recommendations!
I just finished A Madness of Angels by Kate Griffin (which is the pseudonym of Catherine Webb), and it got me wondering if anyone has any recommendations for fantasy/sci-fi written by women. I'm really interested in how female authors use fantasy, since it's so incredibly dominated by the "lord of the rings, burly Strider-type saves little woman
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Anyway, in case you're still interested & in no particular order:
1) Cat Valente - GORGEOUS prose, deep fascination with fairytale and the oral tradition and a keen awareness of gender.
2) Ellen Kushner - ditto, actually. 'Swordspoint', the swashbuckling tale of political intrigue, corruption, betrayal, love and loyalty set in a nonexistant city, has been one of my very favourite books for more than twenty years. Her book 'The Privilege of the Sword' is a wonderful sequel, written more recently, which features a female protagonist. (There's also a sort of prequel called 'The Fall of the Kings' which is pretty good, written with her partner Delia Sherman.)
3) Robin Hobb. God, she's good. Or at least, the Farseer Trilogy, the Live Ship Traders Trilogy, and the Tawny Man Trilogy, are all very very good indeed. She consciously takes the cliches and tropes of High Fantasy and subverts them again and again. Brilliant books. (Male protagonists, by and large.)
4) Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books are Alternate History books with magic and gods and warriors and so forth, but not at all in the Tolkien tradition; her protagonist is a courtesan/spy/geisha/priestess figure. Masses of sex (specifically BDSM) but written with integrity and thoughtfulness, rather than just being gratuitous shagging.
5) CJ Cherryh has been writing hard SF for years, and her female protagonists are serious and kickass.
6) Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is adored by people whose opinion I respect, but I've not had the chance to read it yet myself. I gather it's got lots of elaborate politics and world-building in space.
7) Naomi Novik's Temeraire books are Alternate History Napoleonic War stories with dragons - basically 'Master and Commander', but, y'know - with dragons. She's pretty damned brilliant, and over the course of the books the protagonist (male) is continuing to grow and change and question the mores and value systems he's always upheld. Her world-building is fabulous.
8) Barbara Hambly has been one of my favourite writers since I was a teenager, and I still &hearts her books to pieces. 'Dragonsbane' is perhaps my favourite (although the sequels, written many years later, ripped my heart out of my chest and rubbed it in ground glass - you might want to avoid the sequels). If you can find 'The Ladies of Mandrigyn', or the other Sunwolf/Starhawk books, they make wonderful reading too. As do the Windrose books and...actually, Hambly's generally reliable.
9) Vonda N McIntyre - another rather fabulous writer of original and innovative SF, complete with characters of colour, polyamorous marriages and interesting politics.
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I have heard lots of good things about Octavia Butler's SF, but I've not read any yet myself.
There's rather a lot of mediocre Monster!Chicklit Urban Fantasy stuff on the shelves at the moment, with Hot Chicks pouting on the front covers. LK Hamilton is perhaps the most successful person in this genre, but her Anita Blake sequence gets quite dire after the first 2 or 3 books, and Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse books aren't anything like as good as the series 'True Blood', which they inspired. However, Kim Harrison's 'Hollows' books are pretty good, Tanya Huff's 'Blood' and 'Smoke sequences are both very engaging, and Carrie Vaughn's 'Kitty Norville' werewolf books are usually fun and readable and not too cliched. Rachel Caine's 'Weather Wardens' series has a genuinely original spin on magic, and her 'Morganville Vampires' books remind me, tonally, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer - although in terms of plot and character they're very different.
In YA fantasy, Cassandra Clare, Holly Black, Claudia Grey are all writing some pretty damned fabulous books with strong, interesting female protagonists. Sarah Rees Brennan is also worth keeping an eye out for - I've not yet managed to snag copies of her books, but simply on the basis of her LJ I do want to find them.
Marion Zimmer Bradley's another oldskool SF/Fantasy writer well worth checking out, as is Ursula K Leguin, of course - she was seminal (no pun intended) almost to the extent that Tolkien was, introducing the idea of writing a wizard as something other than the Wise Old Yodalike Dude. And I grew up devouring Andre Norton's SF books too - she's another oldschool SF writer with some fascinating ideas, worth checking out. Robin McKinley has some lovely books too - The Hero And The Crown, for example, and The Blue Sword - these are both classics with female heroes. Mercedes Lackey has written zillions of books, and although I feel rather guilty about enjoying them, because they're often rife with cliche and cheesy things, somehow they're still oddly more-ish. She writes female protagonists more often than not.
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I love Naomi Novik, and Robin McKinley (Sunshine is actually maybe my favorite book, and whenever I am faced with shelves and shelves of depressingly awful vampire books for teenagers -with pouty girls on the cover, uncannily enough- i just want to wave the book around shouting "no, it can be done well!"), and I actually read "the privilege of the sword" years ago, and loved it. The other authors sound FANTASTIC too, and I'll definitely be haunting my library shelves like crazy. Thank you so much! Again!
I'm also a big fan of the Mercy Thompson series by Patricia Briggs. Mercy's a great protagonist, and the series covers some serious issues while weaving some really great worldbuilding with vampires and werewolves and fae stuff. It's frustrating how saturated a lot of the magical realism stuff is with terrible work, because I really love stuff like that (not written by a woman or starring one, but I love the Dresden Files).
I'm definitely going to check these out! Also I just finished the sequel to "A Madness of Angels", and it's JUST as good, which is GREAT because I was so nervous that the sequel wouldn't be able to come close to the wonderful wonderful first novel. But it's fantastic!
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