Adventure-centric YA fantasy novels with cool female leads?

Ever since I gave into the hype and read the Harry Potter books and discovered I liked them, nay, loved them, I have had a soft spot for YA fantasy-adventure and have tried to keep a spot in my rotation open for such books. I had faith that the success of the HP series boded well for the genre, and that if I explored further I would run across plenty of smart, courageous heroines in the Hermione Granger mold, girls who got to participate in rousing adventures and hair-breathed escapes rather than being left on the sidelines while the boys got all the action.

Then along came Twilight, and everything went to... well, you know.

The success of Meyer's series ensured that we would continue to see a sharp division in YA fantasy, between adventure-oriented books aimed at boys and shmoopy paranormal romance aimed at girls -- boys' books in which the male protagonist took charge of his destiny and gained heroic stature, and girls' books where the female protagonist (almost invariably an Ordinary High School Girl (TM)) is rescued and protected by super-hot supernatural love interests who make all the crucial decisions. The latter is what the publishers think girls want, and maybe I'm skewering the market out of whack because I'm a much older reader who still enjoys the pleasures of well-written YA. But what if you're like me, and you'd rather read about girls having adventures rather than about girls being rescued and inexplicably worshiped by hot guys? What's out there for us?

What are some well-written YA fantasy novels which feature female leads with Hermione-like qualities (smarts, courage, empathy, loyalty) who get to participate actively in adventures, as opposed to being caught up in angsty boyfriend drama? Bonus points if she's the protagonist, but she doesn't have to be, as long as she plays a prominent role.

Some of what I've read so far:

The Hunger Games series -- enjoyed it, but a little too heavy on the angsty boyfriend drama for my liking, esp. in the last novel

Graceling -- had some issues with it (no heroine should be mean to her horse!), but enjoyed it on the whole, and appreciated that the heroine got plenty of page time away from the love interest

The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, the first two volumes -- loved them! A girl and her female dragon! How can I not love that?

The Swan Kingdom -- loved it; loved that the heroine herself was magical and that the love interest was secondary; appreciated that the romantic subplot was actually well done and not remotely stalkeriffic

The Sea of Trolls -- engrossing; I had to read it till the end to find out what would happen; but I did NOT like the way the female characters were portrayed in this novel (uniformly unsympathetic, with only two very minor exceptions). I understand the second volume, The Land of the Silver Apples, does have a more appealing female figure, so that one I will read eventually.

Cry of the Icemark -- strong heroine; intriguing hero; but while I liked the book on the whole, a writer should never include a romantic subplot if he doesn't know how to write one. The two leads acted as if they despised one another for almost the entire book, and I saw nothing remotely tender or admiring between them. I would have appreciated the book much more if they had been loyal friends who actually liked one another.

So what are some more adventure-geared stories in which girls feature prominently?

Most of Tamora Pierce's books would qualify. Also try Ellen Kushner's Privilege of the Sword. There really are more girl-centered YAs out there where the female lead isn't spinally challenged--let me look through my daughters' bookshelves (they loathed the idea of Twilight, bless 'em!).

2: Of course! How could I forget Pierce? I'm just starting to dip into her work, having read the first three books of The Immortals series. The Circle of Magic series also comes very highly recommended.

Others that I've read and liked:
The Hero and the Crown
The Blue Sword
Spindle's End

These are the kinds of things I'm looking for. I suspect a lot of the best ones will pre-date Stephenie Meyer's syrup-fest.

Shannon Hale tends to have proactive female characters, though her books are not always adventures in the traditional sense--some of them veer more towards intrigue. There's boy-related drama in many of them, but it's generally a secondary part of the plot.

I'm not sure if the original Heralds of Valdemar trilogy was marketed as YA, but it fits the bill pretty well. Again, there's a tendency towards intrigue at times moreso than adventuring, but there's certainly action mixed in too.

Lirael / Sabriel / Abhorsen by Garth Nix

The Blue Girl by Charles de Lint, perhaps...

This is the sub-subgenre I spent my entire adolescence reading. :)

Seconding Garth Nix's Sabriel, which I just re-read: an eighteen-year-old necromancer about to graduate from school receives a message from her father that he is in trouble, and she must journey into a magic-ridden kingdom and find him. There are two further books, Lirael and Abhorsen, following a different female protagonist about fourteen years later who has a talking dog companion, also female. Romance is present but minimal in the first book (along the lines of The Swan Kingdom but he's with her on the adventure), but romance subplots are not something that tend to make a great impact on me, so I can't remember if there are any in the second or third books.

Patricia Wrede's Lyra books are secondary world fantasy usually focusing on young heroines (Shadow Magic, Daughter of Witches, The Raven Ring), though one of the five focuses on an older woman with children (Caught in Crystal). The Raven Ring is my favorite of Wrede's work.

Tanith Lee's Black Unicorn and sequels focus around a heroine's attempts to find herself out from under the shadow of her powerful sorceress mother. Biting the Sun is a science fantasy coming of age story and one of my favorite books ever.

Isobelle Carmody's Obernewtyn books are post-apocalyptic quest fantasy following a heroine that I really enjoyed when I was in the target age group. Alas, the series is still not finished- I read the first three books years ago, and there are now seven (more in the US publication which split some books into two) and still no ending.

Sherryl Jordan's Winter of Fire is a standalone postapocalyptic (but not Earth, and decidedly more fantasy than science fiction) story with an underclass female protagonist trying to change things.

Joyce Ballou Gregorian's The Broken Citadel is very good and was a new read for me last year, but it's out of print and has two sequels I have not read yet. It's a portal fantasy following a young girl named Sibby who unexpectedly finds herself in the land of Tredana; she meets up with a prince and his friends on a quest to rescue the daughter of an evil queen, and things happen. This book is dated in many ways (the female characters other than Sibby are mostly sympathetic mother figures or unlikeable and its self-sacrificing non-white characters are similarly not great), but it's a rare example of a portal fantasy destination that does not revolve around the visiting protagonist, with a created symbolism and mythology that I found gives the lie to Jean Lorrah's "you can't make new archetypes" line, characters inhabiting the world who have their own backgrounds other than "wandering orphan" and are therefore affected by their own past decisions, and their parents' decisions, and characters interested in the stories told in their world in more than a plot-coupon way.

Midori Snyder's Oran trilogy follows multiple female protagonists trying to overcome an evil queen. It's a bit on the "dark and gritty" side sometimes, but there's a diverse and interesting cast of female characters.

Diane Duane's So You Want To Be a Wizard and sequels follow a female and male protagonist duo as they attempt to stop entropy from destroying the world. These are partly modern-day and partly science fiction, but they are decidedly fantasy-fantasy rather than paranormal.

Mary Gentle's A Hawk in Silver is a contemporary-for-the-time fantasy about two girls who end up involved in a secret war.

Both of the above are contemporary settings, but I find that older YA tends to respect its audience more than recent YA- I find that protagonists are allowed to have more emotional complexity than "angst" and "hormones."

Sylvia Engdahl's Enchantress from the Stars is a science fiction story where the protagonist must convince the inhabitants of the low-technology world she visits that the technology is magic while undermining the attempts of a higher-technology people to exploit them.

Annette Curtis Klause is known more for her werewolf and vampire books, but Alien Secrets has a girl trying to help an alien boy recover an artifact valuable to his people.

Katharine Eliska Kimbriel's Night Calls and Kindred Rites follow a young girl learning Wicca-like magic in an American frontier setting. I found them better than that summary might indicate, but it's been a long time since I read them. They may be shelved in the "horror" section because all books with werewolves and ghosts were so shelved when they were published, but there really isn't that much of horror to them in my opinion.

Books that I would un-recommend, but that others have liked...

Kristin Cashore's Fire was recommended to me as being in this sub-genre, but the love interest was violent and threatening against the heroine and her behavior twisted around him to the extent that I had to stop reading the book.

A much milder dislike, I really wanted to like Malinda Lo's Cinderella retelling Ash, but the pacing was all wrong for me and I thought the heroine was a bit passive. Your mileage may vary, and Lo's later work may have improved on this count.

Jane Yolen's Sister Light, Sister Dark and sequels should be in this subgenre- a girl in a separatist community of women with magical powers to summon their "shadow twin" in moonlight- but I just didn't find the execution to be there. I re-read the first book last year and was disappointed at how none of the women in the community seemed to have any meaningful friendships or even professional relationships with each other, and how the protagonist set aside her female friend as soon as the male love interest showed up, and her interactions with him drove the plot. The myths/legends/songs/history conceit is interesting, but fell flat for other reasons for me that I won't get into now.

The Garth Nix books were the first I thought of as well.

Possibly the Chaos Walking trilogy by Patrick Ness (The Knife of Never Letting Go, The Ask and the Answer, and Monsters of Men. It may not be quite what you're looking for, but there are definitely strong, interesting, resourceful female characters - both good guys and not so good, if I remember correctly.

Jasper Fforde's The Last Dragonslayer and sequels might fit. More absurdity than adventure, but definitely a female protagonist.

What about Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy? Who could ever possibly top Lyra! (And that's an ! -- not a ?)

>9 CurrerBell: I forgot about those. I read them around the same time I did Sabriel and remember liking them (enough to read the other Pullman books my library had), but I don't remember hardly anything that happened. Perhaps a re-read is in order sometime soon (she says while standing in the shadow of Mount Doom TBR...)

I second The Last Dragonslayer!

Your description matches most of my favorite books fairly accurately. I've been reading in this genre since middle school. I'm also in the age range that most of these books are aimed at.

The Golem's Eye and Ptolemy's Gate are the second and third books in one of my favorite series. One of the three main characters in these is female. There is not a major female character in the first book, but the second at least can be read without prior knowledge of the first. There aren't too many likable female characters besides Kitty, the female protagonist, but there aren't too many likable or sympathetically portrayed characters at all.

The Wee Free Men and the other Tiffany Aching books would certainly count. Tiffany is a wonderful character!

Rampant might qualify. It's about girl warriors fighting killer unicorns. It is a modern day setting.

Leviathan has two main characters, a girl and a boy. It's alternative world and more science fiction than fantasy, but it is certainly an adventure! Bonus - it as absolutely beautiful illustrations.

Fablehaven has two main characters, a brother and a sister. They go to stay with their grandparents and find out that they run a nature preserve for magical creatures. The first two books remain on the preserve, but the third, fourth and fifth go all over the world.

Sunshine is another Robin McKinley. It is my favorite of hers, but I won't say much more as I see you already are familiar with her books.

Inkheart's protagonist is a twelve year old girl, Meggie. She is intelligent and brave. There are also other courageous and sympathetically portrayed woman in the trilogy, such as Meggie's mother and aunt.

Howl's Moving Castle is about a girl or young woman (her age is not specicified) who turns into an old woman due to a curse by an evil witch. If you haven't yet read it, you should!

Heir Apparent would be science fiction, but the vast majority of the book is spent inside an simulated fantasy world. The main character, a girl, is stuck inside the game due to a computer malfunction, and must solve it in order not to become brain dead. Both my sister and myself loved this book, as well as the next one on my list, which is...

The Wall and the Wing. I don't remember too much about it, my sister and I read it years ago. I do remember that it is about a girl who can turn invisible and a boy who can fly.

The True Meaning of Smekday is about a girl and an alien traveling across the United States after an alien invasion.

I've probably read more, but this is just what a look through my LT library has produced.

- Edited to fix touchstone.

How about City of Ember? I haven't read the books, but I loved the movie. Actually I didn't know there were books, I think I might look for them myself. City of Ember has two good teenaged leads who find a way out of their failing underground city.

A College of Magics and A Scholar of Magics by Caroline Stevermer. And definitely Tiffany Aching!!

New entries in this category would be The Meri, and Phoenix Girls from last months ER giveaway.

If it's translated to English someday, the heroine Ellana by Pierre Bottero would probably qualify too.

I recently read Divergent by Veronica Roth. It has a female main character who definitely kicks ass!

I'm surprised by the mention of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Of course the main character is young and is a heroine, but is that really YA?

I've heard Seraphina by Rachel Hartman described as YA as well, although again, I wouldn't have classified it as such. It does have a female lead who gets in on the action though. I totally enjoyed that book and am anxiously waiting for the next part!

Patricia Wredes latest series Frontier Magic has a female lead with some very interesting powers - if you can stand her lack of self assurance and slight dash of passivity. I found it believable and in character for her, so it didn't bother me, but YMMW. It is certainly adventure heavy. Set in the Little House era.

The Darkangel trilogy by Meredith Ann Pierce has a lot of adventure, and it is very alien - fantastic worldbuilding for an YA book.

I second the Charles de Lint recommendation - he also wrote The Dreaming Place which is another contemporary fantasy with female protagonists. Although is may be a bit more fantastic than adventure-centric. The same goes for most of my other recommendations.

A fistful of sky and Spirits that walk in shadow by Nina Kiriki Hoffman - both contemporary.

Margaret Mahy has a few contemporary magic stories set in Australia: The tricksters and The Changeover

Hannah's garden by Midori Snyder is a contemporary YA book with a female protagonist.

The perilous guard by Elizabeth Marie Pope is a medieval YA retelling of Thomas the Rhymer with focus on the female protagonist, where Tamsin is a retelling in a more contemporary setting - again focusing on the female protagonist. Juniper, Gentian and Rosemary is another book by Pamela Dean I would recommend.

Bonus recommendation: H. M. Hoover wrote some interesting YA science fiction stories way back when - one of them, The Delikon, feature a 'female other' as the protagonist.

Wow! The field is plentiful. Many thanks to all responders here.

I'm not really surprised to find so many girl-centered fantasy-adventures dating from BEFORE the era of Twilight and its multitudinous clones. I'd gotten the idea that where this was concerned, we'd actually moved backwards. Yet quite a few of these recommendations are recent! It's gratifying to see plenty of authors going against the prevailing trend and recognizing that not all female readers of YA fantasy are Bella Swan wanna-bes.

I do pay attention to recommendations. Quite a few of my recent reads, among them Ombria in Shadow, Cordelia's Honor, Wolfwalker, A Thousand Words for Stranger, Beholder's Eye, and the webcomic Earthsong, have come straight from recommendations in various threads. So I'm looking forward to plundering the recs here. In fact, Midori Snyder's Oran trilogy -- the first volume -- is up next in my rotation.

#16 - Interesting observation about what qualifies as YA - the Danish translations of both The amber spyglass series and the Discworld series are childrens/YA books. I do agree with His Dark Materials, but Discworld ? (not the Tiffany Aching or The Amazing Maurice, but books like Light Fantastic or Colour of magic).

And when I read older fantasy or science fiction, much of it seems a lot more YA than it was meant when it was published - like Ray Bradbury and Robert Heinlein (if you can ignore his misogynistic streak of course).

For more science-fictiony material (but still "feels" like fantasy), Doris Piserchia is one of my old favorites. I have Star Rider and Earthchild and both of them have taken up permanent residence in my mind. They feature girls in early puberty coming to terms with a very strange world. Star Rider is about a race of people who can travel around the galaxy on the backs of their somewhat doglike mounts. Earthchild is about the last girl left on earth after the natural world has gone wild (she lives in the canopy of a mile-high jungle, and has a couple of nonhuman friends).

Re: Heinlein being a misogynist. Spider Robinson wrote an excellent essay on Heinlein. It included the following:

(2) “Heinlein is a male chauvinist.” This is the second most common charge these days. That's right, Heinlein populates his books with dumb, weak, incompetent women. Like (LONG list of women characters removed for brevity.)

Brainless cupcakes all, eh? (Virtually every one of them is a world-class expert in at least one demanding and competitive field; the exceptions plainly will be as soon as they grow up. Madame Curie would have enjoyed chatting with any one of them.) Helpless housewives! (Any one of them could take Wonder Woman three falls out of three, and polish off Jirel of Joiry for dessert.)

I think one could perhaps make an excellent case for Heinlein as a female chauvinist. He has repeatedly insisted that women average smarter, more practical and more courageous than men. He consistently underscores their biological and emotional superiority. He married a woman he proudly described to me as “smarter, better educated and more sensible than I am.” In his latest book, Expanded Universe—the immediate occasion for this article—he suggests without the slightest visible trace of irony that the franchise be taken away from men and given exclusively to women. He consistently created strong, intelligent, capable, independent, sexually aggressive women characters for a quarter of a century before it was made a requirement, right down to his supporting casts.

>19 amberwitch:, amberwitch Interesting observation about what qualifies as YA - the Danish translations of both The amber spyglass series and the Discworld series are childrens/YA books. I do agree with His Dark Materials, but Discworld ? (not the Tiffany Aching or The Amazing Maurice, but books like Light Fantastic or Colour of magic).

I'm not sure what the requirements are to call a book YA. I think in most cases the protagonists are young, but in addition I would think a book is not Young Adult if it doesn't also have a certain simplicity. That's how I look at it in any case, if anyone else has other ideas, I'd be glad to hear it! But if you take my definition, the His Dark Materials books certainly do not qualify (if I understand you correctly, you agree with the Danish qualification?). Yes, the main characters are young, but the story is really quite involved and has deeper layers that I'm sure I haven't all discovered yet.

Seraphina isn't as complicated as His Dark Materials, but it still didn't feel like YA to me, it felt just like regular epic fantasy. I have no doubt it can be read by young adults, but still...

(Sets out soapbox, dusts it off)

I take some umbrage at the viewpoint that a book is not YA if it doesn't have a "certain simplicity". YA can be simple, or it can rich and deep and complex...just like books written for "adults". There's Tobin Anderson's Octavian Nothing or Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian at one end, and there's Gossip Girls at the other...just as there's Nora Roberts and Tom Clancy vs. Salman Rushdie and Mark Helprin in the adult world.

A clearer definition for Young Adult fiction is something along the lines of "fiction with young adult characters undergoing events and conflict of interest to young adult readers, in which the young adult characters are the ones to overcome their challenges and undergo growth and/or begin to find their place in the world". A bit unwieldy, but it better encapsulates what YA fiction is all about.

I would also point out that there's a difference between Middle Grade and Young Adult--Middle Grade fiction indeed tends to be less complex, and is aimed at the 8-13 age group; YA tends to be for 14 and older. Some of the titles mentioned here would probably be found in the Middle Readers section of, say, Barnes and Noble, not the Young Adult section.

Lastly, don't forget that those 14 etc.-year-olds are studying for the SATs and reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy and Joyce in their literature classes, and are surprisingly sophisticated readers.

That was a bit of a rant and I apologize, but it's an issue close to my heart.

(sheepishly gets off soapbox)

>17 amberwitch: Seconding Darkangel, the Hoffman books, and the Hoover books (I liked The Rains of Eridan).

>21 Morphidae: Sexism (by my definition, maybe not by other people's) is believing that women are a monolith. The "female chauvinism" you mention is a classic example of putting women on a pedestal, as is the belief that all women are naturally more caring and nurturing and able to relate to others, or that all women are morally superior to men. These may seem like "good" stereotypes, but they can be damaging for those of us who do not fit them.

But with Heinlein's work, I think more people have a problem with quotes like "nine times out of ten, when a girl gets raped it's partly her fault" (found in Stranger in a Strange Land, which is also quite homophobic- a character senses "wrongness" in gay men, for example). In any fictional work, there's always fuzziness between the author's opinion and the characters' opinions, but the fact is that the author chose to have the characters be that way, and the author has put these words into the mouths and monologues of characters we are supposed to like.

Stranger is the most-owned Heinlein work on LT. I suspect that someone who starts there with Heinlein will not get the same enjoyment as someone who started with his juveniles while in the target audience.

Heinlein's later work is also somewhat different in its themes than his juveniles- I personally have positive memories of Tunnel in the Sky, but though I liked the female character, I don't remember enough about her role in the story to recommend. (I read Tunnel in the Sky before Lord of the Flies, and it rather spoiled the latter for me because of its optimism with regard to human nature in group survival situations and inclusion of female characters.)

>22 zjakkelien: YA to me is defined by coming-of-age, finding-your-place themes more than the age of the protagonists or anything else- I find there are light, fluffy examples and there are examples with more depth, just as with adult books.

No problem, Marissa_Doyle, like I said, I don't know what the requirements are to call a book YA.

Two remarks: 1) I know many young readers are reading Shakespeare. I honestly don't think there are that many among them who are truly interested in it, though. Some books are read because they are obligatory. Perhaps it's different in other countries, I don't know, and of course there are exceptions, but I think most young readers would not pick Shakespeare in the library if it wouldn't be for school...

Actually, only one remark, I still need to think about the second...
Well, perhaps a half remark. Or several. Does a YA book really need to have YA protagonists? Because given your definition, that would make a lot of fantasy books YA, and I'm not sure if all of those were really intended as YA. Isn't it possible that some young adults simply read books that are not YA, sometimes with adult protagonists and sometimes with young adult protagonists?

They may not be liking the Shakespeare or whatever other books they're reading in lit classes and wouldn't choose to read them on their own, but they're still reading them and thinking about them and learning to be smart, analytic readers. :)

There are a couple of issues around defining YA--what I gave you pertains to the content of books...but there's the bigger issue of who publishes the book (most YA is published by the children's divisions of major publishers) and where the book is shelved within bookstores or libraries (in general fiction, or in the Young Adult section). Those are very important parts of defining YA as well--or maybe meta-defining it. :)

A book can have a YA protagonist and not necessarily be a YA book (IIRC, The Lovely Bones would fall into this category). But a YA book needs to have a YA protagonist--does that make sense? And yes, young adults certainly are reading books that aren't strictly defined as YA or published by a children's publisher...just because a young adult is reading a book doesn't automatically make it a YA book.

Sorry to highjack the OP's thread...but this and the Heinlein discussions are fascinating digressions.

The thing that bothers me about Heinlein's super-competent female characters is that they always fall to their knees groveling when the male love interest shows up, and in the end they realize that they just wanted to make babies all along.

I don't know if this is universal in his fiction, but it was universal in the ones I've read :)

"According to Niday, the "Characteristics of a young adult novel usually include several of the following:

(1) a teenage (or young adult) protagonist

(2) first-person perspective

(3) adult characters in the background

(4) a limited number of characters

(5) a compressed time span and familiar setting

(6) current slang

(7) detailed descriptions of appearance and dress

(8) positive resolution

(9) few, if any, subplots

(10) an approximate length of 125 to 250 pages."

Some fuel for the fire...

>25 zjakkelien:,26,28 There's also the trend where both works originally published for an adult audience (eg Obernewtyn and Snyder's Oran trilogy) and works originally published as children's (eg L'Engle's Time Quintet and Pierce's Circle of Magic books) get re-published and re-branded YA.

I think Marissa_Doyle's "things young adults like" or perhaps more cynically along BruceCoulson's formula definition, "things publishing companies (and self-publishing authors) think young adults will buy," is probably the only truly accurate umbrella descriptor.

>27 Amtep: Yes, that too.

It's a quoted definition; not my own. (Although I agree with much of it, and it does provide a starting point.)

I enjoyed RAH's juveniles when I was growing up. But yes, it is true that many of his heroines and female characters (not all; cf the rival in 'The Menace from Earth') have a tendency to seek motherhood when they meet a suitable man. (Although the mother in 'The Rolling Stones' is a highly competent female who is clearly co-equal with the father.) Of course, Heinlein himself believed that men were inherently more romantic than women...

It was a tendency that got worse as Heinlein got older and editors were less willing to confront him.

Heinlein's amazing competent women were basically "worthy mates" for Heinlein's far more amazing and competent men. Their role was to be a reward and a pillar of support for the guy, and to pop out babies.

They were also usually the exceptional woman in the novel, with most other women too stupid to understand concepts like "orbit" (ie. the mother in Space Cadet). Not to mention the ex-girlfriend: "Marianne was the sort of girl who never would get clearly fixed in her mind the distinction between a planet and a star."

Let's just say that I feel there's a level of gender essentialism in Heinlein which can grate on some readers.

On the recommendation front, there's so much which has been mentioned already. I don't think I've seen mention of Elizabeth Ann Scarborough's Songs from the Seashell Archive books, such as Bronwyn's Bane. These were released as adult fantasy, but I suspect would hover on the edge of young adult these days. They're fluffy, light romantic fantasy with a strong emphasis on humour. (Hm, hadn't seen the cover for that edition of BB before - love armor on a girl! Bronwyn would also fall into your "tall women" and maybe your "female other" threads, kceccato, since she's six foot tall by the time she's 12 because of an ancestor who was a giant.)

Scott Westerfeld's tetralogy Uglies Pretties Specials Extras fits the bill. There's plenty of action and a kick-ass female lead.

I'd definitely second His Dark Materials and Howl's Moving Castle. What's refreshing about Howl's Moving Castle is that you get to see the world through a young woman/teen's eyes AND you get an old woman's perspective.

A set of really quite old books now that I loved but haven't reread for a while are Simon R Green blue moon rising. It's hard to pick apart what makes up the the series as US/ UK released in different names and sometimes compiled volumes. There are about 6 shorts in 2 compiled volumes normally plus another couple of books set around same people/ same place.

Specifically it's a flip of "Prince goes and rescues fair maiden from dragon" where the prince is a bit wet at first (he rides a unicorn, much sniggering as unicorns will only hang out with virgins) and the lady is most definitely a self-rescuing princess. She is a proper fighter character (to make a D+D equivalent). In the later books, they're both guardsmen in a very grotty city that feels a lot like a sort of Ankh Morpork/ Terry Pratchett place.

Not totally sure if they are YA-suitable but I don't remember anything particularly X-rated or gruesome.

I feel like I probably mentioned this is one or other of these female-character threads, but my go to rec for YA since I read it is Elizabeth Bunce's Star-Crossed and the sequel Liar's Moon. The first has almost no boyfriend elements aside from a general sense that the main character might be interested in one or the other young male character. The second book solidifies one character as a love interest, but he spends half of the book in need of rescue and the other half pretty much following our heroine's lead. I haven't encountered a heroine that impressed me quite this much with her self-sufficiency in a long time.

The books are somewhat more mystery and intrigue than swashbuckling, so depending on your definition of adventure, that may rule them out.

Don't know if it qualifies as YA but lynn Flewelling's The Bone Doll's Twin and sequels are excellent. Gender is a big part of the story.

Rae Carson's Girl of Fire and Thorns and sequels.

I was perplexed and then amused some time ago to learn that David Eddings was available in the YA section at the bookshop, (not my normal haunt you see) then I walked over to the my normal fantasy section lo and behold there are the exact same books with a different cover! I have since found out that there a number of books that are dual stocked in this way. In fact I found Seraphina in both the YA and normal Fantasy just today. It does seem like an artifice of the industry sometimes to put books in YA or not. There was a Writing excuses podcast a while back where they talked about the YA genre, and Dan Wells talked about how one of his books was simultaneously YA and Adult with his US and UK publishers (can't quite remember which was which). It seems to be much about the vagaries of the editor and publisher and how they decide to market it.

I wouldn't say that Twilight has put the kibosh on all of this kind of work, any more than Harry Potter can be said to have 'killed' the market for non fantasy works, merely because they happened to be what was popular and there were a lot of imitators. There is still room for every kind of work to exist.

Cinder by Marissa Meyer was good, and Scarlet just came out.  I'll be picking that up first chance I get.

31: I found Bronwyn's Bane at a used bookstore and picked it up because I really liked the cover, which showed Bronwyn as clearly a woman after my own heart. I haven't read it yet, but it holds a significant place in my TBR pile.

As for Heinlein, well -- on the one hand, he deserves at least a smidgen of credit for including female characters in his work at all, at a time when most sci-fi writers, including Andre Norton, could scarcely be bothered to give women a place on a single page. Have Spacesuit Will Travel and Tunnel in the Sky are in my TBR pile, albeit near the bottom, and in a pinch I might be persuaded to give The Star Beast a look one day. But your issues with Heinlein are my issues. There's a definite sameness to a lot of them, and they are almost never the protagonists, or even the co-protagonists, of the novels, but instead are viewed through the eyes of male characters. (Friday and Podkayne of Mars are exceptions -- though the character arc the latter goes through is a discovery that she is neither smart nor capable enough to pursue the non-traditional path on which she is bent at the story's beginning, and she should scale back her ambitions to something more feminine, like child-minding.) Are there any Heinlein novels in which a female character actually saves the day? If the answer is "no," then Spider Robinson's assessment that his women could kick the butts of Wonder Woman and Jirel of Joiry hardly seems accurate.

I did look at Robinson's article, and where he really hurts himself, I think, is his inclusion of Penny in Double Star on his list of supposedly impressive heroines. I looked up this novel on Goodreads, and of the fifty-odd reviews I glanced through, only two had a positive word to say about this character. Even reviewers who otherwise loved the book acknowledged that this character is tough to take. She is, by most accounts, a whimpering, fainting handmaiden who is referred to at one point as "curly top Penny child." That hardly sounds impressive to me -- certainly not like someone who could go toe-to-toe with Jirel of Joiry. Just who ARE these ass-kicking Heinlein heroines who could embark on adventures without needing to be rescued multiple times? My question is not hypothetical. I would like to know. Friday is the only one I've heard about. Penny's presence on the list would suggest that the article's standards for what constitutes an "impressive" heroine are a bit on the low side.

35: I am a bit leery of The Bone Doll's Twin et. seq., and this has more to do with my limitations as a reader than Flewelling's as a writer. To put it simply, I have a hard time thinking of a character as a heroine when "she" is a boy for the vast majority of the story -- not simply disguised as a boy (more on that in a minute) but an actual boy. I had this same problem with The Marvelous Land of Oz. I knew going in that Tip was really Ozma, but I still couldn't think of him as a heroine, because he was male until the very last chapter. An engaging hero, certainly, but not a heroine. What I've read about Flewelling's series suggests that the role of the heroine, Tamir, is actually quite small compared with that of the hero, Tobin, which would make the "Tobin Triad" a more appropriate title for the series as a whole than the "Tamir Triad." (Tobin gets the first two books; Tamir gets the third.) My impression of Flewelling's work in general makes me wonder if she doesn't enjoy writing male characters much more than female, and so might be happier working with Tobin than with Tamir; her other major series centers on a pair of male adventurers, with female characters in supporting roles.

I don't have the same difficulties when I encounter females disguised as males, when the male guise is merely a mask hiding a clear female identity. But I will confess I am a bit tired of it, and while I can appreciate it when it's well done (Shakespeare, of course, did it beautifully), in recent works I find it problematic -- the implication being that femaleness itself is an obstacle that must be overcome in order for the heroine to emerge as a capable and somewhat powerful figure. In almost all stories in which a heroine adopts a male disguise, we have a sexist or downright misogynist society in place, where a woman, as a woman, is scarcely allowed any significance whatsoever, and I wish that writers of fantasy would stop replicating this kind of society over and over again. It would be nice to see girls have hurdles other than entrenched sexist ideas or even individual misogynist enemies to surmount.
My realization that I'm all but over the male-disguise trope came when I read Leviathan last year. Deryn Sharp is certainly a strong and adventurous heroine, but it bothered me continually that every other character had to think she was a boy in order for her to play to her strengths, again as if femaleness is a problem in and of itself. Worse is the general dislike in which the story's other major female character, Dr. Barlow, is held. She has managed to achieve a measure of strength and authority AS a woman, yet neither Deryn nor any other character in the story respects her for this.

Interesting recs. Starcrossed is high on my TBR list, and I need to get my hands on Cinder.

Re: Bone Dolls Twin, Maybe you would read it different, but there is only a brief period when she thinks she is a boy, she finds out very young, that she is a girl and does clearly think of herself as a girl in the second and third books, she keeps the name Tobin when she is revealed a girl, and only takes Tamir, (as a Homage to the first Queen) at the end of the last book. Tobin was accused of being girly several times in the first book and when the revalation come it does make things click for her. The point kind of is that she does not think or feel any different either way, she is still the same.

39: Okay, that WOULD change things. I'd read reviews that claimed readers themselves would forget that "Tobin" was a girl. If this were the case, as with Tip of Oz, I might think of him as a hero worth rooting for, but not quite a heroine. Are there other important, sympathetic female characters in the first novel?

Sometimes it's a matter of pronouns. I had similar difficulties with the first hundred pages of New Moon, the first book in Midori Snyder's Oran trilogy. I knew going in that Jobber, the toughest and most intriguing of the good guys, was female, but for the first third of the book, her gender is buried by the consistent use of male pronouns. Unlike Tobin, Jobber is not physically a male but has adopted a male "street identity" in order to protect herself (for reasons other than the dangers posed by a sexist/misogynist society, which is refreshing). But I found myself getting impatient with the male pronouns, and felt distinctly relieved when she was unmasked as female. What I really like is to see female characters being strong and capable with their femaleness freely acknowledged.

But at some point I might need to sneak The Bone Doll's Twin into my rotation so that I can see for myself how Flewelling deals with gender identity.

38> If you didn't like Leviathan because of the disguise trope, you should try Uglies. It's by the same author, and the main character is a smart and adventurous heroine who never goes disguised as a boy.

I loved Leviathan, though even if the story was awful, I still would have bought it for the illustrations. I think they are large part of why I like it so much.

Also, it may be worth pointing out that in the sequel to Leviathan another important and courageous female character is introduced.

38: Well, of the Heinlein I've read recently, The Puppet Masters starts with two government agents, one male, one female, both highly competent. (One, sec, I'll just go steal the end of my Goodreads review.)

"Like most of Heinlein's books, it's difficult to be female and focus on the story. It's full of statements like: "Listen son, most women are damn fools and children" and "Forgive me darling. I'm weak and womanish". Even compared to other books written in the 40s, it's bad.

The story does open with a team featuring a competent male and female agent, but at the close of the story the female has been reduced to saying little but "Yes, dear" in blissful wifely servitude."

(I note that the majority of books from the 1940s which I've read are classic mysteries - none of which include statements like those above.)

You hit right on my bugbear with: "It would be nice to see girls have hurdles other than entrenched sexist ideas or even individual misogynist enemies to surmount." That's one of the major reasons I prefer egalitarian worlds. It's not that "girls can do it too!" is a bad plot, but at times it seems that (and rapeytimes) are the ONLY plots and themes female characters get to deal with.

The Extra-ordinary Princess by Carolyn Ebbitt is quick-paced adventure with a strong female lead.

Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George is just a lot of fun and definitely has a Harry Potter vibe in many ways, but the lead is a female. Well technically the main character is probably the castle, but the main human is a girl....

Whoever said Castledown -- that was one of my favorites as a child, and I also loved the 2nd book, but the 3rd in the series was really difficult for me until I was older (it was also nearly impossible to find).

41: It isn't so much that I didn't like Leviathan -- I found it a very gripping adventure story -- as that it made me realize I was tired of seeing so many books in which the heroine has to disguise her gender in order to live the life she wants and earn the respect of those around her. Deryn is a wonderful character, and eventually I will read more of her story. The main source of my frustration actually had less to do with her disguise than with my really, really wanting to like Dr. Barlow and the book refusing to let me. Had Westerfield chosen to make her a sympathetic character, a worthy ally rather than an antagonist, then at least Leviathan wouldn't have suffered from Highlander Syndrome ("there can be only one" heroine worth rooting for). As weary as I may be of cross-dressing plots, I'm far sicker of Highlander Syndrome. Good to know that in the sequels we'll be introduced to at least ONE more halfway admirable heroine.

This is the best place to mention that I'm relishing Midori Snyder's New Moon, which offers the very antithesis of Highlander Syndrome. Rarely have I read a fantasy novel in which female characters are so plentiful and yet male characters (while outnumbered for a change) are still allowed to play important and sympathetic roles. Not only that, but there's such a wonderful VARIETY to all these women; they get a chance to show strength in different ways. We have the tomboyish fighter Jobber, the maternal Waterling leader Kai, the gentle and spiritual musician Lirrel, the tough-talking past-her-prime swordswoman Faul, and even the may-not-be-as-crazy-as-she-seems Zeenia, all characters we're meant to root for, flawed though they may be. I know better than to entertain the slightest warm feeling for the bad-news swordswoman Gonmer and her possibly even worse-news hench-girl Lais, but at least Snyder takes some time to make them interesting, instead of writing them as one-dimensional exemplars of heartless villainy. Plus, even though the main villain is a Queen, her villainy is NOT linked to her gender in that "see-what-happens-when-you-let-women-have-power" way that drives me up the very highest wall. She must fall, of course, but other powerful and more admirable women will rise.

My only problem with it, at this point, is that I'm reading it too fast. I want more like this. I'm glad to know there are two books left in the series.

New moon went on my wishlist! It sounds very good... (And why can't authors pick original titles? Midori Snyder was first by the way)

I think Dr Barlow mainly suffers from being an adult in a YA. She's never the bad guy, but she's never fully 'in' with the YA leads, either.

44 and 46> I didn't get the impression that she was an unsympathetic character - she is against the war, and is often the one the one to come up with solutions to help the Leviathan. I think AndreaKHost is probably correct. Being an adult, she's going to be at a distance from the protagonists.

46, 47: That makes some sense. In this case, I may be suffering as a result of my own age perspective -- an adult who reads YA for the adventure, wishing I could engage with the adult characters as I do with the young ones. At least Westerfield doesn't write his adults as clueless morons, a trap that less talented YA authors fall into.

Again I must praise New Moon, and question its classification as YA: the adult characters are as complex and sympathetic as the adolescents, and Snyder lets us in on their point of view, most specifically Kai and Faul and possibly Lirrel (whose age I'm not sure of, but who seems at least a good two years older than Jobber, and who acts as the latter's mentor).

45: As much as I'm enjoying the book, I'm shy about reading it in public sometimes, because I don't want anyone to give the cover a careless glance and assume I'm reading Stephenie Meyer, which I would never ever do. Fortunately I won't have that problem with the sequels.

48> If you think reading New Moon in public is embarrassing, try reading Shades of Grey in public.

As much as I'm enjoying the book, I'm shy about reading it in public sometimes, because I don't want anyone to give the cover a careless glance and assume I'm reading Stephenie Meyer, which I would never ever do. Fortunately I won't have that problem with the sequels.
>48 kceccato: I wouldn't worry about that. Anyone who connects the title with Stephenie Meyer probably knows what her covers look like (they are very recognizable after all). And anyone else won't know who Stephenie Meyer is or that she has written a book called New moon.

Fortunately I don't have to worry about that anymore. I've finished it and am now reading Sadar's Keep.

Martha Wells has a new book out that I think actually fits several of your request threads--multiple heroines, female Others, and this one.

Emilie and the Hollow World, which feels sort of like a love letter to Jules Verne to me, is a journey/adventure-based YA book. The titular Emilie has run away from home hoping to attend school, but she stows away on the wrong ship and ends up on a journey twenty thousand leagues under the sea to the centre of the earth (*cough*). On the ship she meets Miss Marlende, who has put together the expedition to rescue her father.

On a more spoilery note (as this happens around the midway point of the book), while in the hollow world Emilie also meets Rani, a nonhuman female ship captain (who also has at least a few other females among her crew, and inherited her ship from her mother).

There's a little bit of mild misogyny since the surface-world society seems to be somewhat Victorian in feel, but during the actual journey there's too much going on for more than the occasional stupid comment from one of the men.

I seem to have missed this thread the first time around, so I'm glad it's resurfaced. I don't think anyone's mentioned The girl who circumnavigated Fairyland yet, which is an excellent recent YA novel with an adventurous heroine. Some have been turned off by the ornate prose, but I like the author's sense of whimsy and the fascinating characters.

Another good one is The hotel under the sand by Kage Baker. It's quite short but I found it had a real depth and power beneath the adventures on the surface.

Juliet Marillier's Sevenwaters books starting with Daughter of the Forest are really good!

The book Elemental by Antony John would qualify. The primary protagonist is a male named Thomas, but the book also heavily features two female characters - Alice, who can control fire and Rose, who can control water. Alice especially figures very heavily in the story's action.

You may want to try The Raven Boys. The point of view shifts between the raven boys (they attend a private school whose mascot is a raven) and a girl who comes from a family of psychics. Together they investigate the sleeping ley lines as well as other mysteries. It's the beginning of the series and there are a number of subplots. However, it is set in the present day. I know you prefer more separate fantasy worlds.

I really liked Daughter of Vengeance by David Temrick, zero cursing, action scenes aren't needlessly gorry, really enjoyed it.

Dare I say that my own book Bad Holiday in Witch Town has a teenage female protagonist. Sorry for the obvious shameless self promotion, but it is true!

I just finished Michelle Sagara's Silence. Emma can see ghosts and gets caught up in some adventuring when she's trying to help one of them. There is at most a hint of future romance, and the rest of the book is Emma mobilizing her friends to help her with this, in true Buffy fashion (except she doesn't physically fight anyone, she does cool ghost-stuff). Incidentally, the friends consist of two girls and one autistic boy. The friends are really supportive of each other, even though one of them is at the top of the social ladder. And yes, there is the Outsider Boy who Knows All About It, but he is really not as annoying as he could be. He gets on Emma's side fairly quickly, and he doesn't overshadow her. I really liked this one.

THRONE OF GLASS SERIES!!!! The main character is a kick ass heroin with a tragic back-story. She is the most notorious assasin in her land and after spending a year in the world's deadliest work camp as a slave, she is chosen to partake in a competition to be the king's champion in exchange for her freedom. Her opponents are men-thieves and assassins and warriors from across the empire, each sponsored by a member of the king's council. If she beats her opponents in a series of eliminations, she'll serve the kingdom for three years and then be granted her freedom. (though there is slight insta-love, *spoiler alert* she regains her senses and it doesn't last very long. There is also a strange monster murdering her competitors and many fantastical elements, not to mention the mystery of how magic suddenly disappeared from their world years ago. This is a MUST READ for those who love YA fantasy heroins. Celeana has the determination of Katniss, the strength of Katsa, and she is incredibly intelligent but altogether very human and relate-able. The second book CROWN OF MIDNIGHT far surpasses this one in the sheer scale of it. The second book raises stakes, builds the world, deepens the character, creates unpredictable juicy twists, and makes you unable to put it down. I highly recommend this and I'm begging you to stick with the first just so that you can experience the absolute pleasure of reading the heart racing, emotional roller coaster of the second. There is so much action, adventure, romance, mystery, and three dimensional characters in both but the second has so much more and the third is absolutely a gift. third book is heir of fire

I became reacquainted with Princess Cimorene Dealing with Dragons over Thanksgiving and highly recommend it.

>61 justjukka: I love Dealing with dragons!

61, 62: This series is excellent. I can't think of a single thing I don't like about it, except that the awesome Cimorene is shifted into the background in Book 4. Books 1-3 qualify for this thread, in spades! I'm not sure about Book 4.

>63 kceccato: Book 4 not so much, the women get less page time...It's still a fun book, though.

Has anyone mentioned The Ring of Solomon ? I suppose you could argue that Bartimaeus the djinni is the main character or protagonists, but Asmira, the queen's guard Captain, is an amazing heroine. She's smart and tough, and very capable, but no Mary Sue.

23, hey Marissa, hear hear!!

I tend to be annoyed by the general concept of a YA category. Why a 900-year old wizard wouldn't be of interest to a 13 yr old, I'm not sure.

On the other hand, I am willing to accept the idea that there may be stories that best resonate with the average 15 yr old reader. But which they are, and whether they are morally simple or complex is hard to know.

My guess (teens please correct me!) is that teens today who read His Dark Materials will re-read the trilogy again in their 20s and 30s, just as many of us (slightly older folks) first read The Lord of the Rings in our (pre-)teen years, and have continued to re-read it.

59>

I second the recommendation for Michelle Sagara. Her books uniformly have strong female leads, and her most recent series is earth para-nornal, rather than high fantasy, with very credible high-school protagonists.

>66 david_c:  I held off on reading LotR because the movies came out around the time I would have given them my first read-through.  I was 14 years old and well aware of how the movie might not hold a candle to the book, so I let myself enjoy the movies, first.  I allowed myself to enjoy The Hobbit, though.

Right now I'm reading Shadow Scale, which is an excellent book and even more adventure-oriented than its predecessor, Seraphina, as this time around the heroine embarks on a quest that takes her far away from home, the sort of thing that male adventurers get to do as a matter of course. One of the things I admire about Rachel Hartman's Seraphina is her strong sense of responsibility. She knows how much depends on her. While the previous book featured a love plot, romance is (so far) placed on the back burner here.

I think these may have been marketed in the "Intermediate" age range in the US rather than YA, but it occurred to me that Balsa of the Moribito books (and anime) merits a mention here. She's an adult spear-woman tasked with protecting a young prince who may or may not be implanted with an evil spirit egg thingie in the first book, and then the second has her returning to her homeland to right some old wrongs.

>70 Niko: Yes! Seconding both translated Moribito books.

Cinda Williams Chima's Seven Realms trilogy has Raisa, a very powerful princess who manages to be a powerful character that still gets into a very tender bit of romance without coming off as weak or deferential. It was one of the best fantasy trilogies that I have read yet. The Bartimaeus trilogy also features a female protagonist, and she never gets romantically involved to my knowledge.