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 mean masculine traits, including:
Nyx, God’s War, by Kameron HurleyRead about another entry on the list.
We could slot in just about any Kameron Hurley protagonist here, but we’d be remiss not to mention Nyxnissa so Dasheem. She is a Bel Dame, a licensed bounty hunter who cuts off heads on behalf of her government on the ravaged, war-torn colony world Umayma. She’s a veteran of the front lines in the planet’s never-ending HolyWar. Her body has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times, she’s not even sure if she’s still human. And she has not an ounce of compassion for you or anyone else. (That’s her there, up top. That bundle she’s holding? Yeah, it’s a severed head.) Hurley’s brutal Bel Dame trilogy is filled with brittle, fascinating, alienating characters, none more so than Nyx, who is a self-destructive madwoman who cleaves to no principals other than her own self-interest, and God help you if you make the unfortunate decision to become her ally, because it’s probably not going to turn out well. She is perhaps the fiercest female character in all of genre fiction, unapologetically vicious, shaped into a monster by a remorseless society and a heartless world—and her most dangerous opponents tend to be her fellow Bel Dames, women enhanced with strange, bug-based tech that gives them powers akin to magic.
God’s War is among Adrian Tchaikovsky's top five books featuring adventuring parties and Joel Cunningham's seven top sci-fi books featuring strong women.
My Book, The Movie: God’s War and Infidel.
--Marshal Zeringue