Discussion: Strong Female Characters

Yes, I usually reserve discussion posts for weekends, but why not start the weekend a little early this week?

Anyway, what I want to talk about this week is strong female characters, particularly in YA.  Sometimes you encounter a genuinely strong female character that can fall in love and yet not depend on her man to solve all of her problems.  Other times, not so much.  You end up getting a Faux Action Girl who is always described as tough by the author and other characters but never actually does anything.  Well, except get rescued by the male lead.

My latest favourite strong female character is QuiTai from The Devil of Ponong series by Jill Braden.  She isn’t physically strong, but she uses her wits to help her conquered people and stay one step ahead of the Thampurians.  I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say that when it comes down to a choice between a man and the livelihoods of her people you aren’t in much doubt as to what she’s going to choose.  QuiTai was awesome in the first book, The Devil’s Concubine and even better in the second book, The Devil Incarnate.  She’s definitely taken a well-deserved place among my favourite heroines.

So my question for you guys this week is: What makes a strong female character?  Who are your favourite heroines?  Why?

As always, discussion posts are posts where you’re absolutely free to engage with myself and/or other commenters.  My Commenting Policy still applies, but that just encompasses what I like to call “basic human decency”.

Thank You

After the drama of the long weekend, it’s been difficult to get back to my regular blogging schedule.  Comment moderation and replying is slower than usual, but rest assured that I will get my act together after another day and all comments will have the replies they deserve.

With that said, I want to give a huge thank you to the book blogging and self-publishing communities.  Thank you to everyone who showed me support through a comment, tweet or Facebook post.  In a way, it’s sort of restored my faith in humanity because it shows that the behaviour of the author involved is completely unacceptable to pretty much everyone.  As it should be.

I would also like to thank you guys for not (as far as I know) perpetuating the cycle of hatred that the author started.  Trolling, death threats, etc. were not a part of this incident as far as I know and I’m very grateful for that.  There’s no excuse for anyone to do that, especially when it’s in retaliation for that same behaviour.  I’m not a really dramatic person, so thank you so much for keeping the drama to a minimum.

Even if it means there will be incidents like this in the future, I will make this promise to all of you here and now: I am not giving up on the self-publishing community.  I will continue to fight for your right to be recognized as legitimate authors and after a bit of a break will support you through reviews and interviews as I’ve always done.  I’ve made my decision and I know that after my break I will not be closing submissions to indies because of the actions of one person.  That’s unfair, especially considering how many good experiences I’ve had and all the new friends I’ve made in my year and a half of blogging.

Zombie, Inc. by Christine Dougherty

Zombie, Inc. by Christine Dougherty(Cover picture courtesy of Goodreads.)

Twenty-five years after the deadly plague, the United Five State Republic’s most successful company, Zombie, Inc., is in trouble. Will a simple case of dwindling supply and lessening demand be the end of them or will Zombie, Inc. find a way, however unpalatable, to survive?

Zombie, Inc. is an awesome new twist on the whole evil corporation trope.  I don’t say that lightly either because the evil corporation trope is done quite a bit these days, not entirely undeservedly.  Politics aside, if you love zombie novels you’ll love this new take on the zombie mythos.

Christine Dougherty’s zombies are pretty standard fare: they’re generally slow but the new ones are obviously stronger and faster.  However, what’s done with the zombies by Zombie Inc. is incredible: since zombies aren’t as much of a threat as looters 25 years post-apocalypse, they’re used as chained-up watchdogs.  Zombie Inc. has built its whole business model on the fact that there will be enough zombies to supply this guard dog demand, but now that the zombie supply is running out what will the corporation do?

I think you can sort of guess, but let me tell you more about Christine Dougherty’s post-apocalyptic evil corporation.  People at Zombie Inc now work seven days a week because it’s safer, they work ten hour days minimum and get only 2 days off per year for their first year of work.  Two days a year!  And the world is so changed that everyone just accepts this without question; Zombie Inc. is there to protect you, after all.  In between the chapters in a series of training manual clips, press releases and advertisements we learn a whole lot more about Zombie Inc. and its less than savory business practices.

With world-building like this it would be easy to let the evil corporation theme steal the scenes and leave the characters undeveloped.  I won’t say that Christine Dougherty had absolutely amazing character development, but her characters were interesting and generally well-developed.  I particularly liked Carl’s backstory, even if Candy’s was a little random.  Once we got to see things from Dill’s (Dillalia’s) point of view, she started to carry the story on her shoulders, especially toward the end.  Carl was still my overall favourite character because of his tragic past, but Dill was decent enough.

The plot was well paced and although some of the plot twists were a little predictable, the characters and awesome world-building more than made up for it.  In short, if you love zombies, you’ll love Zombie, Inc.

I give this book 4/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble*     Goodreads

*Not available

My New Review Request Policy

As anyone who’s been on my blog for the past three days knows, I had a bit of a nasty incident when an author reacted badly to my refusal to review his book.  Even though in my review policy it says in bold letters I am closed for business.  The fact that he wanted a review despite this policy is not unusual, but his over-the-top reaction was definitely unusual.  For that I’m thankful.

However, this incident and the drama that has resulted because of it (partly my own fault, but still) has made me re-examine how and when I accept book review requests.  Do I really want this kind of drama anytime soon when my health is getting worse and I’m working six day weeks?  The short answer: No.

That’s why I’m going to do one thing for sure and see how it works and depending on the results I may do one of several things:

I AM COMPLETELY CLOSING THE DOORS TO ANY UNSOLICITED REVIEW REQUESTS (BOTH PUBLISHERS AND AUTHORS) UNTIL 2014.

Yes, this can be perceived as letting the bad authors win and letting good authors suffer.  The latter will certainly happen as I know I’m one of the more self-publishing friendly book blogs out there.  Yes, good authors will suffer because of my policy and I will be limiting myself because I will not be finding good books that I otherwise may have stumbled upon.  At this point, I frankly don’t care.  Book blogging has always been and likely will always be a hobby for me and when a hobby stops being fun it quickly becomes work.

Now, depending on how fast I get through my backlog and whether any further drama results out of this recent incident or future incidents, I may do one of several things:

1.  Reopen submissions once I clear my backlog and write a disclaimer on my review policy that I reserve the right to refuse or accept requests for any reasons, not limited to my level of interest, how busy I am, book length, the phase of the moon, etc.

2.  Finally take Mark Lee up on his offer to work as part of The Masquerade Crew and have someone else handle all author book review requests and any attached drama.  This means that I won’t be dealing with authors firsthand which can be a blessing in certain circumstances, but also a pitfall because I love most authors.

3.  Steal The Masquerade Crew’s idea and have open submission weeks where only one genre is able to submit.  After I’ve finished reading all the books submitted in that limited period of time, I’ll have a submissions call for books of another genre and so on and so forth.  Either that or have one week every quarter where anyone within my review criteria can submit.  The idea here is to limit the number of submissions.

4.  Permanently close review requests and only seek out authors whose books I feel I will like or old authors whose books I’m pretty certain I will like.  This appeals to me because of the level of control I have, but I know I’ll be missing out on a lot of good books out there.

5.  Reopen requests in the fall like I had planned but write a pillar post in which I politely explain why ignoring review policy criteria is a great way to get rejected and that it’s the author’s fault for such a rejection.

In truth, I may do one of these to the letter or combine several of them to create a strategy that works for me.  But until then, my review requests are completely closed.

Giveaway: Catnip by Valerie Tate

Today I’m lucky enough to be hosting a giveaway for Catnip by Valerie Tate, a mystery set in Canada involving cats, heiresses and seemingly crazy old ladies.  This is my first Rafflecopter giveaway, so please bear with me here.  There might be some bugs to work out.  However, I’ll do my best to get everything done on time and announce the winners on Monday, August 26 (3 weeks from today).

Just click the link below to get started on entering the giveaway, which includes prizes of 2 internationally shipped paperback books and 10 ebook copies of Catnip!

a Rafflecopter giveaway