Favourite heroines

Well, this list keeps getting longer, so I think I'd better just post it! I've added a quote for each from one of my reviews, if I had one, or sometimes a quote from a book. Listed in the order I thought of them, whatever that tells you!

Who would you add?

Sophie Hatter, from Diana Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle: One of my all-time-favourite characters, literary girl-crushes, people-whose-head-I-want-to-spend-time-in. I related (and still do relate) so much to her: I'm an oldest child; nothing exciting was ever going to happen to me; I was the responsible one who wanted her sisters to go out and find their dreams. But when Sophie starts talking to hats you can see DWJ's brilliance at creating characters: maybe she's quiet and responsible, but Sophie is also observant and imaginative and funny, and she has power she knows nothing about.

Tiffany Aching, from Terry Pratchett's series: she sees a monster in the creek so she goes and gets a frying pan, sets her younger brother out as bait, and whacks the monster on the head with a clang. Tiffany thinks, and she cares, and she pays attention to detail. She loves words like susurrus.

Cordelia, from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan series: the most morally centered, compassionate, fierce, suffers-no-fools, brilliant and courageous mother in all of fiction, I think. The scene with the shopping bag in Barrayar is one of the best scenes ever written.

Cassandra, from Andrea Höst's Touchstone series: Normal, practical, stoic but not immune to panic and despair, with a great self-deprecating sense of humour—it's the way she deals with everything the plot and setting throws at her that riveted me to the page.

Irene, from Genevieve Cogman's Invisible Library series: She's competent, firm, thinks on her feet, rises to the occasion, but she's also still a junior Librarian who doesn't have all the information or experience she needs. She has moments of panic, doubt and sheer frustration and it's lovely to watch her deal with them.

Rowan, The Steerswoman, from the series by Rosemary Kirstein: I love the way Rowan thinks, and I love watching her figure things out! 

Jane Eyre: These words resonated in my 13-year-old brain and still do.

Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?"

Still indomitable was the reply — "I care for myself. The more solitary, the more friendless, the more unsustained I am, the more I will respect myself.

 Elisabeth Bennett, from Pride and Prejudice, because, of course.

The Grand Sophy: Irrepressible, bubbling with mirth, rescuer of dogs and ducklings and people in unsuitable matches. Almost all of Georgette Heyer's heroines are delightful, but she's probably my favourite.

Rachel Hartman's Tess of the Road: Stubborn, angry, alcoholic, she's in so much pain and she is trying. so. hard. Tess is a mess but she's a compelling, hilarious narrator. Your heart breaks for her, but she could care less what you think! 

Gunnery Sergeant Torin Kerr, from Tanya Huff's Confederation and Peacekeeper series: she is everything I am not: decisive, courageous, strong-willed, really good at getting people to do what she wants them to do. She Gets her People Out Alive.

Yael from Ryan Graudin's Wolf By Wolf: Fierce, broken, bitter, hopeful, with a will of iron and nerves of steel.

Neverfell from Francis Hardinge's A Face Like Glass: She has such a good heart, and she lives in a terribly dangerous world, and it's heartbreaking and thrilling to watch the world be transformed by her naive, stubborn goodness. Also Triss from Cuckoo Song.

Going back a bit:

Alanna, by Tamora Pierce

Harry from Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword; Sunshine from Sunshine

Both Susan and Titty from Arthur Ransom's Swallows and Amazons series: Susan because she was the oldest, like me, and had to be responsible; Titty because I thought I was more adventurous like her.

Oh, one more:

Lucy from Neil Gaiman's The Wolves in the Walls: observant, clever, and knows she's right even when no one believes her. From possibly the best plotted book ever written (it's a picture book).

And how could I have forgotten The Paper Bag Princess!

Things I like in my heroines: stubborn strength, compassion, knowing themselves and what they want, thoughtfulness, competence, humour.

Who have I missed whose books I must immediately read?

MMGM: A Wish in the Dark, by Christina Soontornvat

From the moment we meet Pong patiently waiting, listening, for the moment a ripe mango drops from a tree, A Wish in the Dark invites us deep into a rich, believable fantasy world with a truly engaging hero as our guide. Pong is quiet and observant with fierce loyalty to his friend and a strong sense of justice that keeps getting him into trouble. When he escapes the prison where he was born, we find out he is quick-thinking, ingenious and scrappy. He is a delight to travel with as he tries on his own to find freedom from an unfair society. Then he encounters Father Cham, a Buddhist monk, and, oh, my heart!

This is a story inspired by Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, and it is so brilliant (yes, this is a pun) in the way it plays with Hugo's characters and themes, translating them into a middle-grade plot about children who start off believing what society has labeled them. Both protagonists learn not only that they can choose to define themselves, but that they can choose to help each other, and that a lot of people all choosing to stand together can change society. All in a gorgeous Thai-inspired world with magic that cleverly illuminates (can't help myself) the social commentary: the brightest lights are reserved for the rich, and Soontornvat does so much with that simple metaphor.

Nok is harder to like, at first, and I didn't want the narration to keep switching into her point of view. But her rigid self-righteousness is a product of her upbringing, and she is trapped every bit as much as Pong by the lies the Governor tells. The Governor is a well-done villain, scary and believable in his reasonableness.

There are some great friendship and found-family moments, gentle and heartfelt wisdom, and a stirring Les Mis-worthy conclusion. This one was shortlisted for the 2020 Cybils, and deserves all the attention it's getting. (Soontornvat won a Cybil for her non-fiction book about the Thai cave rescue, which I really want to read!)

As sweet and juicy as a perfectly ripe mango! For more delicious middle-grade reads, see what everybody is reviewing at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle.

Dogman, Murderbot and other things that made me happy this week

New Murderbot novella!!!! Fugitive Telemetry came out on Tuesday, and I couldn't quite drop everything to read it right away, but finished it yesterday. A little murder mystery set on Preservation Station, before the start of Network Effect. Our favourite sarcastic SecUnit has a dead human and some new annoying live humans to deal with, and it is as funny and heartrending as ever. "Fortunately, I had a lot of experience being screamed at and stared at by terrified humans." 

A Goodreads reviewer mentioned Murderbot's deep integrity, and now I want to reread the novella with that in mind, because I think it's a theme Martha Wells rather brilliantly weaves through it. Along with the usual friendship, selfhood, decency, and other things a rogue killing machine has to figure out for itself while trying to avoid more humans getting dead. Also my favourite cover of all of them so far.

And then I went to my local bookstore to pick up 13 Ways to Eat a Fly, a cleverly grotesque counting book by Sue Heavenrich (often seen on Marvelous Middle-Grade Monday). I now know far more than I ever wanted to about the disgusting eating habits of insectivores! I think this will be hugely popular among my nephews (and at least one of my nieces). Kudos to Sue and her illustrator David Clark for presenting so much detailed science in such an engaging way. 

While at the bookstore I noticed the two latest Dav Pilkey graphic novels: Dogman: Grime and Punishment and Dogman: Mothering Heights. I happen to think Dav Pilkey is one of the best comic writers out there, and The Adventures of Super Diaper Baby is a masterpiece of literature, but I have not been keeping up with his Dog Man series. The idea of Wuthering Heights and Crime and Punishment given the Dav Pilkey treatment* was too good to pass up, so I had to bring them home.

So I had another afternoon of laughing out loud, pounding the couch cushions, tears running down my face. And then Pilkey sucker-punched me with the sweet, wise denoument of this story arc about the redemptive power of love.

Trigger warning: Many people seem to object to the diarrhea-themed song parodies in Dog Man, so if that's an issue for you, you've been warned! I found them hilarious, but I have a particularly nuanced sense of humour.

The last thing that made me happy this week was the discovery that Becky Chambers has another book out in her Wayfarer's series: The Galaxy and the Ground Within. Will be reading that one soon. And if that weren't wonderful enough, she's starting a new series called Monk and Robot, the first novella of which, A Psalm for the Wild-Built, is coming out in July. The premise sounds amazing (and reminds me a little of the wonderful middle-grade novel The Wild Robot, also the Ghibli film Castle in the Sky) and I am so there for a robot who abandoned human civilization having conversations with a non-binary monk!

*For fans of Brontë and Dostoevsky: it's not a particularly close retelling of the classic novels. In case you were wondering! But Mothering Heights does contain "The Most Romantic Chapter Ever Written," complete with Romantic Advisory: Mushy Content, and Smooch-o-Rama, The World's Most Amorous Animation Technology. And there are various crimes and various punishments (and people getting dirty) in Grime and Punishment, though a grand total of zero dead humans.