More or less verbatim. I loved it.

But Paks is not your typical hero and Moon remains among my favorite artists for managing to portray a coming of age story through a woman’s eyes. One of the very few to do so. And she did it so well.

But, Del is not really a being one of the boys characters. She’s driven and brittle.

I have to agree that the warrior women have become more common to write, but I think they continue to be difficult to write well.

Kate Elliot and Mercedes Lackey are casual reads for me. Their worlds are moderately complelling (Honestly, I think Elliot should focus less on her characters and more on the world they inhabit. And Lackey will forever be associated with ElfQuest Fanfiction for me.)

I actually prefer Danerys out of all of GRRMs characters. She begins the story so floundering and she is learning how to exercise power. I might also have a soft spot for slightly insane characters

*cackle* I adore the Blue Moon books (“Where’d you get the dragon?” “I rescued him from a princess.” *bap!*) , and am proud of myself for figuring out the Hawk&Fisher connection a few books into the series. I don’t *dis*like punch-throwing warrior women AT ALL – hell, I love Simon Green and he hardly ever writes any other KIND of woman – I just think they’ve become too easy to write. It annoys me that so many fantasy novels seem to think Feisty McPlayswithswords is the default female POV, as if a woman’s only worthy of sympathy if she wants to be one of the boys. Even when it’s *unrealistic as all hell* for the society being written about.

In addition to the Farseer books, I’d recommend Robin Hobb’s Liveship Traders (the middle set in a trilogy of trilogies). People seem to like them less than the Farseer books which bracket them, but for some reason they’re my favorites. ANYway, one of the things I like is the portrayal of women in the main family – several of different ages, and almost all of them demonstrating their own strength. One iron-willed matriarch who knows which strings to pull, one excessively-devoted woman who still keeps it together while her family’s going through hell, one Action Girl, and one spoiled-brat teenager who’s a cross between Scarlett O’Hara and Catherine the Great. Not to mention a whore with a heart of titanium (much more useful than a heart of gold) as an awesome secondary character. (Robin Hobb also writes as Megan Lindholm. I recommend anything of hers except for her blog.)

And yeah, I love Ista in Bujold’s books, and not surprisingly have a sneaking fondness for Fawn in the recent “Sharing Knife” series. Mercedes Lackey is enjoyable, but more of a comfort read for me – I don’t expect stunning originality, just a fun few hours.

Sadly, nobody (including me, most of the time) is willing to slog through the writing style, but Tolkien’s got some *awesome* female character in the Silmarillion. Galadriel? Blacksmithing, rebellion-leading, refugee-herding apostate. Luthien got locked in a tower by her overprotective father, magicked herself up a rope and cloak of invisibility, and set off to rescue her lover. That being the MIDpoint of a story where she ends up besting Sauron’s *boss* and convincing the local deities to break a bunch of unbreakable laws.

Sharyn McCrumb writes mystery, but I’m very fond of the police dispatcher in her Appalachian Ballads series, who’s trying to advance her career purely because she *wants to do a better job*, not for squishy relationship reasons. She’s in a rocky relationship, knows it’s rocky, and has a very pragmatic but believable approach, trying to ensure her protection while seeing if the relationship is worth preserving. McCrumb writes awesome female characters in general.

Random thoughts – I’m rarely impressed with authors who have clearly set out to Write A Strong Female Character. The characters I start to believe in are the ones who have been written as *people* – taking GRRM as an example, I like and sympathize with Arya just fine, but Sansa, Cersei and Catelyn “feel” more solid to me. There’s a synchronicity between their motivations and their actions that seems more workable than Rebellious Fantasy Tomboy #1,578. Something that I see all too rarely in female fantasy characters is…ambition, I guess. Wanting to excel for its own sake is something I see fairly often in male characters, but rarely in fictional women, who seem to need some unrelated reason.

She also has a trilogy (kind of, the third book is more of a ‘tales about..’ sort) about 2 female mercenaries, The Oathbound, Oathbreakers, and Oathblood. They are set in the Valdemar universe, but in a different country than Valdemar. By The Sword is about another female merc, Kerowyn, who is another one of my favorites.

And I could go on for pages on these books, Mercedes Lackey is my favorite fantasy author. It doesn’t hurt that I am a horse nut, and the horse-like, super-intelligent Companions are major characters in her books as well. (And no, no ‘Invincable’s here)

Seriously, if you like fantasy, and you have not read any of Lackey’s books, you are missing out on some amazing stuff.

And another one I like: Lynn Flewelling’s the Oracle’s Queen trilogy has a female protagonist who does have to become a ruler.