Writing that Alters Reality

Apr 2020
Foundryside - Robert Jackson Bennett - Jo Fletcher Books, 2018 (ebook edition)
* * * *
Maybe it's just my particular sampling, but an awful lot of recent fantasy works seem to have had female thieves, rogues or assassins as lead characters. Some examples: Brandon Sanderson's Vin in the Mistborn novels, S.A. Chakraborty's Nahri, P. Djeli Clark's Creeper, V.E. Schwab's Lila in A Darker Shade of Magic, A.K. Larkwood's Csorwe (review forthcoming!) and Lila Bellaqua from His Dark Materials. I find this a bit depressing. I get that in a traditionally male-dominated mediaeval fantasy environment, making a female protagonist a small-time crook is one of the few ways to give her both freedom and agency whilst allowing for the inevitable "special destiny" plot development, but shouldn't we be starting to tell different stories by now? It says something for the small numbers of roles that women are permitted in big commercial fantasies that the only female equivalents of Gandalf that I can think of in terms of power and accorded respect are Galadriel, Granny Weatherwax and David Eddings' Polgara, for goodness' sake. And stories with female knightly or amazonian protagonists aren't exactly two-a-penny either. Making your female protagonist small and weak might be a way of encouraging reader sympathy, but it's a subtle form of misogyny.

Well, tough luck, because here's yet another one - Robert Jackson Bennett's Sancia in his new "Founders" trilogy. Fortunately, Bennett's talent for hitting on good fantasy ideas has struck again, and makes this book an enjoyable and compelling read.
( Read more... )