Kick-Ass Women in Speculative Fiction and Movies

Last night I had a really fun chat with a facebook friend where we playfully imagined creating an all female body-guard platoon from our favourite hawt kick-ass female characters from movies and fiction. 

Some of the ones which quickly made the cut included ones I was instantly and quickly familiar with:

* Sarah Conner

* River Tam

* Buffy

* Faith

* Mila-Multi-pass-Resident Evil-Jovovich

* Kate Beckinsale

* Gina Carano (who is a real-life mixed martial artist)

* Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver)

* Trinity (Matrix)

Some that would make my personal list that did not make the cut last night

(mostly because I was tired and had to go to bed before zombies noshed on my

brains) would include:

* Anita Blake Vampire Hunter (Laurell K. Hamilton)

* Mercy the shapeshifter (Patricia Briggs)

* Rachel Morgan the witch/demon by Kim Harrison

* Ivy the living vampire (Rachel's BFF) in the same series by Kim Harrison

* Bo the succubus in the Canadian TV series Lost Girl (filmed in my own home town of Toronto)

* Pris the replicant pleasure model assassin (Darryl Hannah in Blade Runner)

* Zhora the replicant assassin (Joanna Cassidy in Blade Runner)

* Valeria Queen of Thieves (Sandahl Bergman) in Conan the Barbarian


* Elena Michaels werewolf (Kelly Armstrong)


* Hope Adams demon (Kelly Armstrong)


* Paige Winterbourne witch (Kelly Armstrong)


There are more, but one only has so much time in the day to indulge in blogging...

Some whom my facebook friend made me aware that I obviously need to make

the acquaintance of:

* Molly Millions from Neuromancer -  (I only know her as Jane from Johnny

Mnemonic)

* Mina Murray from Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

* Alyx from Joanna Russ's Picnic on Paradise.

This made me realize that maybe there are lots of other hot kick-ass female

heroines that I am missing out on and that is just inexcusable! I need to find

them all! So any pointers in the right direction would be appreciated...




And really, when I finally grow up, I'd love to be creating and writing strong 


kick-ass female characters like these myself - or living as, and being one of


them myself. ;-) As if that's ever going to happen in real life. Guess that's why I


read so much. Living in the imagination is the next best thing. 

Modesty Blaise

My treasures, my precious...

I don't know if every bookworm has a special shelf just for those extra precious books (yessss...my precioussss...er..um sorry about that...) that shine like powerful, enchanted gold rings in the dark, but I certainly do. There are just some books that seem to glow, and to give off their own life and light, just as they sit there humming quietly to themselves on the shelf.

I prize these stories, like something rare, irreplaceable, priceless, and unique. I suppose if I were a rich art collector, I would pursue these novels around the world and pay any price for them, then keep them in a special room with a carefully controlled atmosphere so they would not deteriorate ever. I would invite only highly privileged people into my book-treasure room. We would all stand around and savour rare vintages in tiny crystal glasses while contemplating and discussing my preciousssss collection of prized literary acquisitions.

No, wait, that is totally wrong, and not me. I'm much more the down to earth, touchy-feely, hold it in my hands, smell it, read it, casually relax and hang out with it kind of girl. I guess that is one of the reasons why I don't collect rare things that break easily (besides not being rich).

Perhaps that's just one of the reasons why the books I consider special aren't special because they are old, rare, historical, collectable, or worth a great deal of money. They are mass market genre novels and are special only because they've touched me personally in some wonderful way. They stand out from the rest because of the way they are written. They have various, perhaps indefinable qualities to them that I can't always quite pin down or describe. All I know is that I love them more than most of the other books, so they get put together on a special shelf where I can look up at their spines and see them easily, anytime, from where I am sitting reading, or working on the computer.

Right now the books on the special shelf are not many. This is for several reasons. One is because I've just recently moved and most of my books are still packed away. The other is complicated and ancient history by now.

So what are these few, very special glowing books right now?

1. Robin McKinley's _Sunshine_ (I so wish she would write another one of these...a sequel, or another comparable one to this...)
2. Susan Hubbard's Ethical Vampire Series
3. John Ajvide Lindqvist's _Let the Right One In_

If I were to write a book, I'd want it to be as good as Sunshine, to have many of the qualities in it that I am so in love with in Sunshine. Sunshine is both sensual and spiritual, earthy and ethereal, hilarious and scary, homey and alien. When I see Sunshine, I hunger for cinnamon buns AS BIG AS YOUR HEAD. The book has become my good luck charm and my talisman against all evil. How does McKinley do what she does? I want it. I want it bad.

It would also be as powerfully visual as Hubbard's literary images are. I want to move right on in and live in that silvery-turquoise coloured bedroom and I never want to encounter the creepy white faced harbinger in that van, ever.

Also, my imaginary truly awesome book that I'd write would also be as fresh and tart and tangy and startlingly cold and dark and brutal as _Let the Right One In_.

My special list of extra-treasured books is a very short one right now.  These are the ones that I can't pack away or go without looking at or thinking about for very long. The present ones also all happen to be about vampires, but they are all very different from each other. None of the vampires sparkle, which I think is good.

The list changes from time to time, but there are some that stay on it. I just don't happen to have the older books with me since my used-to-be larger library is no longer in my possession, and hasn't been for over 10 years now. Obviously there are ones like TLOTR, and the complete set of The Chronicles of Narnia, but I don't own those ones right now. One I really miss from my childhood is Great Swedish Fairy Tales, illustrated by John Bauer, which I think is now out of print.

Anyway, that's my short list for now.

L.A.Banks, Surrender the Dark

Ahhhh. My memory is really being jogged now that I've spent the day working on my long neglected blog and trying to remember some of the better books I've read over the last few months.

I just remembered another new author that I discovered during my recent, tumultuous and stressful move. L.A. Banks. At first I wasn't certain that I would like her novel because it appeared to be one of "those" romance novels that don't do much for me.

However, I soon found that it was much more than just a romance. I could actually identify with the heroine on a very personal level, how low of a level she had sunk in her life, how depressed and demoralized she was, how far she had to come to heal. I even found myself identifying with her taste in clothes shampoos, soaps, and scents. I could also identify with the values, morals, ethics, and interests of the main characters, including the health foods and the natural cleansing and healing process of the body, and how everything is interconnected, mind, body, and spirit. I wanted to be her. I wanted her love interest.

I was honestly surprised at how well Banks was able to make me care about her story and her characters. So I looked her up to see what else she had written, and I was terribly saddened to discover that she had recently died of cancer just this past year at the young age of 51. Her writing had made me care, not only about those she wrote about, but herself as a person. Here was someone highly intelligent, warm, loving, caring, healing, generous, and with an amazing amount of hope for humanity and a strong belief that good and love will always conquer all. Rare in these days and times. I had just discovered her, only to lose her.

L.A. Banks, whereever your spirit is (and I'm quite sure it's somewhere really wonderful!) I will be looking for the rest of your books to read. It seems you gave a great deal of your wonderful self while you were here with us.

The Desert Spear by Peter Brett

The Desert Spear by Peter Brett

Have I mentioned that I recently purchased and read the sequel to The Warded Man that I was originally so impressed with? I think that I forgot to about this in the midst of all the upheaval going on in my life lately.  I was extremely pleased to discover that I was just as satisfied if not more so by the second book in the series as I was by the first. The storytelling continues to fascinate, the characters become more and more interesting, the plot increasingly compelling and intriguing, and the settings convincing enough to make me want to jump on into the pages and wriggle my way right in there myself. And, as a woman who spent a few years studying and practicing the art of Jiu Jitsu myself, I most definitely appreciate the fine martial arts aspects to the book. I can hardly wait to possess and devour the third book in this series. Hurry up Peter, bring it on!

Latest Reads: Simon R. Green, Drinking Midnight Wine, Nevada Barr, Burn

Enough is enough. Time to get back to seriously blogging about my reading adventures.

I've moved house. I'm about half-unpacked a month and a half later. I'm still recovering from the aftermath of being held hostage by dastardly pirate-moving-men who charged me twice what they originally estimated and tacked on all kinds of hidden fees and would not unpack my stuff until I paid them. I had to borrow money from a friend (who is now no longer a friend) to pay them.

In the moving process I also injured a disc in the neck area, leading to some pretty severe nerve pain radiating down my upper arms and hands. That gradually faded as the weeks passed. Then, while unpacking, I dropped a 10 lb dumbell weight on my right big toe and smashed it into smithereens. I will  now be hobbling around in an air cast until mid-March/end of March. So my life has been just filled with adventure - but not nearly enough of the proper kind of adventure as compared to what goes on in my beloved books.

Moving has been hell. But it's time to move on from moving and get back to more meaningful things, like books, and reading, and writing. So I've read some stuff here and there in between moving and unpacking and being injured, but not much of it has made a very deep impact - at least not enough to write about it anyway.

I read like I breath. I just can't not read. So I've usually got at least one book on the go at any one time, often more than one.  But unfortunately, not everything I read is truly stimulating, nutritious to the brain and illuminating of the soul.  Many library books go in one eye and out the other if you will, and then get returned to the library without having left much of an impression on the old brain cells in between the eyes.

Nevada Barr's Burn is one recent exception.  It's not my typical sci-fi/fantasy genre novel. The closest this novel got to anything in my beloved "woo woo" range was a few rather unremarkable Voodoo practitioners. This one was all facts: who dunnit, how, when, why, where etc, and I really enjoyed the change of pace.

The Anna Pigeon mystery/adventure/action series is one I'm going to pay attention to in the future when I need to take a walk outside of dark urban fantasy and get bored with vampires, werewolves, witches, goblins, orcs, faeries, godlings, and other worlds in other galaxies and dimensions. In this novel, Pigeon is a very down to earth park ranger who is staying in New Orleans "on leave",  and runs across a child-sex-trafficking ring. The characters were extremely well drawn in this novel.

I particularly loved the cross-dressing actress mother. Settings were also very convincing. I wanted to be right there in that exact spot, drinking that exact coffee. How could I possibly resist a story that had not one but two brave, heroic women out to save a houseful of young children from the predations of rich, privileged, pedophiles? Well done!

This one stayed with me. I even had to renew it in order to keep it with me long enough until I could find the time to sit down and hold it next to me while I wrote about it here. So Nevada Barr is going to be added to my favourite author's list.

I just finished reading Simon R. Green's Drinking Midnight Wine. At first I was puzzled, thinking, how come I haven't read this author before? Then I looked him up on my blog here and discovered that I had read his Man with the Golden Torc. Ah ha! Here is proof that my blog is actually useful to me -  when I bother to use it.

So, I liked the book. I can't say I disliked it. It just didn't wow me. I hate it when a book doesn't have any surprises in it for me. It's boring when it's too predictable. I know it is often said that there are no new stories, that all stories are just retold in new ways, but that is really where the art lies isn't it? A really good storyteller can retell the same basic story, but never bore the reader.

I really wasn't surprised to discover that the woman the hero fell in love with was actually the human version of Gaia (the earth's soul/consciousness). I had already been guessing that for at least a chapter or two before it was revealed, and the same was true of Luna being the Moon, and the evil Serpent in  the Sun, and that the Sun raped the Moon and the Moon had a son she didn't want who became "evil"and hell bent on destroying humanity blah, blah, blah...

I just couldn't get all that involved or upset about any of it, even though Green tried hard to bring it all "down to earth" by serving up scrambled egg with toast soldier breakfasts after a night of really good sex with an Earth Mother incarnate.

I felt like I was sitting in a hard plastic chair in a hall, listening to one of those pale, weedy looking guys who love to lecture on for hours at Masonic Temples and who read endless books on High/Ceremonial Magick. Yah, Yah Kabbalah. Secret hand shakes, signs and all that. Don't get me wrong. Alchemy is interesting and so is Jung. Dion Fortune is cool too.

It's just that some of the people I've run into that take it too seriously don't seem to have much balance in their lives. They make me want to go eat a nice big green salad full of avocado, go for a walk in the sun down by the lake, stick my toes in the sand, roll around in the grass, and play with a big smelly hairy dog. Anyway. That was my reaction to this one. Kind of Ho hum I guess. There you go.

But now I have a big bag full of fat, shiny new novels to read! I will list them here in the hopes that I will guilt myself into writing about them as I read them this time.

Col Buchanan Farlander: Book One
Justine Larbalestier Magic or Madness
Kim Harrison Pale Demon (I think I skipped this one in the series and read around it so it'll be a catch up read)
Terry Goodkind The Omen Machine (I really hope I don't regret getting this one out - I was getting kind of sick of the whole Richard/Kahlan series, but it's been a few years so we'll see what happens)
Nathan Long Ulkrika The Vampire: Blood Forged


Ok. We'll see how this batch turns out...

Update - starting again...

I am lazy and I am bad. I keep reading books and not making any notes about them. If I made New Year's resolutions (which I don't) I would resolve to be more diligent and organized about writing about the books I read.

To put things into some perspective however, I should say that I have been extremely busy with a major move of household, some recent injuries (neck - disc - arm/hand nerve pain related, and a badly broken big toe), and basically a lot of upheaval and chaos and financial strain in my life. I haven't been reading as much as I usually read, and I definitely haven't had my head together enough to write down my reactions and impressions of what I've read.

Probably the most noteworthy and memorable book I've read since I last wrote a review here was A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness. At first I hated it, but quickly grew to love it, and by the end I was completely forlorn that it was all over and I had to wait for the sequel.

I am resolved to get back to making proper notes of my reading adventures...soon...

Latest Stack of Novels

The Fall by Guillermo Del Toro & Chuck Hogan

This creepy, spooky, disturbing novel is the sequel to The Strain. The writing sucks me right in to the story and keeps me there until it's all over - always the mark of a successful writing job for me.  The Master's vampire take-over of the world is well underway now, having spread past New York into most major global cities. The vampires in this series appear to be something like extra-terrestrials except that the infection that they pass on is not simply a biological colonization of the human body, but also something which affects the mind and the "soul" or "spirit" since there is a sort of "hive-mind" at work. I continue to enjoy the band of vampire hunters:  the "old man" (whose entire life has been dedicated to vampire hunting) Abraham Setrakian, Eph Goodweather ex CDC, Vasily Fet the exterminator, and Augustin Elizalde (aka Gus) ex street tough. I'm looking forward to reading the next novel in the series when it comes out.

Bullet by Laurell K. Hamilton

I don't care what the detractors say, I am a die-hard Anita Blake fan. Hamilton manages to keep producing novels in the Anita Blake series which never fail to keep my interest from start to finish. I'm always sorry when each book is done because it means I have the leave the world and imagination of my favorite bad-ass female vampire executioner/necromancer.  Anita may be physically tiny, but her powerful personality is awesome.  In the face of all the challenges thrown at her in each book, she keeps on growing , learning about herself and others, becoming wiser, more complex and sophisticated, more loving, and also more ruthless (as necessary).  Death-dealing is never easy for her - it comes with a price that she must pay - and that others are not so willing to pay. In this latest novel in the series, The Mother of All Darkness wants  to possess Anita's body, soul, and mind for her own and Anita needs everyone's co-operation to win the fight.

It says on the back jacket that Hamilton is a full-time writer. My wish of the day: when I grow up I'd like to be like her - a successful, published writer who makes a viable living doing what she loves to do most. I've started buying some how-to- write novel books. I'm taking notes every night in one of my brand new journals (I am a such a journal-nerd-girl). My goal this year is to educate myself as well as I can about how to write my first book, and then to set about doing that. I turn 45 this year. I think it's time for me to "grow up" by now...I've wanted to be a "real writer" since I was a tiny little girl.

The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness

This is the first sci-fi or speculative fiction novel in a series. It's set on a human-habitable world somewhere in the Universe where people have been infected with the ability to read each other's minds. They can't shut the power out, so it drives a lot of them crazy, and results in some awful consequences and extreme reactions (like killing off women, making classic gender-divides even worse, and so on). It's well written. I like Todd the main character. I am curious to see what happens next. Can Todd be corrupted by the other men into "falling from grace" or not?

Arcane Circle  by Linda Robertson

Persephone Alcmedi aka "Seph" is a witch, and a Master vampire's Master. Her boyfriend is an uncomfirmed Domn Lupe waerewolf whose power is locked down in the mysterious tattoos all over his body. The leaders of the werewolves must challenge and confirm Johnny's powers. To save his life, Seph and Johnny must work together to solve the mystery of the tattoos all the while planning their foster daughter's 10th birthday party. A light and entertaining supernatural read.

The Hidden Goddess  by M.K.Hobson

I enjoyed reading The Native Star so much that when I saw this sequel on the library shelves I grabbed it. This is a hybrid genre novel combining steam-punk and witch-craft, and set in a Reconstruction-era America. The heroine is one Miss Emily Edwards. She is a very down-to-earth, smart, independent Earth-Witch, who is willing to do whatever it takes to save the Earth and all it's peoples, and who is totally uninterested in the ego-trappings of power, wealth, and fame.

Zoo City by Lauren Beukes

This gritty urban fantasy is set in a futuristic Johannesburg, South Africa.  Some humans become mysteriously "infected" or "cursed" with the dubious and mysterious gift of symbiotic animal familiars and individual shamanic magical talents. Protagonist Zinzi December is smart, tough, street-wise, and has a talent for attracting disaster and for finding missing things and people. Let the trouble begin...

The Diviner's Tale by Bradford Morrow

This book has a series of fantastic reviews by famous authors. After reading it, I understood why. It is one of those books which stands out from my stack and glows with a life all of it's own. The writing is luminous, magickal, and hypnotic. Sentences and phrases light up in the mind and float there, waiting to be explored like rooms in a mansion, or secret doors in mysterious closets that lead into alternate worlds. Cassandra Brooks is a diviner, from a family of diviners. She doesn't just find water though, she finds a lot of other things too, in the past, present and future, in her life and other people's lives, in life and in death.

My sincerest thanks to author Bradford Morrow for teaching me the meaning of Syzygy in a most meaningful manner, and for writing beautiful thought provoking passages that I felt compelled to copy down and save in my personal journal.  This one is special - a real keeper.

I amend my original wish - when I "grow up"  into the "real writer" I hope someday to become,  I'd like to be something like a combination of Laurell K. Hamilton and Bradford Morrow.  Despite the snootery certain critics heap upon best-selling authors, I don't think that there is anything wrong with making a successful living writing books that people actually buy and enjoy reading.

I've been lazy!

Bad me, I've been lazy.
Well, to be fair, I've been busy too and I haven't had time to write about what I've been reading most of this summer.  I'm still busy, but I feel guilty now for neglecting my blog. So I will make some short notes.

Recent reads:

Night of the Vampires by Heather Graham
This novel is set in the Civil War era American south.
The female heroine is half vampire, half human. She teams up with a hunky human male from Texas. Together they set out to hunt down and eradicate an insidious vampire horde which is taking advantage  of the killings on both side of the war. Heavy on the romance. I'm not really someone who enjoys the supernatural romances on the market, but I will read them when I'm short on other kinds of more interesting reading material.

This Side of the Grave by Jeaniene Frost
That said, I still continue to enjoy reading about the relationship between half-vampire Cat Crawfield and her full vampire husband Bones. They are hot, spicy and sassy! Together they get up to all sorts of fun, sex, fighting, trouble, murder, mayhem, violence, and trying to save the world over and over again. Cat's psychic/vampire abilities continue to evolve -- a bit like Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake who I also enjoy  reading about --  except Cat is only having wild monkey sex with her husband.  As an aside, I probably should add that unlike some people who complain about Anita Blake's sex life, I don't have a problem with polyamory and other sorts of more exotic bedroom sports as long as they are between fully responsible, consciously consenting adults.

Deadworld by J. N. Duncan
Jackie Rutledge is a tough female FBI agent who finds herself dealing with a serial killer who happens to be a vampire.  In the course of her investigation she finds herself falling for a yummy PI named Nick Anderson who also happens to be a vampire. Yup, I really lucked out this time folks. Another romantic supernatural story.

Slim pickings at the library make for one desperate reader here...

Living on the Edge by Shannon K. Butcher
This one's closest claim to supernatural status is that the author's husband is Jim Butcher, author of the fabulous Harry Dresden wizard series. I guess Shannon's writing is ok as far as the romance-thriller genre goes, if you like that sort of thing. Sloane is the female heroine of this novel. She's tough and trained as a paramilitary body-guard. She falls for Lucas, a tough and handsome ex-soldier. Together they take down an evil Columbian drug lord while saving the life of one of Sloane's best friends. Lots of guns, violence, blood, and explicit sex in this one. Uh huh.

Walking Dead by Greg Rucka
Out of all the books in this group this one was the best and it wasn't even a supernatural one. The monsters in this novel were all too human and all too believably evil. In fact, this novel was so upsetting that it really affected me for days afterwards, and even kept me awake with the lights on the night that I read it.

Atticus Kodiak and his wife Alena Cizkova have retired from their former (very dangerous) professions to hide out in a tiny little town in the former USSR. All they want is to live the rest of their lives together in peace and safety. Unfortunately as long as you are human and living with other human beings,  there is no where you can go to escape the evil of mankind.

Atticus and Alena are drawn into the world of human sex trafficking when the daughter of their neighbor is kidnapped and the rest of her family slaughtered.  Atticus goes on a long journey around the world to track down the 14 year old girl, exposing an intricate network of ruthless human exploitation, deep suffering, violence, greed and corruption.

This is one fabulously researched and written novel about a horrifying reality and the sort of true evil that people are capable of. I will be on the look out for more novels by this author even though he does not write within my usual preferred genre.

After reading that, who needs vampires and zombies? Me.  That's who.
I will be on the lookout for some new novels of my favorite genre soon.
Wish me better novel hunting luck than I had this last time!

The other thing I've learned is that if I don't make any reading notes about what I'm reading before I return the books from the library, I quickly forget what the books were about unless they were truly spectacular - such as what has happened with the last list of books I mentioned in the previous post, but did not get around to writing anything about. :-(

Lesson learned.

Recent Reads - quick post

Here's a list of recent reads that I haven't reviewed yet
but have to return to the library!

Dead Streets by Tim Waggoner
- An unusual sort of zombie with his own free will, soul, and consciousness fights crime in the Underworld with his half vampire lover at his sort of not completely decaying side. Talk about 'til undeath do us part...or some such forever romantic nonsense...

Dreamfever by Karen Marie Moning
- Bad FAE! Hooray! Not silly useless cherubic fairies.
I just hate it when I pick up a book, love the story and the characters but something like the third or fourth book into the series already). (More later. )

The Messenger by Jan Burke - Immortal guy who can talk to the recently dying meets female soul mate destined to share his powers and abilities and together they defeat a big bad. Nice cemetery dogs.

Ghost Ship by P.J. Alderman - Murder mystery with someone who can talk to ghosts. Ho Hum.

Flirt by Laurell K. Hamilton - Better than some recent writing. (More later. )

Karavans by Jennifer Roberson - Ok.

Witch and Wizard by James Patterson - Young Adult. Great subversiveness.

A Brush of Darkness by Allison Pang - (more later)

Must run to library now to return books before I get more fines...and get new books out to read of course.