Action Girl/Literature

Because books have badass females too.


 * Llana of Gathol, from John Carter of Mars. For its time, this was an extremely daring thing to do.
 * Even more so Tavia, the heroine of A Fighting Man of Mars.
 * Every female of many (though not all) of the Martian races is supposed to be an Action Girl, but they're not very impressive at it.
 * Anne Westfeld from Reality Check by Charlie Brooks. They don't call her Sister Machinegun for nothing.
 * Action Girls were popular in classical literature. Examples include the goddesses Athena (Lady of War) and Artemis (The Archer), Penthesilea the Amazon Queen who appeared ancient epic cycles (and later Kleist's play) and Camilla in Virgil's The Aeneid. The popularity of Amazon women waned in Middle Ages, but they were to make a comeback in Renaissance epic in the form of female knights such as Bradamante and Marfisa in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Clorinda in Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata, and Belphoebe, Britomart, and Palladine in Spenser's The Faerie Queene. In the latter poem, Spenser laments the scarcity of Action Girls in his own time and bids females to start kicking ass again as they did in the old days (because he knew Queen Elizabeth would appreciate it).
 * Sharrow in Iain M. Banks' Against a Dark Background.
 * Novelist Christopher Brookmyre's kung fu cop, Angelique de Xavia. She kills terrorists with her bare hands, and responds to the Big Bad's expository speech by . She's also technically a Violent Glaswegian, especially considering she's a Rangers fan, but since she's about five feet tall and of south Asian ancestry you might not realise it to look at her.
 * Jane Fleming was no slouch either.
 * Ellie Quinn and Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan from Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga, although Cordelia seems to have retired after the events of Barrayar, at least in terms of physical arse-kicking.
 * In Jim Butcher's The Dresden Files:
 * Karrin Murphy with (particularly in early books) a bit of The Lancer thrown in. As she is the Badass Normal, she can have trouble with some of the things that she has to face, but after a while, she learns the rules for battling things, and kicks ass.
 * The Lancer disappeared in the recent books, as Murphy begins to out-badass everyone in every book. Including Harry.
 * , after she.
 * Miss Gard. A Valkyrie with a penchant for firearms.
 * Lara Raith at times. She's The Vamp in every sense, but she's also quick to kick ass when need be. She takes the lead and guards the rear in a super-ghoul attack, even if she does have to be badgered into it by Harry, and in a later book she arrives on the battlefield by jumping out of a helicopter, and.
 * Charity Carpenter. Spars with her husband (a master swordsman), makes his weapons and chainmail, and helped Harry assault Arctis Tor, Mab's personal fortress.
 * Badassery is inherited. Molly is noted to be an absolute terror with illusion magic. 'One Woman Rave' indeed.
 * Velvet in David Eddings' The Malloreon. She kills one enemy in Demon Lord of Karanda by throwing a viper in his face.
 * The viper is 'very' annoyed.
 * Just about every important female character in The Wheel of Time.
 * Susan, Lucy, and Jill are like this when they're in Narnia
 * Hermione Granger is the wizarding world's resident Badass Bookworm. Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood also have their moments, and so does Ginny's mom Molly. Also let us not forget about Professor McGonagall
 * Tonks is also implied to be a skilled witch (Auror training is difficult, and you'd have to be badass to have Alastor Moody as your mentor), though we never really see much of it.
 * Captain Holly Short and Juliet Butler (on occasion) in Artemis Fowl. Juliet is more of a Cute Bruiser, Holly Short a Fair Cop, among other things.
 * Kahlan in Terry Goodkind's The Sword of Truth series and even more so in Legend of the Seeker. Also Cara, and by extension the rest of the Mord-Sith. In the books series,  later becomes this as well.
 * The title character from Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher mysteries.
 * Anita Blake from Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake series. She is the ultimate killing machine.
 * Jame of P.C. Hodgell's Chronicles of the Kencyrath?a martial arts expert, formerly a professional thief who pulled off some of the most impossible thefts, and in training to be a military officer.
 * Robert E. Howard wrote some surprisingly strong female characters considering his time, genre and upbringing, including Valeria, Dark Agnes, Tarala, Helen Tavrel, Conchita and the original Red Sonya (totally different and far more realistic than the character better known from Marvel comics and the movie).
 * David Isaak's Shock and Awe features multiple examples of this, most notably the heroine, Carla, who is probably the most realistic, believable portrayal of an action girl ever seen.
 * Makala and Yvka in Blade of the Flame both unarguably qualify.
 * Mara Jade of the Star Wars Expanded Universe switches back and forth between being an Action Girl and a full-on Mary Sue depending on who was writing her.
 * Then there's Jaina, who is at once Badass enough to take down one of the most powerful and yet least impressive Sith Lords ever,, and yet despite being a fully-functioning Jedi Knight and part of the Skywalker line (which practically burns with Force potential), had to get additional training from Boba freaking Fett, a seventy-year-old cancer-survivor with bad knees, all because of Karen Traviss's desire to keep Fett and the Mandalorians relevant. Not to mention the 12+ books where she hung around uselessly before even getting to that point. Twelve books where her twin brother received an obscene amount of god-modding.
 * And don't forget that in the New Jedi Order, she took down the Warmaster single-handedly.
 * Let's not forget Tenel Ka, who took down a Nightsister without any weapons!
 * Catti-Brie, of the Drizzt novels, is a reasonably competent Action Girl. This is helped by her truly badass equipment; her sword would be decent equipment on someone four times her official character level, and her bow is all but epic. She even beats Drizzt in sparring matches now and again, and he's fifty years her senior, still in his prime, and trained since his youth to fight. However,.
 * In game terms, though, it's noteworthy that she has the lowest character level of any of the Companions of the Hall -- Drizzt is 16, Bruenor is 12, Regis and Wulfgar are both 9, and Catti-Brie is (before her 4). She does, however, have the least overall combat experience, so this is justified.
 * Salvatore's other leading original Forgotten Realms female, Danica Maupoissant, is also a warrior. In her case, she's a fighting monk, trained from her youth both in unarmed combat and the use of some very fine knives, and by the second book of the Cleric Quintet the foremost student of a long-dead grandmaster's teachings. She's skilled enough to fight alongside and impress centuries-old elven warriors before she's even thirty.
 * Come to that, she's skilled enough that she's capable of briefly holding her own against Artemis Entreri, top it off with the fact that he had his weapons and she had none.
 * The Seven Sisters from the Forgotten Realms all fit the template to some degree.
 * Mercedes Lackey examples: Georgina (One Good Knight), Tarma (Oathbound series), Elspeth (Mage Winds trilogy) Kerowyn (By the Sword, appearances in Mage Winds and Mage Storms), Silverblade (Silver Gryphon, though she's a bit iffy).
 * Brienne of Tarth from A Song of Ice and Fire is arguably a mix of Action Girl and Failure Knight. A talented warrior (in a fairly patriarchal fantasy society) who and still tries to defend him. She also manages to defeat many skilled knights (often outnumbered) and is doing pretty damn well on her quest before . Some people have no luck.
 * The series also contains Asha Greyjoy, Meera Reed, Osha and Ygritte, all who play this trope fairly straight without Brienne's terrible luck. Though, poor Ygritte did have the misfortune of.
 * Arya's journey of survival across Westeros cemented her Action Girl status before she turned eleven.
 * There's also Oberyn Martell's bastard daughters, the "Sand Snakes," whom Oberyn has raised be strong and fend for themselves. At least one, Obara Sand, is a trained warrior, and her sister Tyene is an expert on poisons. Action Girls have something of a tradition in Dorne, since their legendary Queen Nymeria was said to be a great warrior.
 * House Mormont of Bear Isle also has a history of producing female warriors, since they needed to defend themselves from Iron Island raiders while the men were away fishing. Lady Maege Mormont and all five of her daughters are skilled fighters.
 * The Wildlings have Spearwives, who are pretty much what the title implies. Six of them accompany.
 * When Aegon the Conqueror began his conquest of Westeros, he was accompanied by his sister-wives, Rhaenys and Visenya. Visenya would commonly braid her hair and dress as a warrior, wielding the Valyrian steel sword Dark Sister in battle and ride the dragon Vhagar. Rhaenys, the more feminine and playful sister, rode the dragon Meraxes in battle alongside her siblings.
 * In the markets of Vaes Dothrak, Daenerys takes notice of warrior maids from Bayasabhad, Shamyriana, and Kayakayanaya, who wear iron nipple rings and rubies in their cheek.
 * Another action girl in the series with poor luck is Pretty Meris, a female mercenary belonging to the Windblown company. Supposedly she was raped by half the members of a different mercenary company. She has a severely scarred face and is described as being anything but pretty.
 * Hekat and Rhian in Karen Miller's Godspeaker Trilogy
 * All of Tamora Pierce's Tortall protagonists (with the possible exception of Aly, who's more of a Spy/Trickster Archetype, but can still hold her own in a fight).
 * Daine may be an exception as well; she's more of a certified nature girl who can shoot a bow and use a slingshot, but doesn't have any explicit powers of destruction unless you . Then she gets angry.
 * Her prowess with a longbow against the Stormwings would certainly qualify her in the first book, though.
 * Tamora Pierce says outright that she wanted to write stories for children featuring "girls who kick butt."
 * Terry Pratchett has outright stated that he "can't write 'soft' female characters." Thus, Discworld contains Angua von Uberwald, werewolf cop; Susan Sto Helit, Death's granddaughter; Polly Perks, a dirty-fighting Sweet Polly Oliver ; Granny Weatherwax, an old Action Girl-ish witch; and even normally bland female characters who have their moments. Magrat Garlick, generally rather useless, has taken down a pair of snake-ladies in Witches Abroad and a few evil elves in Lords and Ladies, Agnes Nitt roughs up a few vampires in Carpe Jugulum, and Saccharissa threatens a man with a crossbow near the end of The Truth convincingly enough that he passes out.
 * And don't forget Tiffany Aching, who overpowered the Queen of the Elves with only a frying pan on her home turf, and to whom Mistress Weatherwax took off her hat in respect, at the age of nine. That's just the start of her adventures.
 * Even Sybil has her moments. On two occasions, in Night Watch and Guards! Guards!, she responds to trespassers by getting down one of the ornamental swords from the wall. She even stops murderous dwarfs with a song from an opera in The Fifth Elephant.
 * Don't forget Adora Belle Dearheart (do NOT comment on the name) from Going Postal. She chain smokes and threatens to put the heel of her stiletto through a man's foot, is a trained ballerina and can kick like a mule.
 * Not to mention Kirsty from Johnny Maxwell Trilogy.
 * And then there are the Good Omens ones conceived with Neil Gaiman. War is the quintessential Amazon, and then there's of course Pepper. Arguments could be made for putting Anathema and Agnes Nutter into this category as well; they were certainly badass enough in their own ways.
 * And let's not forget Conina, Cohen the Barbarian's daughter. She laments that she's quite literally an action girl to the core - she wants to be a hairdresser, but get anything that can be used even vaguely as a weapon in her hands...(even without one, she's not someone you want to mess with.)
 * The titular character in Robert Heinlein's Friday epitomizes this trope. She is stronger, faster, smarter, and hornier than everyone she meets. Most of Heinlein's heroines are larger-than-life, but Friday is literally superhuman.
 * Deety in The Number of The Beast is a 22 year old busty strawberry blonde who is a precocious super-genius polymath with a PHD, a crack shot, and an expert martial artist.
 * Rachel in Animorphs; her signature battle morph is the grizzly bear. She's a Blood Knight, The Big Guy, and her other passions in life are gymnastics, her boyfriend, and shopping.
 * Actually, Rachel is interesting almost as a Deconstruction of this trope, or at least, one of its more realistic portrayals: like her fellow Animorphs, Rachel is deeply affected by the war in the novel, and as the series becomes Darker and Edgier, she gets closer and closer to being a Dark Action Girl, culminating.
 * Cutlass Cate and, to a lesser extent, Cheng Li, in Vampirates.
 * In the Omen Island Chain series' The Purple Widow, the Purple Widow recruits a fencing-savvy prostitute named Sophia as an apprentice after she defeats him in a duel. She re-names herself "Arachna".
 * Patricia Savage, Doc's pistol-toting cousin in the Doc Savage novels who is quite capable of taking on several armed thugs at once.
 * Blue Jade in the fifth Finnegan Zwake novel is a (modern-day) pirate Action Girl.
 * Little My of The Moomins.
 * Several in Nightrunner, considering one of the major settings is a matriarchy with lots of women warriors. Most notably Beka, the princesses Klia and Phoria, and Retired Badass Thryis.
 * In the Temeraire series, there are female captains of dragons -- and they are almost exclusively captains of the light-heavyweight acid-spitting Longwing breed, critical to Britain's combat formations. There are even three variants presented; a more matronly, heavyset, ladylike woman, a shy young woman who in any other service would be the Sweet Polly Oliver, and the middle road of a woman approaching early middle age with a daughter in the service with a mannish stride and a penchant for smoking and drinking.
 * In Matthew Woodring Stover's The Acts of Caine novels, there's Talaan in Heroes Die and Olga/Marade in Caine Black Knife.
 * Just like Terry Pratchett, David Weber is apparently physically unable to ever write a fragile, helpless girl. Even his Distressed Damsels tend to be Badass in some way, and are usually able even if not to fight, then trick themselves out of trouble with some sort of Indy Ploy or Bavarian Fire Drill. But more often than not they just start to kick asses and take names.
 * Honor Harrington from David Weber's Honorverse novels not only commands starships (and later in the series, entire fleets), but on occasion takes part in various forms of hand-to-hand combat. She's an all round example of the action woman who's both smart and physically very capable.
 * And then there's Alicia Devries. In any other setting, a character who gets into university (the equivalent of Oxford or Cambridge, no less) at the age of fourteen, completes a five-year degree in three and a half, joins the Imperial Marines, graduates in second place from Camp Mackenzie, sets a new small arms record in the process, gets accepted for a Recon tour straght out of said basic training, then earns a Silver Star on that tour (by killing more than fifty GLF separatists) would count as a Mary Sue. In this case, it "merely" makes her a promising recruit for an entire organisation of people who are just as good if not better. And that describes the events of the first third of the book.
 * Since combat is never purely in the cockpit, most of the women in the books of the X Wing Series count. Shalla Nelprin would probably have gotten along well with Plourr, above.
 * In Spider-Man: The Darkest Hours, during Spider-Man's fight with The Ancients, Mary Jane She's also saved Spidey more times than he's saved her, beaten up like a million stalkers, & was trained by the eptimone of Manliness Captain America, If that's not Action Girl, what is?
 * And in Spider Girl, she not only faced Normie Osborn aka the third Green Goblin, but actually shames the boy via a nice The Reason You Suck Speech. ("I used to change your diapers, what makes you think I'm scared of you!?")
 * Aunt May too, Look up how she delt with Chameleon in the Civil War, do it.
 * Brandon Sanderson seems to like this trope. The main character of Mistborn is Vin, who is one of the biggest Badasses in a trilogy full of them even before she, and in the first book she has a Dark Action Girl nemesis, Lady Shan. Sarene from Elantris is more of a political Chessmaster type, but she fences in her spare time and is good enough to hold her own against the Big Bad, a magically enhanced warrior monk. Warbreaker has no really solid example, though Vivenna seems to be becoming an Action Girl in training by the end. Also, all Parshendi females in The Stormlight Archive, assuming Dalinar's guess about their "battle pairs" is right.
 * Many of the female characters in Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern novels. Most notable are Lessa and Moreta, though others such as Brekke occasionally qualify.
 * Your Mileage May Vary VERY much where Brekke is concerned.
 * Arya of The Inheritance Cycle, who reminds Eragon of this whenever he expresses concern over a danger to her, and seems to disdain "helpless females" who aren't. Christopher Paolini mentioned once that just about every good story has an Action Girl.
 * If Katniss of The Hunger Games wasn't this before the title event, she is by the end of them.
 * Clarissa Kinnison (nee McDougall) of EE Doc Smith's Lensman novels, and all four of her daughters. Arguably Virgilia Samms from the same universe, in as much as she's an integral part of Triplanetary's senior operations planning and is as exposed to danger as any of the men (to the point where she's, and barely escapes with her life). In Masters of the Vortex, there are several female members of Neal Cloud's crew who kick MAJOR arse, including the epic scene where they . The Lensman universe was pretty much Smith's redemption for making Dorothy Seaton such a shrinking violet for all but the very last part of the Skylark quartet.
 * Clio Marsden in Triplanetary doesn't fight anywhere near as effectively as her male compatriots; but given that she starts the story as a naive young civilian, she doesn't do too badly.
 * Milla of the Far Raiders of The Seventh Tower is tougher and more physically competent than any fourteen year old should be... on the other hand, she is still a fourteen year old, and behaves like one, behaving in an incredibly arrogant and at times almost homicidal way towards Tal in the early book. She grows up a lot as the series continues, like Tal, mostly due to common sense being drilled into them both by reality.
 * Any High Lady in the Codex Alera is a potential Person of Mass Destruction, but the key Action Girls throughout the series are the Cursor Amara and the Marat warrior Kitai. Both are also half of a Battle Couple.
 * As the basic function of everyone in Warrior Cats is to fight or help the fighters, the females of the series are generally treated about the same as males. This means much ass-kicking in battle.
 * Kate Daniels has a Cool Sword and throwing knives, and she is quick to use them. Her best friend Andrea is deadly with her guns. This is only to be expected in post-Shift Atlanta, when monsters prowl the streets and nobody is completely safe.
 * The Percy Jackson and the Olympians series has several. Annabeth, who even when she gets kidnapped or severely injured, is still awesome. Clarisse, who is the daughter of the god of war (so, duh). Artemis and Athena, who are both goddesses, so also duh. The hunters of Artemis, which includes Thalia (daughter of Zeus) and Zoe Nightshade (daughter of ).
 * Judge Dee operates in Imperial China where Confucian ideals place women firmly in the home. Never-the-less he manages to encounter at least two Action Girls in Miss Violet Liang, a Mongolian woman-wrestler, and Blue-White, a skilled street fighter.
 * Jo Clayton's recurring character Serroi is a tiny, green-skinned, utterly Badass Magic Knight.
 * Many of James H Schmitz's characters were Action Girls before the trope was popular, most notably Maleen, Goth, and the Leewit from The Witches of Karres. Others, such as Trigger Argee and Telzey Amberdon could also hold their own. In terms of sheer Badassery, though, the prize has to go to Nile Etland, a research biologist who almost singlehandedly stonewalled an alien invasion of her planet.
 * There are a few in William Gibson's Bridge Trilogy, but Zona Rosa, the leader of a girl gang in Mexico City, stands out. Chevette Washington is a borderline example.
 * Not to mention Molly Millions/Sally Shears in Neuromancer and its sequels.
 * Hester Shaw and Anna Fang of Mortal Engines.
 * Nearly all the women in Gail Dayton's One Rose Trilogy. Certainly all the women in the Varyl ilian.
 * Princess Eilonwy from Prydain Chronicles actively participated in several battles.
 * Gaia Moore from Fearless has extreme physical prowess, is heavily trained in martial arts, has an extremely high IQ, and a defective physiology because she can't feel fear. And she routinely goes looking for asses to kick.
 * Pretty much all the girls from The Gallagher Girls series, except the civilians and Liz.
 * Kitty in The Alien Series has killed aliens with a pen, an iPod and hairspray.
 * Tally Youngblood in the third and fourth books of Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series since she's a special. Shay and the rest of the specials/cutters and the Sly Girls form book four also apply for this trope.
 * Mearad of Pellinor from Allison Croggon's The Books Of Pellinor series is a swordswoman and warrior. Sylvia of Innail could also be considered an action girl since she's seen battling the mountainmen in book four.
 * Michael Scott's Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series is full of them. Perenelle Flamel is a powerful sorceress, Scathach is an ancient Celtic warrior and Sophie takes a level in badass when she gets her magical powers activated. Then none other than Joan of Arc shows up in the second book.
 * Miya, from Miya Black, Pirate Princess starts the book thinking she's this; by the end she's definitely proven it.
 * The Shannara franchise has had a few. While the original trilogy was lacking in this department, The Heritage of Shannara featured Wren Ohmsford, and Matty Roh, both of whom were perfectly capable of looking out for themselves and kicking major ass. Wren fought her way in and out of Morrowindl using a knife and the Elfstones, while Matty is a Waif Fu abusing, rapier-armed Broken Bird who can match the Federation's best, and cheerfully goes after The Shadowen using only her sword. The Voyage of the Jerle Shannara also has two, in Tamis (Elven Hunter, personally trained by the Captain of the Home Guard), and Rue Meridan, who at one point jacks an entire airship by herself.
 * The Malazan Book of the Fallen has them in spades. Empress Laseen, Sorry, heck any female Imperial Marine or Crimson Guard.
 * Eowyn, of course, from Lord of the Rings. A Lady of War who pulls a Sweet Polly Oliver and kills the leader of the Ringwraiths. Tolkien had actually initially planned to have her die in that battle, but his wife liked her so much that he had her survive to marry Faramir--who was his Author Avatar.
 * Nihal, the main heroine of the Chronicles of the Emerged World is a badass Half-elf Dragon Rider.
 * Kris Longknife is a very badass Space Navy officer.
 * In Can You Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, Yakuma the stripper steps out onto a table, stabs a zombie in the face with a broken bottle, then again with her stiletto. She then proves herself able to easily dispatch several more with a pair of katanas, all while the hero struggles to kill a single zombie.
 * Any heroine froma JT Edson novel. Calamity Jane got her series.
 * Margo Smith of Time Scout, once she takes her levels in badass. She can kick your ass unarmed or with a blade of her choice, or put a bullet in your eye with a pistol at fifty feet, or a rifle at fifty yards.
 * In Death: Eve Dallas is very much this. Peabody tries to be one, even though she is nowhere near Eve's level.
 * Septimus Heap: Many women in the Septimus-verse qualify, including Marcia Overstrand for and Jenna Heap for knocking down the Toll-man in Queste, among others.
 * Pity from the Sinister Six Trilogy is able to roll with the rest of the Sinister Six and go toe-to-toe with Spider-man all by herself.
 * Jessamyn Bonney and Chantal Juillerat. The former; a teenage cyborg who's host to a spirit thing and is virtually unkillable. The latter; a highly-skilled, superbly trained ninja nun and cyber-exorcist who doesn't need any help from the collection United States Road Cavalrymen she has following her around.
 * Par for the course in the Ciaphas Cain novels, given that a bulk of it takes place during the titular HERO OF THE IMPERIUM's time in a mixed-gender Imperial Guard regiment. Aside from commanding officer Colonel Kasteen, recurring characters include cheerfully sociopathic Mari Magot, perpetually unlucky (but still perfectly competent) "Jinxie" Penlan, and future Lady General Jenit Sulla.
 * Special note goes to said Hero's Love Interest Inquisitor Amberley Vail, who is described as being able to deck an ork. Without the golden Power Armor.
 * Then there was the Enginseer Felicia Tayber, who converted a power lifter into Power Armor. And proceeded to run circles around the orks that had originally kept her as a POW. Did I mention the flame thrower?