I've got a very special guest on the blog today! It's day one of Helen Grant's Demons of Ghent blog tour, and Helen has stopped by to share her top ten kickass heroines.
Demons of Ghent is the second book in the Forbidden Spaces Trilogy; I read the first, Silent Saturday, quite recently, and absolutely loved it. It tells the story of Veerle, a 17-year-old girl who stumbles upon a secret society of urban explorers obsessed with breaking into unoccupied buildings, and when she joins them, finds herself in more danger than she could possibly imagine (you can find out more here). Helen combines a spare, elegant writing style with fast-paced action, edgy characters and a compelling setting – in this case, a bleak suburb of Brussels, which, for me, made a fascinating change from the usual US/UK settings of YA novels.
So, as you can imagine, I'm very excited that the second novel in the sequence, Demons of Ghent, is being published in a few days' time. I'll share the blurb at the end of this post, but in the meantime… over to Helen!
I always find it really hard to compile Top
Tens because I haven’t read all the books in the world (…yet), so there are
bound to be some brilliant candidates that I’ve totally missed! These are my
personal favourite kickass heroines.
Katniss
Everdeen (The Hunger Games)
Katniss belongs on this list so much that I
thought I should just put her there at the top and get it over with. I love her
because not only is she strong and capable, but she’s also protective. She’s
not a mindless killing machine. She has a conscience. The whole plot kicks off
because she tries to protect her little sister – and she does it without
thinking, not as some kind of macho display.
Jane
Eyre (Jane Eyre)
It’s harder for a Victorian heroine to get
onto the list, because back then things like fainting dead away in the face of
danger were considered acceptable behaviour. In spite of this, Jane manages to
be totally kickass, especially in the scene where she spends the entire night
sponging blood off the badly-bitten victim of some unseen horror, while
Rochester rides off to get the doctor.
Jess
Tennant (How To Fall)
The heroine of Jane Casey’s two YA crime
novels, Jess took my breath away at the end of the first one, How to Fall, because of her frankly
outrageous strategy to lure out her cousin’s killer. I’m saying no more in case
of spoilers, but…wow.
Mrs
Proudie (Barchester Towers)
“She’s not the heroine!” I hear you cry.
Well, no. The domineering wife of the Bishop of Barchester in Trollope’s
Barchester novels is a character you love to hate, rather than actually love.
Unable to be a bishop herself (something still impossible at the beginning of
2014), she nevertheless manages to do the job in all but name. At the end of
the Barset books she dies, perhaps literally, with her boots on: she is found
dead and rigid, on her feet, clasping the bedpost, and with her eyes wide open.
Cass
Hollencroft (The Fearless)
Cass, like Katniss, is motivated by
protectiveness, in this case the desire to rescue her little brother Jori from
a fate worse than death. Impressively, Cass did not grow up in the dismal world
of The Fearless, where you can either spend your time locked up in a fortress
or risk being picked off by pharmacologically-created ghouls. She began life as
an ordinary girl with a loving family and a pet cat. In spite of this soft
beginning she still turns out to be kickass. Respect.
Lisbeth
Salander (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)
Do I need to explain why she’s on the list?
Thought not. Probably the most kickass heroine ever.
Circe
(The Odyssey)
Circe lives by herself on an island in a
palace guarded by wolves and lions. When Eurylochus and his men turn up, she is
busy weaving and singing and upon seeing them she invites them in for dinner.
So far so cutely domestic. Then she drugs them and turns them into pigs
(there’s no such thing as a free lunch, guys). Odysseus, who turns up later,
escapes the same fate thanks to some sneaky help from the Gods, but she still
keeps him on her island for a year, and when he finally leaves, she tells him
to go to Hell – with detailed instructions.
Jo
March (Little Women, Good Wives)
Jo would probably be on quite a few
people’s lists of kickass heroines, because of her fiery spirit, her disregard
for boring social mores and the time she cuts off all her hair and sells it.
Personally, I love the fact that she swerves the young, rich, handsome suitor
who is prepared to lay it all at her feet, in favour of the chunky foreign dude
with the beard and a shedload of integrity. And then they set up a boys’
school.
Ayesha
(She)
It’s pretty kickass to be known locally as
She-who-must-be-obeyed. As well as ruling an uncharted region of Africa from
her stronghold under a volcano, Ayesha is able to kill a love rival by pointing
at her and giving her a hard stare. Furthermore (spoiler alert) as the sequel
proves, her kung fu is so strong that if she snogs a mere mortal man, he drops
dead of it.
Veerle
De Keyser (Silent Saturday, Demons of Ghent)
Is it bad to have one of my own heroines?
Well, it’s my party I guess. All my books so far have female leads, and out of
all of them, Veerle is the one I’d like to be. She’s got far more nerve than I
have, and a much better head for heights: Demons
of Ghent is full of rooftop shenanigans, and I am terrified if I am more
than a couple of metres off the ground. Also, she’s so kickass that at the end
of Silent Saturday she goes back into the crime scene to confront
the killer.
I love this list – and thank you for mentioning Cass, Helen! Here's the blurb for Demons of Ghent, which I recommend you go and buy as soon as it hits the shelves (I know I will):
People are falling from the rooftops of Ghent. But did they throw themselves off - or did somebody push them?
Veerle has seen enough death to last a lifetime.
But death isn't finished with Veerle just yet.
When people start to die in her new home town, some put it down to a spate of suicides. Some blame the legendary Demons of Ghent. Only Veerle suspects that something - somebody - has followed her to wreak his vengeance.
But she watched the Hunter die, didn't she?
