Romance with villains, monsters, aliens, elf lords, wizards, robots, demons, gods, cryptids and anything with a Reylo vibe.
Tag: capable heroine
“Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders… but her father isn’t a very good one. Free to lend and reluctant to collect, he has loaned out most of his wife’s dowry and left the family on the edge of poverty–until Miryem steps in. Hardening her heart against her fellow villagers’ pleas, she sets out to collect what is owed–and finds herself more than up to the task. When her grandfather loans her a pouch of silver pennies, she brings it back full of gold.
But having the reputation of being able to change silver to gold can be more trouble than it’s worth–especially when her fate becomes tangled with the cold creatures that haunt the wood, and whose king has learned of her reputation and wants to exploit it for reasons Miryem cannot understand.“ GOODREADS
This is the best book I read in 2018. It’s eerie, fairy-tale like and romantic. Naomi Novik is definitely one of my all-time favorite writers. I love love love her portrayal of girls and women and their relationships with each other. Both her main and supporting characters are fleshed out and equally engaging to read about.
The story revolves around two heroines whose fates intertwine more and more as the plot unfolds. Their male love interests (one is the king of some kind of ice elves, the other the tsar who’s possessed by a fire demon) learn to appreciate and love them for their characters, skills and actions.
Spinning Silver features almost every trope I love:
The heroine is certainly not as attractive as her beautiful best
friend who gets her own interesting plot line.
The
Darkangel (the Darkangel Trilogy, #1) – Meredith Ann Pierce
The protagonist starts out as unattractive, later she undergoes a transformation of
her appearance which represents a turning point in her character development.
This book has lots of female characters of all shapes and sizes.
The main heroine is plain and a bit overweight. Another important
famale character is dead and looks the part. Both have very
attractive love interests.
This heroine is actually very attractive by human standards.
Unfortunately the male protagonist isn’t human and he finds her
appalling and he’s just as ugly to her. The like each other from the
start.
Stolen
Songbird (The Malediction Trilogy, #1) – Danielle L. Jensen
The heroine spends her time around
(mostly) human looking and extremely attractive trolls. She’s not
quite up to their standards.
The heroine is almost a cyborg. Her extremities were replaced by
completely overpowered prosthetics after a horrific assault while
working as a government agent. She’s traumatized, in pain, doesn’t
have full control of her new body and hasn’t come to terms with her
new menacing look. The rock star demon elf protagonist is very much
into her. Yes, really. This book uses and often subverts every trope
known to fantasy and science fiction.
Herb-Witch (Lord
Alchemist Duology, #1) – Elizabeth McCoy
Within the world described in this book the heroine’s look is not only considered
ugly but also shameful as it reveals her barbarian heritage.
The protagonist starts out as rather plain, later she undergoes a transformation of
her appearance which represents a turning point in her character development.
The heroine is fat. She does lose weight while trying to survive
on a hostile alien planet though. The lizard man protagonist is
interested in her either way. All kinds of trigger warnings for this
book: violence, rape, gore, death. It’s also over 900 pages long.
Crazy.
This one stands out as it’s the only book written by a man. It’s
also one of my earliest conscious encounters with an unattractive
female protagonist. For me that was a formative experience. Rather on
the hard side of science fiction the narrative follows the good
looking male protagonist who is a kind of emissary from a culture that values
aesthetics to the extreme coming to a planet where people live by a
more practical approach to life. The female protagonist assigned to him as his assistant is so ugly to him that he can’t
stop staring. After some culture clashing they get married.
I’m always looking for more of my beloved ugly heroines. They are quite difficult to find. So if you know of a book or a movie, please let me know! Reblog this with your suggestions, chat me up, ask or submit. All suggestions are welcome.
TAG: On my blog I use the “unconventional looking / conventionally unattractive heroine” tag.
suggested for Brienne and Jaime (I haven’t read ASOIAF, so I don’t know how they are described in the book but Brienne and Aria from the TV series are certainly great unconventional looking female characters.)
I can’t believe I forgot this book the first time around. The heroine is plain and capable and has a sexy voice but not when she sings. It’s weird. Great book.
I haven’t read this one yet but Tanith Lee is always highly recommended.
Aaaaaaaaaaaand another addition…
Older Women Getting the Hot Guy in Fantasy and Science Fiction
I have thought long and hard if I should make a separate post or just add it to this one. I decided to do the latter because the list for older heroines is so ridiculously short (as of yet) I wouldn’t even call it a list.
Ok, first let’s define “older woman”. According to who gets storylines that center around personal growth, getting it on with a desirable love interest AND saving the day, thirty is the onset of old-age in genre fiction. Very, very seldom have I read a book where all those good things happen to a woman older than twenty-nine. Oh and BTW I’m practically a crone by these standards. So if any of you are offended by this just remember that this post is written by the most offended old hag aka ME.
“But,” some of you might say, “there are plenty of BAMF woman over thirty in fantasy and science fiction.” Yeah, true but they get different kind of stories than woman below that magic age ESPECIALLY in books.
And that’s because these woman are so very mature that having adventures, falling madly in love and behaving accordingly is absolutely beneath them. Also there is no more character growth possible because the typical human woman is mentally complete by that age. Excitement, immature decisions and the use of sarcasm are also absolutely out of the question.
Have you read the last paragraph in a sarcastic voice? If not, try again.
“But,” I hear some of saying, “I know tons of really cool female characters over the age of thirty or at least played by actresses older than thirty on TV and in movies who fall in love, make mistakes and learn from them, save the day and go on great adventures.” Very true, I agree. And out of all these cool characters I will take Captain Janeway as example. She’s smart, capable, the hero of her own story, feminine AND strong, just a great character in short. She’s also physically attractive. I’m not holding that against her character but it’s just a perfect example how not being young anymore is not much of a problem if the female character in question is beautiful. Beauty trumps age in the visual medium. In genre books however any women above the age of thirty is “ewww old” apparantly.
End of rant. Here is my (very short) list of books with older women in genre fiction:
The heroine is 47(!). And she’s not even compensating it by being stunningly beautiful (for her age). How dare!!! AND the LI is an Orc. 🙂 If you want to know more @ever-hungry-aria has written a great review here.
Not sure if this one qualifies because the heroine is 37 or 38 if I remember correctly but ends up looking like 17. The character doesn’t change her behaviour. She continues to act believably like a woman closer to 40 than 20 which is sometimes hilarious. Great book, some LGBT themes and hard to pin down genre-wise.
“I want something better than this for women. Intelligence, compassion, integrity, persistence, the ability to look beyond oneself — these are qualities that we should encourage all genders to value and embrace, both in themselves and others, from a young age. But the assumption that heroines need to be good-looking creates a corresponding assumption about women who are not. Books have the power to combat the idea of appearance as defining currency. Books can show us that admirable and interesting women come in all shapes and sizes.“
Very good article on female beauty standards in genre fiction. This topic is very close to my heart and I agree with most of it. The author is unfortunately a bit dismissive of women having romantic plot lines and I get where she’s coming from. Still I don’t agree with her.
Of course we need to see heroines who have other worries besides their love interest but she makes it sound as if a romantic love diminishes the female protagonist and takes away from the realistic depiction of a character. Romantic love is for most people a very important part of our daily life and I love to read about it in my fantasy and science fiction novels.
That cover looked so amazing I instantly headed over to Amazon and YAWN.
Book descriptions that use “beautiful” as the defining descriptor of the heroine instantly sound so off-putting and boring to me. I’ve read and seen too many stories with that kind of character and NOPE. I have zero desire to hear more about the tragic condition of “too beautiful”. Yes, it’s possible to turn that into a plot device but never an interesting one.
Double YAWN if the beautiful heroine is destined for some destiny because she has the most magical magic in all the land.
I don’t want to be negative but I’m just tired of all these unbelievable beauties. I just wish there were more female characters who are ordinary women in extraordinary circumstances. You know, like their male counterparts…
STAINED GLASS MONSTERS by Andrea K. Höst
Creatures from the Eferum are a world-wide problem: creeping through tears in the fabric of space, they feast on every unprotected human they can find.
Tyrland has a solution in the Kellian: faster and stronger than humans, they are Tyrland’s clawed, shadowy monster hunters. But no matter how faithfully they serve, or how true their sworn word, they are too different, too separate, to ever be entirely trusted.
Rennyn Claire is a complication. Secretive and obscenely powerful, she knows entirely too much about a massive new threat to Tyrland’s safety. Worst of all, she is linked to a past that the Kellian would rather forget.
All three of these things – monsters, Kellian, and an entirely overpowered mage – are about to land in Kendall Stockton’s lap. The last thing Kendall wants is to try to play conscience to someone who can swat her like a bug. But innocent lives are at stake, and no-one else seems willing to ask if what is necessary is the right thing to do.
Andrea K. Höst’s books are not easily chategorized. She mixes fantasy, science fiction and steampunk with a strong romantic element while never losing focus on plot and character development.
Her novels always feature interesting and capable heroines that are easy to identify with, sexy and thoughtful men and fully fleshed out secondary characters. There are usually multiple lgbt characters in each of her books.
This graphic novel had a huge impact on me when I was a teenager.
It follows the main character Halo Jones from adolescence well into adulthood. Growing up in a futuristic giant housing complex where shopping expeditions are life endangering and despair and boredom kill its inhabitants she takes a chance to leave for space as an interstellar hostess. Later she becomes a mercenary fighting in a terrible war where she also meets her love interest who is basically a war criminal and tied to her past in ways that horrify her. I think I don´t give away too much by saying that in the end she never loses her moral compass.
Halo Jones is a well rounded character who takes her destiny into her own hands. She makes decisions and suffers the consequences, she grows, she learns and is never defined by familiy or the men she encounters. Halo loses people she loves and forms new, meaningful friendships. She falls in love but never gives herself up. Not bad for a graphic novel that was published in the ‘80s and written by a man. The novel is full of interesting female characters. I´m sure by today´s sensibilities there are many things to criticize. I won´t because I´m biased and I still love Halo as much as I loved her back when I was a teen.
Do you have a REYLO VIBE recommendation? Submit or contact me!💙💙💙
Our Dragon doesn’t eat the girls he takes, no matter what stories they tell outside our valley. We hear them sometimes, from travelers passing through. They talk as though we were doing human sacrifice, and he were a real dragon. Of course that’s not true: he may be a wizard and immortal, but he’s still a man, and our fathers would band together and kill him if he wanted to eat one of us every ten years. He protects us against the Wood, and we’re grateful, but not that grateful.”
Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life.
Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
The next choosing is fast approaching, and Agnieszka is afraid. She knows—everyone knows—that the Dragon will take Kasia: beautiful, graceful, brave Kasia, all the things Agnieszka isn’t, and her dearest friend in the world. And there is no way to save her.
But Agnieszka fears the wrong things. For when the Dragon comes, it is not Kasia he will choose.
Reblogging the first entry of my blog. This book more or less was the incentive to start blogging about villains and monsters. @metamashina mentioned it on their first episode of their podcast and it made me very happy that finally someone was talking about exactly the kind of fiction I’m interested in. So thank you for inspiring me!
While lurking in the Star Wars fandom I’ve seen Reylos recommending stuff to each other but it was always sporadic and unorganized. Why was no one running a recommendations blog for stuff that is similar to the reylo dynamic? Why was no one blogging about exactly the things I’m interested in? Whyyyyy? Oh. Ok. Guess I have to do it. Story of this blog. 😊
Also read this book! Capable heroine, grumpy, but sexy wizard, creepy woods, elements of Polish folklore and graphic depictions of female friendschip…
At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.
After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.
And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.
As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.
Reblogging myself because I’ve been listening to the Metamashina podcast today. They did a great in-depth analysis of this book.
A resilient young heroine, a mysterious demon, russian folklore and a great evil lurking in the woods and in the hearts of men…
BRYONY AND ROSES by T. Kingfisher
Bryony and her sisters have come down in the world. Their merchant father died trying to reclaim his fortune and left them to eke out a living in a village far from their home in the city.
But when Bryony is caught in a snowstorm and takes refuge in an abandoned manor, she stumbles into a house full of dark enchantments. Is the Beast that lives there her captor, or a fellow prisoner? Is the house her enemy or her ally? And why are roses blooming out of season in the courtyard?
Armed only with gardening shears and her wits, Bryony must untangle the secrets of the house before she—or the Beast—are swallowed by them.
Sophie has the great misfortune of being the eldest of three daughters, destined to fail miserably should she ever leave home to seek her fate. But when she unwittingly attracts the ire of the Witch of the Waste, Sophie finds herself under a horrid spell that transforms her into an old lady. Her only chance at breaking it lies in the ever-moving castle in the hills: the Wizard Howl’s castle. To untangle the enchantment, Sophie must handle the heartless Howl, strike a bargain with a fire demon, and meet the Witch of the Waste head-on. Along the way, she discovers that there’s far more to Howl—and herself—than first meets the eye.
Reblogging myself because this book deserves more attention. I even prefer it over the movie. The characters are more consistent, the plot makes more sense and I the development of the romance is better.
Monsters and Villains 