “rain-wild day” in Mt Aspiring National Park, not far from a place called Paradise…

Orthanc, Lothlorien and Boromir’s death scene were all filmed in this general area—although I feel this particular landscape is unique to itself.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Each entry is accompanied by a quote from the books in which the place appears, currently either The Heir Of Night or The Gathering Of The Lost, or both.

The series is currently traversing “W”, the final letter in this series—but there are still a few more places in the Haarth world beginning with “W”. 😉

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Westwind Hold:  a satellite fort of the Keep of Winds.
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‘ “The river Telimbras,” said Kyr. “It marks the boundary between the Gray Lands and Jaransor. In Westwind Hold,” he added, his expression impassive, “we call it the River of No Return.” ‘

~ from © The Heir Of Night, The Wall of Night Book One: Chapter 25 — The River of No Return
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‘Haimyr studied his wine with great interest. “The winter was severe and they had no provisions, even if they could have found shelter. But there are no habitations in Jaransor. The Westwind scouts thought it possible their bodies might never be found, not in that country.” ‘

~  from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 2 — A Libation for Seruth

On Monday, I commenced a two-part post looking at some favourite heroines from SFF I’ve read over the past three years (since my Six Great Heroines Of SFF, Part 1 & Part 2 posted in 2011.) All ten heroines are in books by contemporary authors that have been relatively recently published, i.e. not just recently read by me (although that is also the case.)

The list is presented in alphabetical order by heroine’s name; no further preference should be inferred.

Now, please meet my concluding five.

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M is for Mercy Thompson in Patricia Briggs’ Moon Called & Frost Burned (Genre: Urban Fantasy)

I am something of a latecomer to the Mercy Thompson fanclub, having discovered the series in 2011, five years after Moon Called was first published—but I was hooked from Book 1. What’s not to like, after all, about a coyote shapeshifter who is also a motor mechanic? But in fact Mercy is such a smart, feisty and good-hearted character that I feel it would be very hard not to like her. I also think Patricia Briggs’ take on the supernatural-as-part-of-our-everyday-world with the Mercy Thompson novels is one of the better urban fantasy series out there. And fun: that, too.
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R is for Rachael in Teresa Frohock’s Miserere–An Autumn Tale (Genre: Epic Fantasy)

I really love the character of Rachael in Miserere because she is both a paladin and a flawed individual, albeit one who is “more sinned against than sinning.” She is also cussedly stubborn and refuses to take the easy way out of very difficult circumstances, or to give up, despite almost overwhelming odds. Rachael is undoubtedly “kick-ass”, too, including when the chips are down, which makes her a very different proposition to the cookie-cutter style of “kickass-but-not-really” heroines fund in a lot of paranormal urban fantasy in particular.
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S is for Shallan in Brandon Sanderson’s The Way Of Kings & Words Of Radiance (Genre: Epic Fantasy)

Shallan is another favourite heroine of recent epic reads. She’s smart (and a tad smartass, too, from time to time), resourceful, courageous, and powerful—and although she appears to be youthful and naive when first encountered in the story (and in fact is) you gradually learn there’s a great deal more to her backstory. I also like the way she both develops as a character in the realtime of the story, at the same time as the mystery of her backstory unfolds. Definitely an interesting, multi-dimensional heroine and one I am keen to meet again as the Stormlight series continues.

T is for Teia in Elspeth Cooper’s Trinity Rising & The Wild Hunt (Genre: Epic Fantasy)

I wasn’t sure about Teia when I first met her in Elspeth Cooper’s Trinity Rising. I thought she might have been going to be one of those “everyone-is-mean-to” style of secondary female characters—but she not only turned out to be one of the most important characters in the series, but also my favourite character. Teia has had difficult times, but she is a heroine who rises above it through quiet resolution and a “know thyself” inner strength. I also really like that Teia, unusually for (epic) fantasy, is first pregnant and then a new mother as the story progresses, experiences that are integral to her “journey.”
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Y is for Yeine in NK Jemisin’s The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms (Genre: Epic Fantasy)

Yeine is one of the more intriguing heroines I’ve encountered in recent reading. Initially she presents as a classic romantic heroine, albeit in an epic fantasy setting: i.e. Yeine is young, an inexperienced player thrust into the cut-and-thrust of dynastic ambition and political intrigue, and apparently at the mercy of (male) gods. To survive, Yeine has to evolve and change in ways that are as unexpected to herself as to others. And survival, at the end, may look far different from what either the reader, or Yeine for that matter, expects at the story’s inception. So-o: complex, diverse, and definitely not a black-and-white (that’s a pun actually, but you’ll have to read the story to get it) character…

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So there you are, between Monday and today, a sampler of ten of the more compelling heroines I’ve discovered in my SFF reading over the past three years. Here’s the full list:

Bitterblue (Bitterblue)
Blue (The Raven Boys)
Canny (Mortal Fire)
Karou (Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy)
Mieli (The Quantum Thief; The Fractal Prince)
Mercy Thompson (Mercy Thompson series)
Rachael (Miserere–An Autumn Tale)
Shallan (The Way Of Kings; Words Of Radiance)
Teia (The Wild Hunt series)
Yeine (The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms)

You may feel there are a few “obvious” omissions, such as Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games trilogy, but in fact I mentioned Katniss—and a great number of other heroines, too—three years ago so have deliberately focused on books read since then, with this current post. 😉

So how about you? Who’s a favourite heroine, or heroines, from your recent reading (SFF or otherwise?)

~ by Rebecca Fisher

Introduction:

Welcome to one of the strangest shows you’ve ever seen. Part totally-fabricated biography, part anachronistic historic-political drama, part Da Vinci Code conspiracy, part buddy-comedy, with a smattering of courtroom dramas, supernaturally themed mysteries, and romantic intrigue, Da Vinci’s Demons wants to be absolutely everything, all at the same time.

Everything but the kitchen sink is thrown into this show, so much so that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of the myriad of subplots that meander throughout the course of each eight-episode season. Even Vlad Țepeș of Count Dracula fame pops in for a guest-starring role.

Perhaps the show is best described simply as a fictional account of Leonardo da Vinci’s adventurous youth: his inventions, his associates, his travels and his participation in various historical events.

Premise:

Set predominantly in 15th century Florence during the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci is already notorious for his artistic skill, wild ideas, and unorthodox sexual practices. He fits into his surroundings like a spark with gunpowder. Florence and its de-facto rulers, the Medici family, are currently under immense pressure from Rome to submit to their control. Lorenzo de’ Medici (Elliot Cowan), his brother Giuliano (Tom Bateman), and his wife Clarice (Lara Pulver), are all passionately defensive of Florence’s beauty and independence, and forge an unlikely alliance with Da Vinci in the hopes of maintaining its freedom.

Lorenzo de’ Medici and his wife Clarice

On a more personal note, da Vinci is on a quest of his own. As the illegitimate son of a notary, he’s always been an embarrassment to his father, and knows nothing of his mother save her name: Caterina. Over the course of the season he comes to realize that her disappearance may have something to do with a cult called the Sons of Mithras, whose members encourage him to seek out an artefact known as the Book of Leaves.

Story:

The balancing act between these two plot strands is somewhat clumsy. The wider political intrigue and the cult storylines seldom intersect, and since both vie for screen-time it’s difficult to decide which of the two should be considered the focus of the show. That’s not even getting into the various subplots involving Leonardo’s dalliance with Lorenzo’s mistress (who has an agenda of her own), but one of the advantages to having such a hectic array of plots is that the show is never boring.

This is a real dress worn in the show – I’m not kidding.

There’s also very little attempt to adhere to history accuracy — although you only need to glimpse the astounding outfits of the women to realize that. Though some famous events are touched upon (and the Pazzi Conspiracy makes up the greater part of the last two episodes), the show is content to work with its own rules and more-or-less make things up as it goes.

Characters:

Da Vinci is played by Tom Riley as a sort of hyperactive savant, and the viewer occasionally gets glimpses into the way his mind works: when a flock of birds is released, he sees them as moving sketches; when a new idea comes to him, we see the outline of his plan drawn in his mind before it’s committed to paper.

Yeah, it’s almost exactly like what Sherlock Holmes does on BBC’s Sherlock. In fact, this da Vinci is what you’d get if you combined Tony Stark with Sherlock Holmes – intensely intelligent, rather selfish, somewhat anti-social, and yet treated as attractive because of rather than in spite of how wrapped up he is in his own little world.

Leonardo and Nicco experiment

The supporting cast can be roughly divided into the rulers of Florence: Lorenzo de’ Medici and his wife and brother, all as charming as they are ruthless, and Leonardo’s little collection of comrades: sardonic Zoroaster (Gregg Chillin), long-suffering Nicco (Eros Vlahos), and free-spirited Vanessa (Hera Hilmar).

And of course, every show needs a decent antagonist. Blake Ritson plays Girolamo Riario, a pitiless agent of the Church who will stop at nothing to reach the Book of Leaves before Leonardo, and has a number of spies and assassins at his beck and call.

Conclusion:

All the assorted elements of Da Vinci’s Demons add up to a rather disjointed show — though it deserves credit for taking risks and trying new things as opposed to treading the same familiar paths. Its central theme is that of reason, logic and light overcoming superstition, but it also celebrates free love, creativity and liberty over that which seeks to stifle and control.

In its energy and originality, Da Vinci’s Demons encapsulates both these outlooks.

Next Time:

Veering more toward light science-fiction than epic fantasy is Chuck — an average guy who just happens to have an entire database of government secrets downloaded into his head. Now he’s the most important asset of the CIA, who aren’t above using this Average Joe to hunt down all manner of spies, assassins and international criminals.

About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her They’re All Fictional blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, as well as preceding reviews, click on:

Big Worlds On Small Screens

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

from Meditation XVII by John Donne, 1572-1631

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Strictly speaking, this excerpt from Meditation XVII is not poetry, but prose—but since John Donne’s chief fame is as a poet and we live in an age when prose may be presented as poetry, I decided the excerpt was legitimate Tuesday Poem fare. Enjoy!

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To check out the featured poem on the Tuesday Poem Hub and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click here or on the Quill icon in the sidebar.

A-ways back in 2011, I posted a two-part article titled Six Great Heroines Of SFF, Part 1 & Part 2 — with considerably more names listed at the end of the second post and via readers’ comments.

In that first article, I tended to focus on the classic heroines encountered in my formative SFF reading. Three years on, I’d like to highlight some of the heroines I’ve encountered in more recent reading. I stress that this is by no means an exhaustive survey, but simply compiled from books I’ve had a chance to read since that time. The list is presented in alphabetical order by heroine’s name; no further preference should be inferred. 😉

So here goes!

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B is for Bitterblue from Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue (Genre: YA; Fantasy)

As those who follow this blog will know, I love Bitterblue. In terms of why, I can’t really say it better than Kristin Cashore herself did, during our interview in June 2012: “I love her loneliness. I love her loyalty. I love how much she loves her friends. I love how hard she tries, and I love her refusal to give up.” To which I added: “I was also impressed by her generosity, as well as her “fidelity”:  the way she strives to keeps faith with her subjects, and the truth of the past, and those she loves, even those who cause her more than a little trouble – not just ‘cool friends.'”

Enough said, I hope!
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B is also for Blue in Maggie Stiefvater’s The Raven Boys (Genre: YA; Urban Fantasy)

I really enjoyed the character of Blue, who is curious, compassionate and shows considerable strength of character. She is also smart and more than holds her own with the quartet of eponymous—and troublesome—Raven Boys. I did not properly report back on The Raven Boys but I loved it and have the second book in the series to read when time allows; I am really looking forward to it.
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C is for Canny from Elizabeth Knox’s Mortal Fire (Genre: YA; Fantasy)

If a name says it all, that name is Canny Mochrie—with the surname’s echo to “mockery.”  Canny is tough, tenacious, sharp as the proverbial sampler full of needles, and chock full of magic. I also really loved that Canny is a heroine with a Pasifika heritage, as well as being a genius at mathematics and a magical force-of-nature. Definitely a heroine who delivers on difference.
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K is for Karou in Laini Taylor’s Daughter Of Smoke and Bone (Genre: YA; Fantasy)

Karou is one of the more “magical” heroines I have encountered of recent years, particularly in following her journey from blue-haired art student in Prague, and stealer of teeth from museums, through to someone—and something—considerably more by the end of the book. Karou’s tale begins as a romance and a mystery, and although both the romance and the mystery are essential to the continuing story, both transmute—like the character—into so much more… All of which repays a read.
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M is for Mieli in Hannu Rajaniemi’s The Quantum Thief & The Fractal Prince (Genre: Science Fiction)

Hannu Rajaniemi’s series is some of the more interesting science fiction I have read of recent years. I particularly like the character of Mieli, the warrior who has made a difficult bargain and has to deal with the consequences of that as the story develops. I found her intriguing from the beginning, but I liked the way she grew as a character and found her portrayal increasingly luminous as the story progressed.

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To meet my remaining five heroines, you will have to check back in on Thursday, following the Tuesday Poem tomorrow and Big World Worlds On Small Screens on Wednesday.

“I loved your ‘world of Haarth’ series so much, I thought I might steal the idea for my book.”

~ Belinda Crawford

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Heh! Belinda was referring to the A Geography Of Haarth post series—a clear case of “steal at will!” 😉

Again, this comment came via Twitter.

“A book, too, can be a star, a living fire to lighten the darkness, leading out into the expanding universe.”

~ Madeleine L’Engle

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Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle In Time was one of my favourite books as a young reader. I feel this quote captures the flavour of her writing.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is exploring the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Each entry is accompanied by a quote from the books in which the place appears, currently either The Heir Of Night or The Gathering Of The Lost, or both.

The series is currently traversing “W”, the final letter in this series—although fortunately there are many places in the Haarth world beginning with “W”. 😉

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Westgate:  one of the largest islands forming the River city of Ij and the one closest to the western Road Gate; contains several market squares and a large warehouse quarter with headquarters of several major trading houses and embassies from other River cities.
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“The heralds’ Guild House was located on a large island known as Westgate, where the Main Road officially entered the city. For the first time since Terebanth, the main road branched at the foot of the hill where the heralds had drawn rein. One branch ran south to the river port and the Great Southern Gate, while the other led north, toward a smaller gate where red-roofed merchant houses sprawled along the city side of the river. The main, western gate was simply known as the Road Gate and the closer the heralds came to it the busier the road became. Merchants and other long distance travelers were joined by farmers and carters coming and going from the city markets, as well as country families eager for the sights and entertainment of the festival. First hawkers’ booths, and then inns and stables, began to crowd along either side of the road—and the clatter of hooves and jingle of harness, the creak of carts and the cries of the hawkers filled the afternoon air.”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost, The Wall of Night Book Two: Chapter 1 — The Road To Ij
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