Kick ass girls, broken girls who find their power, funny girls who can't help being assholes. Female characters run the show for me when it comes to stories. I don't care if the main character is a man like in my beloved Walt Longmire series by Craig Johnson. The girls have to rock it even in a supporting role. They can be wussy or stereotypical if they have something that compels me to know them. And I can ramble off names of a few new favorites so I'm gonna.
Kinsey Millhone, private detective, loves to be alone and at the same time is so keenly aware of her hunger to have companionship you root for to get...intimate. She's never catty, which I love, but almost always cranky (which I really love).
Mercy Thompson, mechanic, underdog loner with an unwavering moral compass and a habit to mouth off when others would duck their heads and hope no one sees them. She's loving and protective and scared at all the appropriate times. She gets her ass kicked and not because she makes stupid choices, but because she makes emotional ones.
Cat Crawfield, killer, half-vamp with a chip on her shoulder and very little social skills, she doesn't always choose the right path for the right reason. She bounces between rage, lust, and rage more than anyone else. And she is the opposite of graceful when it comes to dealing with her jealousy issues. I love this girl because so far you can't pay her to behave.
Kate Daniels just recently made the list because I fell into a series marathon and now I have the biggest fangirl crush on her. Everything I wrote for Mercy applies to Kate minus the mechanic part. I want to be Kate, but not really because I would cry all the time. She almost never cries. I would screech at all the gore. She just shrugs her shoulders, gags sometimes. I would try to stab Curran too, so we're the same there. She's the perfect balance of emotion, fight, and compromise.
Almost every book on my favorites list (not including children's books) has girl power. So I wonder, where's my list of favorite men? My mind settles on Walt Longmire, but part of that is how he regards women (which is so fantastic and self-effacing I love it). Is there a double standard that women have to be better even in fiction? Or is it just the simple fact that I am a woman reader?
(By Carl Thorborg [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
(By Carl Thorborg [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons)
