One thing I love about the Urban Fantasy genre is that most novels have women lead protagonists. When most action movies today are helmed by men, it makes having women shown in action roles in books all the more important.
Here are my top five reasons why women in Urban Fantasy novels are so awesome.
Badass to the max. They kick so much butt, shifters behinds concave in fear whenever she struts into a bar. She’ll karate chop a ware wolf in the throat, slice off a demon’s balls with a sword, and drive a stake through a vampire’s heart–after making love to him, of course–before lunch, and she never gets up before 10a.
Sex-positive. Urban Fantasy female leads often own their sexuality (their heart is another matter). Crazy, brooding, supernatural lovers are par for the course in this genre. The leads dates who she wants and doesn’t care for anyone’s judge mental stank eye.
Unique locales. Urban Fantasy novels never take place in some ho hum town. The cities are cool and gritty or the quaint little town is a hot bed of witch activity. The settings can be like a character in the novel. Even though the time period is modern, the world building is as detailed as any high fantasy or science fiction novel.
Despite being a cliché, the female leads are more often than not funny, snark machines. A girl would have to be in order to survive living in a world where monsters are real and she is the only one preventing them from snacking on humans.
They are tough. I don’t just mean physically or magically strong, although they are usually one or the other. Urban Fantasy women are mentally tough. They face down evil fairies while going through set back after set back on top of protecting their loved ones and investigating cases. How easy would going home, opening up a tub of double chocolate chip ice cream and flipping on Netflix be? Super easy, but they never do.
What do you like the most about female protagonists in books?
I hope you liked this week’s blog post. The first two books in my urban fantasy series are available at:
Please let me know what you think by liking, commenting, or subscribing.
stacy benedict 