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

[PedroSteckecilo]

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles by Patricia C. Wrede is a humorous "High Fantasy" upending of fairy tale tropes with a phenomenal female lead (until the 4th Book, but that's the only one).

I'll also second The Belgariad/Malloreon by David Eddings, though the main protagonist is not Female... it has Polgara The Sorceress, who is very, very close to being the second main character of the series and who is entirely awesome in every way.

I'll also bring up (I think someone else mentioned them as well) The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix, excellent female main character.

Also technically The Golden Compass/Northern Lights has a Female Main Character, and although a Male Main Character also pops up in the second book the first one (Golden Compass) is the best of the series.

The Scar by China Meiville has a Female Lead, though its not really high fantasy, or sword and sorcery, definately fantasy though... its an interesting novel...

Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie is a deliciously evil fantasy novel with a Female Lead seeking revenge, it's wickedly awesome.

And while I haven't read it yet I hear the Mazalan, Book of the Fallen is very good to the ladies.

If you want to branch out into other mediums...

While not a "novel" per say (it's a Graphic Novel Series in the truest sense of the word), Hayao Miyazaki's Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind has one of the greatest Female Protagonists in fiction

The classic anime series The Slayers and its sequels (Next, TRY, Revolution, Evolution-R) features Lina Inverse, an insanely powerful sorceress and her friends as they save the world from increasingly ridiculous villains... it's also got a very, very high dose of comedy. It's a lot of peoples introduction to Badass Anime Heroines who don't show their tits.

Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit is an Eastern Themed Fantasy Anime Series with an incredibly awesome Spearwoman and Bodyguard as the main character. It's a very good series and it feels much more grown up than a lot of anime out there... despite not really featuring any "mature" content outside of the rare violent death.

It's hard to find now but Meridian from Crossgen Comics features a Female Lead in a world of sky islands as she battles her evil uncle.

Also from Crossgen Sojourn stars a Female Archer with a Magic Bow fighting an evil immortal king... it's as classic fantasy as you get... though its not as smart or original as Meridian.

That's all I got for now... I might be able to think of more though

 

[Thaluikhain]

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.

If you think male characters are the default in speculative fiction, heck pretty much any fiction, than you haven't been paying attention... Because its just not the case. In fact its never been the case.

Yeah, it's white straight cisgender males, not just males in general.

 

[Thaluikhain]

No, it really isn't.

In fact, the fact that we can name so many cases to the contrary, would pretty adequately demonstrate that this is not the case.

Yes, it really, really is. Nobody is claiming that they are the only characters used, only that they tend to dominate. There are exceptions, but they are exceptions.

 

[Thaluikhain]

No, they aren't exceptions to the rule: They are the rule

Seriously guys, you all seem to have a really fucked up understanding of how books get written. No author slips & falls into a male protagonist & says, "oh i seem to have fallen into a male protagonist, oh well, i'll just write about him by default."

An author writes about a character because he or she wants to, regardless of who or what the protagonist is.

Yeah, and the majority of them happen to be male. Thus, the default.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't think I can point to any particular example of high fantasy that has a good female lead. The Mistborn series features a female lead but she is probably the least interesting character in the series.

 

[Little Woodsman]

Sorry, I was going to say that The Thousand Nights and a Night (1,001 Arabian Nights) has Schezerade and Morgiana,
but then I realized that Morgiana really isn't the primary protagonist of the story she's in...and Schezerade by
herself really seems inadequate...although she does fit in to the "every woman" type, being a normal person who's
just good at storytelling and has a plan.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I don't think I can point to any particular example of high fantasy that has a good female lead. The Mistborn series features a female lead but she is probably the least interesting character in the series.

Then i would like to reiterate the above suggestions.

Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone Series
- The Briar King
- The Charnel Prince
- The Blood Knight
- The Born Queen

The Liveship Traders Trilogy
- Ship of Magic
- Mad Ship
- Ship of Destiny

Forgotten Realms: The Year of the Rogue Dragons series
- The Rage
- The Rite
- The Ritual

Pretty much any novel written by Tymora Pierce

There are quite a few books of these sorts, that are well worth reading. More so, if you break out of the very small subset of speculative fiction novels that are the high fantasy genre.

I actually intend to read the Liveship Traders having liked Robin Hobb's work on the Farseer series.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

I actually intend to read the Liveship Traders having liked Robin Hobb's work on the Farseer series.

Honestly the series annoyed me by the end: Just to many characters spending to long complaining about there lot in life... But i know some people who utterly swear by the series. An its technical skills within the medium aren't to bad. It was just the content that annoyed me. I like my protagonists to be more dynamic.

I wouldn't swear by the series; it was simply a well crafted world. That said, you are quite right about the complaints. The lead character always struck me as oddly out of place and inconsistent. He would at one turn slaughter away with incredible skill and yet in another be cowed by a person every ounce his inferior because of self doubt. And, much like the romance plot in Mistborn, the love story seems largely contrived from the start

 

[David Javier]

The Shannara series contain some stories where the protagonist is female.

 

[Bara_no_Hime]

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.

I can help with books.

"Paladin of Souls" by Lois McMaster Bujold. It is a sequel to a book with a male protagonist (that you should technically read first since Paladin of Souls spoils the crap out of it) called "the Curse of Chalion". Anyway, Paladin of Souls features not only a female protagonist, but one over 30. She won a Hugo and a Nebula awards for this book.

Also by Lois McMaster Bujold, the Sharing Knife series. Start with Beguilement. This one has dual protagonists - one male, one female. They are equally important and get equal "screen time".

"Kushiel's Dart" (book 1 of the Kushiel's Legacy series) by Jacqueline Carey. This one is fantasy/historic in that it takes place in an alternative magical France. But, by the end of the first book, there's a Wizard who can make water rise up, turn into his head, and speak (and, if he wanted to, bite a ship in half). The protagonist for the first three books is female. The middle three have a male protagonist, and the final three have another female protagonist. And these are First Person POV books, so you spend the entire first three books in the head of a single female protagonist.

Finally, last but not least... Blood of Elves and Times of Contempt by Andrzej Sapkowski. These are the first two novels in the Witcher Saga. And if you're thinking "but, isn't Geralt the main character?!" - no, he's not. Ciri, the only Female Witcher, is arguably the main protagonist. She and Geralt share screen time (and he's certainly the main character of the third book Baptism of Fire, in which Ciri hardly appears) but she gets a LOT of screen time in the first book, is arguably the main character of the second book (Times of Contempt), and is without a doubt the main character of the fourth book The Tower of the Swallow.

Oh, and since you mentioned gender - both Jacqueline Carey and Andrzej Sapkowski feature bisexual protagonists (both male and female for Carey, just female for Sapkowski).

So there you go. If you need more, just let me know.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

No, it really isn't.

In fact, the fact that we can name so many cases to the contrary, would pretty adequately demonstrate that this is not the case.

In fact its never been the case, even going back as far as the original novellas published in france & popular with the spanish gentry, during the occupation of spain, by france. The female lead novella was both present & popular even then.

Seriously guys, you all seem to have a really fucked up understanding of how books get written. No author slips & falls into a male protagonist & says, "oh i seem to have fallen into a male protagonist, oh well, i'll just write about him by default."

An author writes about a character because he or she wants to, regardless of who or what the protagonist is.

Being able to find contrarian examples does little to undermine the fact that, by and large, fantasy stories feature a male lead. You could come up with all sorts of explanation as to why this is the case but at the heart of the matter you'll find a relatively simple explanation. The basic fantasy story is simply a retelling of the Heroes Journey in some form or fashion. This story features, somewhat necessarily, a male archetypal character at the heart. Even in cases where you find a female taking the lead the gender is largely irrelevant as they are symbolically male.

Take the Mistborn series lead character of Vin. While a female, she serves in a role of protector, warrior, and all around stalwart hero. She is an exemplar of masculine virtues and, outside of a short lived and largely irrelevant plot segment where she acts as an (incredibly ineffective) spy, her femininity is entirely meaningless. I seem to half recall (though cursory web searching has not revealed any support for this) that Sanderson even commented once that in his original conception, Vin was male.

Yes, there are certainly examples of female leads throughout but they are (by my count) the minority by a wide margin. And if you consider how many of those leads are symbolically male anyhow, the number dwindles further. I have personally never read a fantasy novel where the lead character was female and that gender choice was anything other than aestetic. That doesn't mean they don't exist - there are thousands of fantasy novels I've never read.

 

[dragonswarrior]

I don't think I can point to any particular example of high fantasy that has a good female lead. The Mistborn series features a female lead but she is probably the least interesting character in the series.

Really? I loved Vin...

Take the Mistborn series lead character of Vin. While a female, she serves in a role of protector, warrior, and all around stalwart hero. She is an exemplar of masculine virtues and, outside of a short lived and largely irrelevant plot segment where she acts as an (incredibly ineffective) spy, her femininity is entirely meaningless. I seem to half recall (though cursory web searching has not revealed any support for this) that Sanderson even commented once that in his original conception, Vin was male.

Hm, so why do the virtues of protector, warrior, and stalwart hero have to be male virtues? Yes yes yes, that's how they always have been, but why do they have to CONTINUE to be that? Why does Vin have to be defined at all by the terms masculinity and femininity? I am a cisgendered male who really likes fashion (not the industry) and has a keen eye and passion for clothes and style; I also really enjoy dressing up (much like Vin) while my wife (cisgendered female) enjoys fantasizing about making desperate last stands against hordes of enemies and rescuing me from their clutches (Not that Vin ever fantasized about this, but she ended up doing it a lot.)

Which isn't to say that I don't fantasize about desperate last stands myself, and my wife doesn't enjoy dressing up either. We both enjoy things typically considered masculine or feminine.

What I am trying to get across here is despite what society would have you believe, masculinity and femininity actually mean nothing. A person is whoever they are. And I thought that Vin was an excellent character, very believable. (Though I'm pretty sure Sanderson gave her that obsession with parties and clothing because she is a girl, which is irritating, but hey. One takes what one can get.)

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The doing of what needs to be done, selflessly & without thought for ones self is not a male characteristic (at least not in ficton, even if it overwhelmingly is in the real world): Its the trait of the "hero".

My problem with this logic is that the choice of gender becomes meaningless when the female plays the part traditionally reserved for the male. To take the mistborn example yet again, Vin's size, strength and stature are mentioned in passing and then largely ignored because she has superpowers that make those consideration meaningless. Likewise, gender politics, save for one brief moment, never actually matter in the slightest. The fact she is female is and incidental fact about her character. Indeed, when it comes to defining characteristics, her gender comes well behind her status as mistborn and her life as a street urchin.

The fundamental point here, I think, is that you could literally swap the gender of Vin to male and, if you then did the same to the love interest you'd have a cast of relatively generic heroes playing their traditional parts in a retelling of a standard fantasy tale.

This is the issue with making a female symbolically male. Unless done well, choosing to use a female character is simply an aesthetic choice. This is a shame when there exist obvious things a female can do that a male cannot and a host of possible roles that are traditionally female that could easily be used by a female lead. Rather than the simple hero who wins by strength and skill, you have roles like mediator, caretaker, manipulator etc that are traditionally associated with the feminine.

All that said, I'm not denouncing the use of a female as a symbolic male. I'm simply stating that citing such cases as examples of a female character is likely folly since their distinction as female is generally no more important than the author's choice of hair color.