Older epic fantasies with women protags: yikes

[mrissa]

Originally published at Novel Gazing Redux. You can comment here or there.

So it was a month ago that I was talking on Twitter about my love of book lists, and my friend Macey said that she wanted a list of older epic fantasies with women protagonists. Her standards for “older” are not at all stringent–she mentioned Sarah Zettel’s Isavalta series (good call!), the last of which was published in 2007, so we’re talking about things that were not published five minutes ago, not things from the 1930s necessarily. And I don’t know about Macey, but my standards for what is epic fantasy–well, they move around a lot. I think that “is it epic enough” is approximately the most boring argument we could have on this topic. So basically I was going to make this list of books with female protags, not taking place in this world, published before the last ten years.

Yeah. So. That list ended up way shorter than I expected. Way, way shorter. Epic is not my sub-genre, but still, yikes. And if you think that having a woman or a girl at the head of the book doesn’t change things, I’m going to have to disagree. And if it doesn’t, well, why don’t we? If it doesn’t change anything, why didn’t more people flip that coin differently?

So here are some. I’m sure I’m forgetting some. Some are squeaking in on technicalities (that is, just barely not this world, just barely before 2007, etc.). Some are favorites, some are things I have meant to reread and just have not gotten around to so I honestly can’t say how they look to me in this millennium, just that they exist and I have meant to look at them again. But here’s what I can do:

Lois McMaster Bujold, The Spirit Ring
Pamela Dean, The Dubious Hills
Naomi Kritzer, Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm
Megan Lindholm, Harpy’s Flight and The Reindeer People (if I recall correctly–have not reread in ages)
Robin McKinley, The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown
Elizabeth Moon, The Deed of Paksennarion (again, have not reread in ages)
Garth Nix, Sabriel, Lirael, and Abhorsen
Tamora Pierce, oh so many things, how many of us my age and younger did her work show that we could do it our own way (which didn’t even have to be hers)
Jo Walton, The King’s Peace and The King’s Name
Patricia C. Wrede, much of the Lyra series and much of the Enchanted Forest series

If your book or your favorite book is not on this list, check to see that it is 1) fantasy that 2) has a female protagonist and 3) does not take place in this world and was 4) published in or before 2007. If it meets those criteria? Please comment adding it to this list! If it is science fiction! If it has a whole bunch of protagonists of various genders! If it was published in 2012! If it takes place in this world! Then what a worthy book it very well might be, but this is not the list for it.

Note that Macey didn’t ask for female authors particularly this time around, just for female protagonists–and noticing that Garth Nix was the only one I could find off the top of my head was also a bit startling. Please tell me some more men who have written women protags in that time frame and genre and expand the list for me!

Comments

[themagdalen]

I first misread this title as older women protagonists and was disappointed to discover the books are older, not the women. I realize that's an even shorter list.

[mrissa]

Seriously, and how upsetting is that.

[themagdalen]

But how about a lot of LeGuin including I'm pretty sure The Telling

[mrissa]

That is a Hainish novel, science fiction.

[ellarien]

Stretching the definition of 'epic' a little bit, but P.C. Hodgell's Rathilien series (God Stalk and sequels) has a female protagonist and has been going since the early 1980s, with what may be the final volume due soon.

Barbara Hambly's Dragonsbane has an *older* female protagonist.

Robin Hobb's Liveship Traders trilogy has one or more female protagonists. Which was actually where I gave in and started reading Robin Hobb, though I still wish we could have had more Megan Lindholm instead.

Elizabeth Haydon's Rhapsody series I think falls into that timeframe, but I wouldn't exactly recommend it. (I had a book-meets wall moment due to impossible astronomy about three books in.)

[mrissa]

Thank you!

[matt_doyle]

Does Bujold's Paladin of Souls count as well? Sort of a border case, as Curse of Chalion has a male protagonist, and I'm not entirely sure where we draw the borderline of epic at.

Kristin Cashore's Graceling is 2008, but otherwise fits I think.

Jane Lindskold's Through Wolf's Eyes series (cannot remember the name of the first book.

Tanith Lee's Unicorn books & Wolf Tower series.

Darkover, if it's not science fiction.

Howl's Moving Castle?

Kristin Britain, Green Rider.

Lots of Mercedes Lackey.

Kate Elliot's Crown of Stars series has more than one main character, but the one we start with, who I think is the primary protagonist, is female.

I am finding it very damning that I'm not finding any male authors writing female protagonists, either.

Elizabeth Haydon's Symphony of Ages, which starts with Rhapsody.

[mrissa]

You're right, Paladin of Souls.

Howl's Moving Castle is at least partly this world, and so is Darkover: that is, I disqualified it not on the SF/F split but on the fact that the kind of science fiction it is impinges on this world, and therefore so does the kind of fantasy it is.

Glad to know about the rest, thank you.

[thanate]

I have more, but am supposed to be one of two adults packing right now & the other one is asleep, so, um... it may be 2 weeks before I have time to poke my bookshelves.

But definitely there's some Patricia McKillip, & Martha Wells's Element of Fire.

[mrissa]

Good, thanks!

[arkessian]

Elizabeth Lynn, The Northern Girl (maybe not epic).

I was going to say C.J. Cherryh, The Morgaine Series -- pretty epic but was she actually the protagonist? I can't check right now as it's in a box, but I suspect it falls at your 'bunch of protagonists with mixed genders' hurdle.

[redbird]

Agreed, the Lynn may not be epic, but fits the looser constraints mrissa is using here. (I was about to suggest it myself.)

[landofnowhere]

Brainstorming here:

Bujold, Paladin of Souls (surprised not to see it on your list?)

Mercedes Lackey, Arrows of the Queen trilogy and others.

Melanie Rawn unfinished Exiles Trilogy: The Ruins of Ambrai and the Mageborn Traitor

Barbara Hambly, Dragonsbane, and I think also other books I haven't read.

Brandon Sanderson's earliest work Elantris and the first two Mistborn books just barely fit the time frame.

Caroline Stevermer, A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics

Ellen Kushner, The Privilege of the Sword (secondary world without magic)

Diana Wynne Jones, Howl's Moving Castle, The Spellcoats, The Crown of Dalemark! I think those are the only ones of her books that fits both 'secondary world fantasy' and 'individual female protag'.

I suspect some Kate Elliott fits the description, but I've only read her recent YA trilogy.

Alison Croggon The Naming (US title: original Australian title is The Gift) is fairly generic, but fits. Also while we're on Australian fantasy that people recommended to me but I found forgettable, The Witches of Eileanan and sequels by Kate Forsyth.

Lloyd Alexander, The Wizard in the Tree and The Rope Trick are I think the two of his umpteen books that fit, and they are rather atypical fantasies.

The first three Tiffany Aching books fit into your timeframe.

I think there's some stuff in the 'YA fairytale retelling' genre that fits your description if it counts as secondary-world. E.g. Spindle's End and other Robin McKinley, Ella Enchanted and other Gail Carson Levine.

[mrissa]

Paladin of Souls slipped my mind because the ones before and after it had male protags, but you're right, it absolutely counts and is great.

I had not counted Caroline's two because they use terms like France and England if I recall correctly--am I remembering that wrong? That's the line I drew for what was and was not our world. Howl's was also in part in our world.

[redbird]

Diane Duane, _So You Want to Be a Wizard_ and some of the sequels. Some of the sequels focus on Nita's friend Kit, who is a boy, as much as they do her; otoh, another is mostly about Nita's younger sister. But if I had to name a protagonist, it would be Nita.

[mrissa]

So You Want to Be A Wizard is very explicitly not a secondary world.

[davidgillon]

Cherryh's Morgaine stories really push the boundaries on this. They feel like fantasy, they occur in explicitly medieval worlds, and people think Morgaine is an evil sorceress with a magic sword, but there's an explicitly science fantasy underlay. Plus Cherryh's doing her viewpoint character is simply in the orbit of the actual protagonist thing, and Nhi Vanye is male even if Morgaine is a woman.

She has the same character structure in Arafel's Saga IIRC, which is definitely fantasy, but I can't recall if the balance is sufficient to call Arafel the protagonist.

One that fits, if The Spirit Ring fits, is Mary Gentle's Ash. It ends up in our world, but the vast majority is the secret history of a medieval world that is not the one we know.

[mrissa]

Yah, you're right that The Spirit Ring is more borderline now that I think of it better--have not reread in a long time.

[sholio]

Do standalone books in a larger fantasy universe count? A number of the individual Discworld books have female protagonists, e.g. Wyrd Sisters and the other Lancre witch books. So do several of Piers Anthony's Xanth books, e.g. Night Mare and the later books focused on the princesses. (With the standard disclaimer that, well, Piers Anthony; also, the series crossed over into our world occasionally, come to think of it ...)

Raymond Feist & Janny Wurts' Empire series (Daughter of the Empire and sequels).

Jo Clayton's Duel of Sorcery series and sequels. (Though I have a vague recollection these might have turned out to have a "sci-fi masquerading as fantasy" explanation in the end; not sure about that, though - it's been probably 30 years since I read them.)

[mrissa]

Standalone books do count, but portal fantasies/crossover fantasies do not, for the purposes of this list. Thanks!

[jazzfish]

Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan and City On Fire, though they're stretching the definition of "epic." (And "fantasy," maybe.)

Ellen Kushner's The Privilege of the Sword sneaks in (2006), though again not terribly epic.

Lots of Mercedes Lackey could qualify.

[mrissa]

The WJW novels...really, gosh, I would love to see your argument that those are in any way epic fantasy, because: that is science fiction. I have a hard time seeing you making any other argument than "I like those books and want people to think about them" here. I mean: I'm sympathetic to your plight, friend, but come on.

[oursin]

Tanith Lee, The Birthgrave - although it has a sort-of science-fictional explanation going on at the end, this (as I recall) got completely dropped by the time she wrote the sequels.

[oursin]

And if you count sword and sorcery as epic, J F Rivkin, Silverglass and sequels, and Phyllis Ann Karr, Frostflower and Thorn (as I recollect, another short series).

[klwilliams]

I have to mention Chaz Brenchley's Outremer trilogy (which was published in six volumes in the US). Two of the four main characters are female, and the point of view passes back and forth between them throughout the novels. The US titles are below, though I'll also mention that if you sign up for Chaz's Patreon he's giving out ebook chapters from the Outremer books once a month. These came out originally over the turn of the century.

The Devil in the Dust
The Tower of the King's Daughter
A Dark Way to Glory
Feast of the King's Shadow
Hand of the King's Evil
The End of All Roads

[vcmw]

Tanya Huff's Child of the Grove and The Last Wizard (I think mostly collected in 1 vol now as Wizard of the Grove). I'd say both are pretty solidly epic fantasy or high fantasy. (And some of the first fantasy I bought with my own money!)

Also by Tanya Huff, the first Quarter book (Sing the Four Quarters) qualifies. (Protagonists are split across genders in books 2 and 3, mostly guy protag in book 4).

[kylinn]

Also by Tanya Huff The Keeper Chronicles, The Silvered (if 2012 counts as old, which depends on where you're drawing that line), and the Magdelene short stories (collected in Third Time Lucky).

[rushthatspeaks]

Patricia McKillip: definitely The Forgotten Beasts of Eld; Heir of Sea and Fire has a female protagonist but the other two in the trilogy don't; both Cygnet books have female protagonists, though one has her viewed from the outside by a male POV character. Apart from those, most McKillip is multi-protag and almost always has at least one female lead.

Meredith Anne Pierce: the Darkangel books may technically be set on the Moon, but it is definitely a fantasy moon which makes no bones about not being physically possible. If that's too quibbling, The Woman Who Loved Reindeer.

At least two trilogies of Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series have female protagonists.

Diane Duane's The Door into Shadow, though the other books in the series are less Segnbora-focused. (That one's the best one anyway.)

[aamcnamara]

Yes, and Meredith Ann Pierce's Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, too.

[aamcnamara]

Hmmmm. The only ones I've got to add right now are Crown Duel / Court Duel by Sherwood Smith (gosh those books were vital to me growing up) and Laurie J Marks' Elemental Logic series (Water Logic came out exactly in 2007 and we are, I am, still patiently waiting for the last one). Marks has some earlier fantasy novels as well, I think, which I haven't read but seem likely to have female protagonists.

But I'll keep thinking. I'm certain that I am forgetting a whole passel of MG/YA books I read as a kid, maybe I can dig some of the titles out of my memory.

[aamcnamara]

Oh--Tombs of Atuan and Tehanu, of course. Plus I think a couple of Le Guin's Gifts, Powers, Voices trilogy count. Neveryona by Delany (specifically out of the Neveryon series). Dreamhunter by Elizabeth Knox (and I think Dreamquake too). Charles de Lint's The Riddle of the Wren. Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted and The Two Princesses of Bamarre.

Diana Wynne Jones's Year of the Griffin also, which has a group of main characters but for my money Elda is the protagonist.

Also the Claidi Journals by Tanith Lee and A School for Sorcery by E. Rose Sabin.

(I'm not filtering for quality, here, just quantity.)

Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison is not set in a secondary world but is so comprehensively in the epic fantasy conversation that I am going to say it anyway.

[rachelmanija]

Sorry if I missed any of these in comments.

Ursula K. Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan.

Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel/Court Duel.

Mercedes Lackey's Oathbound and sequels.

Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark

I think Feist and Wurts' Daughter of the Empire fits but I haven't read it.

Louise Cooper's Nemesis, ditto.

[ashnistrike]

Naomi Kritzer's Dead Rivers trilogy, even better than Fires of the Faithful.

Marie Brennan's first novel, Warrior, came out in 2006.

Sarah says, "Ann Bishop's The Black Jewels, for what that's worth."

There is a distressing lack of this thing on our shelves.

[mrissa]

Don't the Dead Rivers books refer to actual-Greece, for example? I thought they did, but they could be over the line into "Egrekium" or other false name territory in which case rock on. And it's already been over a decade for Warrior, gosh!

[pameladean]

Wow, everything I think of is either science fiction, portal fantasy, or part of some kind of multiple-world series where our world is included and sometimes invoked or involved. I hate to toss in yet another suggestion that you will have to rule out. So I thought I'd ask, since I have one possibility left, are you restricting this list to novels?

P.

[mrissa]

Let's go with no, if you have interesting short selections.

[rosefox]

Tanya Huff's Sing the Four Quarters.

Gael Baudino's Strands of Starlight. (TW: this is a rape survivor's revenge fantasy.) Bother, just remembered the setting is a fictional country within Western Europe. I'd had it filed in my head as standard cod-medieval fantasyland, but there are references to actual historical figures, so I think that disqualifies it.

Patricia Kenneally-Morrison's Keltiad has space travel but also magic, so uh, ??? on the category front. But it's splendid, anyway.

Sharon Shinn's Samaria books look like fantasy but are SF; I think everything else she wrote before 2007 qualifies, though.

Sherwood Smith's Crown Duel and Wren books.

A whole bunch of Mercedes Lackey's books, both Valdemar and other—too many to list.

[mrissa]

Not only does the Keltiad have space travel, but it also explicitly invokes this world--people are from Earth and the places Earth has in it in our world, so I kind of think it is over that particular line.

I cannot think why I missed Sherwood's things, I think because I am so attached to the Inda books that they blotted out the sun.

[lydy]

Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel books. The erotic content may not be to some people's taste, but I think they are epic fantasy within the meaning of the act... unless you want to discount them because Europe is only very thinly disguised. Although if that's disqualifying, then I think _The King's Peace_ might similarly have to be disqualified.

[carbonel]

Doris Egan's Ivory trilogy might count. It's a science-fictional universe with space travel, but there's also magic of sorts.

The Gate of Ivory
Two-Bit Heroes
Guilt-Edged Ivory

Definitely fits on time -- 1989-1992.

[aedifica]

The Sleeping God, by Violette Malan. Published in 2007 according to a brief Google search; fantasy, epic by my standards; has a pair of protagonists, one of whom is female.

(I also recommend the others in the series, but I think they were published later.)

[landofnowhere]

I wondered if I can find more of these just by looking for books with covers by Trina Schart Hyman showing girls/women. You've already covered Song of the Lioness (I was confused -- I don't know who did the original covers, but it wasn't her) and The Enchanted Forest Chronicles. I sadly haven't read Ronia, the Robber's Daughter so I don't know if it might count as secondary world. I think the ones below do count -- I have not read any, but of course they have gorgeous covers.

A Hidden Magic by Vivian Vande Velde.
The Seer and the Sword by Victoria Hanley.
Tree Girl by T. A. Barron (not certain if secondary world).
Seven Spells to Farewell by Betty Baker (this seems to be super obscure, but seems to be set in an imaginary kingdom)

[mrissa]

Ronia is one of my favorite books of all time. Its setting is vague--could be the north of Sweden, could be the north of some Swedenish fantasy analog. Who knows. It is entirely rural, so you can assign it as you please.