Grimdark Fantasy discussion

Posted today by Mark Lawrence.

You can vote for 3. I voted for Allanon (Shannara), Pug (Riftwar Saga) and Jorg Ancrath (Broken Empire).

http://www.bestfantasybookshq.com/bes...

I went Jorg, Gavin Guile and Fiddler from Malazan. It's not easy picking just three!

That was way too hard. I went with Logen Ninefingers, Druss The Legend and Tyrion Lannister.

Honorable mentions to Bilbo Baggins, Gandalf, Croaker, Drizzt, Conan, Elric and Belgarath. I must dispute adding Harry Dresden and other Urban Fantasy characters as I feel that is a whole different genre.

Garion, sam vimes, waylander

Death, Locke Lamorra, Jorg.

Crap... I forgot about Locke!

Tough one, but... Arya Stark, Logen Ninefingers, Roland Deschain.

My honorable mentions are Carrot Ironfoundersson and Death.

FitzChivalry Farseer and Fool from Farseer trilogy, and Roland Deschain.

Only three? That's tough. I voted for Sand Dan Glokta, Elric, and Raislin Majere because I'm feeling nostalgic.

For some reason I was able to vote twice! This time I went with Jorg, Jalan and the Warden from Low Town. Six votes still isn't enough.

I'm having a blast just seeing who was picked. Melina - I love that you picked three characters with serious health issues who are still total bad-asses.

I would have voted for Glotka. I was on my phone and the list was long and the print was small.

God that was hard, went for Jorg, glotka and jimmy the hand......though kvothe and Silk were close....then there's Fitz....oh damn

This is so difficult! Finally voted for Sam Vimes, Bilbo and Sand dan Glokta. If I could add more I'll vote Arya Stark and Bartimaeus.

Deborah wrote: "I would have voted for Glotka. I was on my phone and the list was long and the print was small."
I wasn't on phone, but I think I'd have changed one of my votes to Glokta if I'd seen him.

Corwin, obviously.

Chompa wrote: "I'm having a blast just seeing who was picked. Melina - I love that you picked three characters with serious health issues who are still total bad-asses."

haha! I have a soft spot for these types of anti-heroes. I think it's the bitterness against the world that attracts me. And the mental toughness to do what's necessary :-)

Heather wrote: "Corwin, obviously."
I had to UTFG to find out who Corwin was. It seems it's from Chronicles of Amber. That's been on my to-read list for a long time. I have a beat up old paperback copy of the all in one book (Great Book of Amer), but I was holding out for a while in the hopes that they might make a kindle version. No such luck yet. I may just have to bite the bullet and start reading that paperback.

The Chronicles of Amber are great. Especially the original series. I read those many times in after first discovering them in the library.

I have very old copies that I got at a used bookstore. You should definitely read them! It is fantasy but with multiple universe aspects - so some fringe science elements. Absolutely great.

The Bloody-Nine gets all three of my votes. No question.

I'll weigh in with Jorge, Glokta and Vaelin all Sorna....I hope Ninefingers doesn't find out he is not in my Top 3.

Phil, it's okay if Logen finds but The Bloody Nine... that's a whole different story.

Chompa wrote: "Phil, it's okay if Logen finds but The Bloody Nine... that's a whole different story."
:D

Phil wrote: ""

I couldn't agree more.Or less either, for that matter.

Why is Lestat not on this list :P

Bartimaeus from the Bartimaeus trilogy should be there too! He's the most amusing character I even read. I mean, even bloody Percy Jackson is in the list. *shake fist*

Tyrion, Glokta, Locke :-)

Alanna, Malta Vestrit and Kvothe :)

Interesting and a bit terrifying to see the total domination of male characters.

Gry you bring up an excellent point. And I did a little digging into it.

The list that we vote on, I didn't know all the characters but I knew a good number or saw a name like "Granny, Jill, Jimmy" etc that strongly indicated their gender.

Of the 101 I knew (or intuited), I found only 28 were female. That's 38%. Sadly, that's better than I actually expected.

When looking by books I found The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were all male for the voting (not that there were many females in the series). For A Song of Fire and Ice which is more balanced than most series, it was 3 women to 6 men. That's actually worse than my largely unscientific count.

Chompa wrote: "Gry you bring up an excellent point. And I did a little digging into it.

The list that we vote on, I didn't know all the characters but I knew a good number or saw a name like "Granny, Jill, Jim..."

It is unsettling but not at all surprising. I wish the women from the Liveship series were higher on the list, as they, in my opinion, are some of the best female characters in fantasy that I've encountered.
Mostly it is probably due to the stigma that "men can't enjoy female characters", which means authors won't write female mc's and men tend to steer away from female mc's, creating a bad circle. (Yes, there are a lot of men out there very willing to read female characters and female authors, but even they tend to discover that they lean towards a 2/3 male authors/mc's. That's the whole reason for female authors using pseudonyms.)

I realized a few years ago that I preferred male authors and avoided female ones. The thing is I had been reading some female authors without knowing it. Robin Hobb? Huh... I always thought that was a guy. Rob Thurman? Are you kidding me?

I think a large part of my leaning was due to being very into Urban Fantasy. Urban Fantasy and Paranormal Romance are used interchangeably much to my dismay. I really don't care for any books where the majority of the writing is spent on thinking about dreamy guy/girl/werewolf is not for me.

I love strong characters. Best Served Cold and Red Country had great strong women. The Shadow Campaigns have Winter Ihernglass who poses as a man to join the army. She's one of the best characters I've read in ages.

So I've learned a bit and realize the gender of the author really doesn't matter. What matters is the story.

Chompa wrote: "I realized a few years ago that I preferred male authors and avoided female ones. The thing is I had been reading some female authors without knowing it. Robin Hobb? Huh... I always thought that wa..."

Ooh, and you just dropped golden droplets for me to read.
Well, there was a study once (can't find the link and originally I heard of it at a sociology lecture) where the same paper was rated significantly poorer when they put a female name as the author instead of a male name. They should do a similar study for sexuality and race.

I found Robin Hobb one day browsing in the book store, thinking "I want epic fantasy, not dumb fantasy, hunger-wanna-be-death-game, romantic stuff. I'd better find a male writer. Ooh, liveship series. Sounds cool. Robin Hobb? I'll google it. What? A woman? No! No more romance for me!"
I put the book back and then caught my own chauvenism, bought the book and found one of the best fantasy stories I've ever read.

Btw, which Rob Thurman book would you recommend to start with?

Gry wrote: "Well, there was a study once (can't find the link and originally I heard of it at a sociology lecture) where the same paper was rated significantly poorer when they put a female name as the author instead of a male name. They should do a similar study for sexuality and race."

I can't recall where, but I just saw something with that study recently. It was a bit disturbing.

I don't recall that same study on sexuality/race, but I do remember hearing a study where they did that with resumes, by having identical resumes with names that seemed to be of a different race versus "home bread white American" sounding names, and the "American White" names got call backs on a MUCH greater scale than the foreign names. They also went as far as to have addresses to show that people from 'bad parts of town' got very few call backs too.

Chompa wrote: "I realized a few years ago that I preferred male authors and avoided female ones. The thing is I had been reading some female authors without knowing it. Robin Hobb? Huh... I always thought that wa..."

In my female and totally unasked for opinion, I prefer male authors to female too and my reasons are the same as yours. I just don't care about pining over a guy/girl, but also over-analyzing and dedicating too much time in thought and emotions. Women tend to be more prone to this "thinking too much, describing too much" style of writing, but men are not immune by a long shot. [This is my regularly scheduled rant on Kvothe and Denna (can she die already?)]

Another generalization is that men tend to not write deep and believable female characters, but rather they resort to generalizations [eg. the women in the warded man, desert spear] or exclude women from their universes altogether (I am semi-certain there is not a single female character that speaks in Prince of Fools, despite the trilogy being called Red Queen]. Again, that is also not an absolute. [This is my regularly scheduled praise on Joe Abercormbie: Monza of Best Served Cold? ugh.. what's the name of the slave woman in the First Law trilogy? ]

Another pet peeve of mine is how much attention male authors call on the gender of their characters if they are female and how "uncommon" it is for them to do such and such, especially against society's norms. I actually prefer it so much more when a woman is introduced doing something bad ass and/or violent without attention being called on their gender (Scott Lynch is very good at this, of course Joe, and Brent Weeks, and Michael Sullivan, although he doesn't write grimdark).

In my opinion, yes, we might need more female characters in grimdark. But more than that, we need more complete, interesting, and not annoying female characters first.

Sadly biases exist for everyone. The trick (IMHO) is to be aware of your biases and try not to give into them.

On Rob Thurman I've only read Nightlife and the sequel to it. It is another series I intend to revisit someday.

Gry - do you have any recommendations aside from Liveships? I've heard that is a great series, just haven't picked it up yet.

Melina wrote: " I just don't care about pining over a guy/girl, but also over-analyzing and dedicating too much time in thought and emotions."

That's exactly it! I've found a few series where that was a problem. Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series just became horrible with that for me and I had to drop it. (Just double checked - he is apparently a man.)

I've never really thought about it, but I think I unconsciously avoid female protagonists. When the blurb begins with 'Seventeen year old Kayla had a normal life until...' I immediately switch off. Why can't more authors write good female characters without all the romance crap? I don't like paranormal/urban, there is very little I tolerate in the YA genre. Can we have adult female kick ass heroines or even villains?

Brittany wrote: "Ferro was the slave woman in The First Law trilogy :) She had to grow on me honestly. The brooding, "I hate everyone" anger wasn't anything new though the reasons weren't terribly cliche. In the end her and Logen succumb to the same problem when characters of the opposite sex are written together and in life in general (which is why I let it slide, it was realistic) their communication sucks. "

You are way to nice. :p

I think most of the characters were way too cliche, but Ferro perhaps most of all. It made her completely one dimensional. And the whole sex thing with Logen was so poorly written, it almost felt like a 13 year old was trying to write what they thought a sex scene would be like (having no experience of their own).

I've said it before, but the First Law books started great and steadily went downhill for me. I'll probably read the second series (I bought them on Kindle at the same time), but after First Law, I'm really in no hurry.

I like Ardee's character development, she might be shallow and so unlikeable but at the end she grew on me. Monza Morcatto started one dimensional but ended up likeable as well. But I agree, Martin wrote better female characters. Cersei Lannister is one helluva character when you read her POV.

Liveship traders is an interesting book. Malta Vestrit is probably a character with the biggest character growth I ever read. She started even worse than Sansa Stark! I still Althea better since even though she was badass and stuff, she still thinks about nice dresses. I think that feels more real to me. A female character who does not forget her femininity, I don't see what's wrong with that.

I like Arya alot, she is my favorite character beside Davos Seaworth but as of now I am kind of tired of 'strong female character' who is also a badass fighter/assassin bending on revenge. That's tired trope for me.

I'm going to say Cersei is a serious power to be reckoned with. She's an exceedingly strong character. For me, the "strong" characters don't have to do with physical strength and martial skill. Glotka is a perfect example of that.

In regards to Ferro. I hated her for being short-sighted and trapped in her need for revenge. Her dalliance with Logen was a perfect example of two stubborn characters just making themselves miserable for all the wrong reasons. Those flaws are what made me really like Ferro's character. Yes, I said I hated Ferro, but that's because I could really sympathize with what I consider her insanity. I liked the character. Just like I loved to hate little king Geoffrey on Game of Thrones.

By the way "Ardee? She should be on the real house wives of the Union." had me laughing out loud, Brittany.

I also need to add, that I'm really glad we've started this conversation (hijacked the thread) about female characters. I'm finding it very insightful and interesting.

This is a hell of a group we've got!

I like Cersei far better than Arya. Arya is too perfect. Cersei's falling apart and I like GM for it.

Chompa wrote: "Sadly biases exist for everyone. The trick (IMHO) is to be aware of your biases and try not to give into them.

On Rob Thurman I've only read Nightlife and the sequel to it. It is another series I..."

Being aware of our bias is definitely important, but as Melina writes it's a huge problem with good female characters. (This is actually one of the reasons I like Sansa Stark, because she's not a female with a sword but she's still got some badassery in her own right AND she chose to be "a lady", she wasn't forced.)
The issue with bias, stereotypes and prejudice is that it becomes reality. As women are excluded from the genre it of course becomes harder to find female characters and we assume they aren't there, perpetuating the circle.

If you're asking about Robin Hobb, Liveship is the only one I've read. One of my pet peeves in fantasy is the whole trope with "staying in the same world but changing characters", which is something she does as well. This is one of the reasons the Alanna series is all I've read from Tamora Pierce.
*Snort* And now as I look back through my list of books read in the last year or so the only fantasy with female characters to speak of I've read are Kingkiller Chronicle and Liveship. So, yeah ... under-representation.
Golem and the Djinni is pretty cool, but, eh, not really grimdark. (But good female character.)

Chris wrote: "Gry wrote: "Well, there was a study once (can't find the link and originally I heard of it at a sociology lecture) where the same paper was rated significantly poorer when they put a female name as..."

That's just terrible. I praise my luck that I once stumbled on a black female reviewer whose intellect I fell for, as she often spoke of these issues and made me aware of them. Being a white, middleclass woman it's sometimes hard looking outside of our privilege, but I'm glad I have. I'm soon about to read Okorafar (fur?) and am looking forward to it. Fantasy, female AND black. Wow.

Tracey (Queen of Blades) wrote: "I've never really thought about it, but I think I unconsciously avoid female protagonists. When the blurb begins with 'Seventeen year old Kayla had a normal life until...' I immediately switch off...."

It's hard. You end up with certain biases. In my own stories what I often do is switch genders. I write a female character and realize she'll work better as a man. *Switch* I write a male character and realize this would be a really interesting woman. *Switch* It works surprisingly well.

Silvana wrote: "I like Ardee's character development, she might be shallow and so unlikeable but at the end she grew on me. Monza Morcatto started one dimensional but ended up likeable as well. But I agree, Martin..."

Though Althea never really liked dresses, as per first scene.
Malta, indeed, does what I wish Sansa had. Sansa still could do it in the sixth book, but it's too late in the TV show. (But the TV producers hate Sansa, so us Sansa-lovers might as well let it go.)
The reason Martin writes so great female characters is because he writes them as he would any male - as a person. This goes back to what Melina said about men always writing female characters where it's a BIG DEAL when they do something cool.

And wow, it's 8 am and I've spammed this entire section. I hope the people I've replied to see the right reply. *Blush, headdesk*