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

Novel: Skinwalker by Faith Hunter

Last week I brought home another of my typical stacks of dark fantasy books. One was so good that I gobbled it up all at once. I started reading it around 4 pm and was done before midnight. It was called Skinwalker by an author known as Faith Hunter (I suspect this might be a pseudonym but I don't know for sure). 

The protagonist is a Cherokee woman who is a shape-changer.  Jane Yellowrock can take on the shape of nearly anything that is approximately close to her own body weight. Any excess mass she temporarily stores in rocks. She rides a Harley, practices "dirty" martial arts, knows her way around all sorts of guns and knives, is 6 feet tall with 4 foot long black hair, knows how to belly dance, eats massive mountains of bloody steaks (shape-changing is hungry work!) and drinks gallons of gourmet teas from around the world. (I have a particular soft spot for anyone who appreciates fine tea.) She is hired by a consortium of New Orleans vampires to come to Louisiana and hunt down a rogue vampire that is killing both vampires and humans alike and attracting far too much negative attention. 

One of the things I particularly liked about Hunter's writing was how she was able to switch the internal running dialogue of Jane's thoughts between her normal human thoughts, and the thoughts of her inner "Beast". Jane's thoughts are pretty typical of any woman's thoughts (as long as she is a tough vampire hunting chick). "Beast's" thoughts are truncated, cutting out anything superfluous, and focused upon the heightened senses of an animal. Hunter does an excellent job of describing the world through smell, taste, touch, sound and sight. She also is able to make really clear what are the important things for a predatory animal such as survival, the hunt, dominance, territory and possession, and mating. And, both Jane and the Beast have their own senses of dark humor. 

Just the way I like them, the monsters are most definitely monsters - albeit complex monsters. Humans are monstrous in their own ways just as the supernaturals are. Relationships are complicated and fraught with tension, uncertainty, deception and risk. There is sex, but the book doesn't start, end and revolve around it. This is not vampire "lite" Harlequin Romance shlock. Fights are dangerous, bloody, and believable. Characters really get hurt and die. There is great suspense, and many twists and turns that keep me guessing. I truly had no idea who the "Big Bad" was until the very end. 


Here is a link to Faith Hunter's website: http://www.faithhunter.net/wp/


I can hardly wait to read the second Faith Hunter book in the series which is called Blood Cross. The third book comes out in January 2011 and is called Mercy Blade. Until then...