Friday, August 19, 2016

Twelve kick-ass women from sci-fi and fantasy

Jeff Somers is the author of Lifers, the Avery Cates series from Orbit Books, Chum from Tyrus Books, and We Are Not Good People from Pocket/Gallery. His new story is The Stringer.

At the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog Somers tagged twelve kick-ass women from sci-fi and fantasy whose strength doesn’t necessarily imply masculine traits, including:
Tan-Tan, Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson

When her father commits an unforgivable sin, Tan-Tan is banished along with him to the alien world of New Half-Way Tree, where the castoffs of a technologically advanced future Earth must eke out a primitive kind of survival among a strange alien race. Brutalized by her father, Tan-Tan kills him in self-defense, and flees into the forests, where she must contend with hardship, integrate herself into an alien society, and plan her revenge against those responsible for her situation. By the time she takes on the mantle of the Midnight Robber, a Robin Hood-like character who takes from the rich, Tan-Tan has hardened herself to the point she’s hardly recognizable. Hopkinson’s novel is a painful, ultimately triumphant look at the terrible reservoirs of strength it takes for an abused, controlled girl to emerge from the shadows of her past as her own strong, independent woman.
Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue