High Fantasy/Sword and Sorcery/Whatever with a Female Main Protagonist

[DementedSheep]

There is the Artifacts of Power and Shadowleage by Maggie Fury (they were my absolute favorite books when I was a 14 or so) and Mistborn and Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson (it focuses and four characters two of whom are female).

The Isvalta trilogy by Sarah Zettel but its not traditional sword and sorcery. I've read more than that but I can't remember the names of any others right now.

Sadly most the books with with female leads seem to be crime, romance or urban fansty (which has potential as a genre but 90% of the time just seems to be another pathetic romance book with supernatural twist)

 

[redknightalex]

All of my suggestions have already been mentioned but I will say that reading Tamora Pierce's novels as a girl were probably responsible for me disliking much of the fantasy genre today. The lack of a solid female lead in many fantasy, and not just "high fantasy," novels make me entirely disinterested in what I'm reading. I find that sci-fi novels have much better female characters on a whole and have pretty much changed my entire reading genre due to fantasy stuck in their Tolkien aspirations, which include having too many white male characters living in a world mirrored after a medieval-like land.

It's also strange that many of the books mentioned have not come out in the last five or so years. I also wouldn't count GRRM in there at all: his female characters never impressed me and, last I was reading (albeit a while ago), they were all tools for men or took too long to grow into their own. Just how I see the series is all.

 

[Nikolaz72]

It's not High Fantasy, but a Song of Ice and Fire has solid female characters, despite the author going a bit much into details 'bout how much they fantasize about man-parts.

 

[Jaythulhu]

There's a lot of books in the D&D ranges that feature women as main protagonists. There's the Time of Troubles series in the Forgotten Realms setting (plus a ton of others), as well as last 4 books of Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman's Dragonlance series.

 

[HellbirdIV]

Song of Ice and Fire has solid female characters, despite the author going a bit much into details 'bout how much they fantasize about man-parts.

To be completley honest, I prefer that over female characters who never seem interested in men at all.

Too many writers take the "Strong Independent Woman" extreme of having no compassion, love, desire, or other positive emotions that might make the character connect with the audience and thus be interesting, instead of just a sexy fight-scene machine.

... Mind you, too many writers go too far in the other direction, too.

I initially specified "Male writers", then I remembered women can suck at writing compelling female characters, too. *coughchristiegoldencoughkarentravisscough*

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

The Symphony of Ages series by Elizabeth Haydon
The Magister trilogy by C.S. Friedman

Those would be the best ones I have read.

 

[repeating integers]

Hrm. I wonder how long until matthew_lane stumbles across this thread title and has his usual pavlovian reaction of hate to the word "female"?

 

[Substitute Troll]

There should definitely be more variety, but on the other hand, if a transexual person can't enjoy a game because the protagonist isn't transexual, isn't that just as weird as a guy not being able to play a game with a female protagonist?

Er, yes it would be. It would also mean they wouldn't be able to play almost any games. This isn't the case. There are massive amounts of people that aren't straight white cisgender guys that play games, but while it's accepted that minorities will accept media that doesn't feature them as protagonists, it doesn't work the other way around.

Which is my point, there needs to be more variety. RPGs are very good at this, offering you the choice of gender and sexuality. Although, they can't take every sexuality/gender identity in consideration. There would be too many resources wasted on that area. Furthermore, they simply can't cater to the smaller minorities all the time. It doesn't work.

So I'm sorry, but if you're in a very small minority, you're shit out of luck. That's just how the world works right now.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

There is a Japanese animated series entitled Seirei No Moribito, or Guardian of the Spirit.
It's a fantasy tale set in Eastern Asia. The protagonist is a woman named Balsa who received a mission to protect a child who is the vessel for an elemental spirit. The animation and soundtrack are high calibre, and there are some amazing fights to be seen in this. However, the series puts a lot of time into developing its characters and telling their stories, so fighting isn't the main focus of the series and there are less fight scenes than you would expect. That isn't for the detriment of the product though. I'm just pointing out because most epics of fantasy seem very heavily dedicated to battle.

 

[Aris Khandr]

There was a series of books called "Sword and Sorceress" being put out fairly regularly when I was in school. Short stories, but all fantasy-based and all with female protagonists. Maybe look into those?

 

[mecegirl]

It is not exactly High Fantasy (well it wouldn't be to some, but it is pretty close). But have you tried the Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix?

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Where have you been my friend, we've largely skipped that and gone straight to choosing your gender as far as games are concerned.

 

[HellbirdIV]

I wonder why it was specifically high fantasy he or she was looking for.

Given that more than half of the original post was about how much I love Tolkien's legendarium, I thought that was rather self-evident.

I just like the idea of taking the most basic and "default" of modern high fantasy settings and shaking it up with subtle changes to the basics and see how they alter the work as a whole, like "What if Middle Earth didn't have medieval stasis and had developed technologically to match 17th century Europe". (An admittedly not a particularily subtle base change, but a good example of the general idea)

 

[oreso]

I think there have been plenty of great suggestions.

I'd only add the second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, a trilogy which is told from a female character's point of view. It's kind of bleak and psychological, and features the 'person from the real world travels to a fantasy land' trope.

I have never in my life seen or read a "High Fantasy" (or whatever you prefer to call it, I'm not getting into a debate about what does and does not constitute a certain genre of fantasy literature) story whose primary protagonist was female. There are bits and pieces. Plenty of women in secondary or supporting protagonist roles, especially in what we consider more "modern" (as in setting) fantasy.

Yet it seems to me that movies, games and books where a Brave Hero(tm) must go out and Slay The Dragon(tm) or Save the Kingdom(tm), unless it's a deliberate parody or bitter commentary, the protagonist is always a man? (I'm not counting video games with "optionally female" protagonists. That's just silly.)

I feel I need to mention that this is based in history, not direct prejudice. It's just a function of traditional gender roles: women simply weren't expected to do dangerous stuff and were generally protected from it, while men often felt honour-bound or otherwise compelled to (either disgraced and exiled, simply dispossessed or expected to bring glory). It's this kind of expectation that the quest narrative comes from. (And this expectation exists for very solid evolutionary reasons, you need more women alive to keep a generation going).

This is to say nothing of what -should- be the case (certainly I'd prefer more diversity myself), only that there are very simple and mundane reasons for it. Tales of women warriors have always been a little bit rarer and non-standard (and always will be? Certainly we have far fewer women than men in the military even now).

Cheers!

 

[HellbirdIV]

Given that more than half of the original post was about how much I love Tolkien's legendarium, I thought that was rather self-evident.

Sure, but why restrict your self to that little subset of fiction... I love a good steak, doesn't mean i don't want a pizza every now and again.

Well if you're going to make a steak dinner, obviously you need to go out and buy a steak. If you plan to make a steak dinner, but then go and buy the ingredients for a pizza, you've gone and fucked up.

So what was the intention of this thread? Was it a "i'm looking for more books to read, that are in the genre & have a female protagonist" or was it "why have i not seen any female protagonists in this genre" style thread?

Both are valid points of discussion, but mainly I was looking for suggestion because we already know why I haven't seen many female protagonists in this genre - because white males are the "default" for any given character in fiction, since writers are lazy and/or sexist.

 

[wolf thing]

in blood of elves the second witcher book, there is a main female character who share screne time with geralt, and the dragon riders book have a lot of femal leads, but tat more science fiction.

 

[GeneralChaos]

I would like to recommend the Arrows trilogy from the Heralds of Valdemar. While the characters aren't as deep as some other fantasy stories, the main character is a rather interesting female hero. Although if you hate horses, you should avoid the books as the author seems fascinated by them and features horses rather prominently. The trilogy starts with Arrows of the Queen and is a fairly good entry point into the series as a whole.