A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. P Is For Tamora Pierce

 Tamora Pierce is an American YA novelist. She has written several series, but her best known series is The Song Of The Lioness. Oddly, it began as one long novel, aimed at adults, but her agent suggested that it might work better, and sell better, as four books for young adults. It did. Her books have been translated into twenty languages and won several awards. 

The Song Of The Lioness series is set in a place called Tortall, a mediaeval-like kingdom where women don’t get to be knights. But Alanna, the heroine, wants to become a knight. Her twin brother, Thom, wants to be a sorcerer. Alanna was supposed to travel to a temple in the City of the Gods and Thom was to go to the palace for training as a knight. 

The siblings decide to swap places so they can do what they really want to do. Alanna disguises herself as a boy and goes to train for knighthood as a page called Alan, while Thom goes to the City of the Gods where he can learn to be a sorcerer. 

Alanna is able to keep her identity a secret. One thing I liked about  the story is that she has to deal with things like having a period. Too many stories with disguised girls don’t take that into account. 

In the course of the series, she grows up, becomes “the lady knight” and marries. 

The Immortals series is set in the same universe as Song Of The Lioness, with another heroine, and the adult Alanna appears in it. The heroine Daine is gifted with Wild Magic and can talk to animals, heal them and even shapeshift to animal form. 

By this time, women in Tortall can become knights and practise other occupations they couldn’t in the start of the Lioness series, so there are a lot of strong, interesting female characters.

There are several other series, which have all done well, but these are the ones I have enjoyed the most. 

All of her books are available in ebook and print. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. O Is For Olwen.

 Olwen is the heroine of the poem Culhwch and Olwen. It’s a mediaeval Welsh story included in the Mabinogion, translated by Lady Charlotte Guest in the 19th century. 

It is a story of a quest carried out by Arthur and his knights to help Culhwch, a young cousin of Arthur, win the beautiful Olwen, daughter of a giant, Ysbaddaden. Culhwch hasn’t actually met her when he falls in love with her; it’s a spell put on him by his stepmother, by which he will never marry unless it is her. The stepmother doesn’t think he will ever be able to marry her, because it’s going to take a quest that he can’t carry out by himself.

That, of course, is not a problem, because he is the cousin of King Arthur, who is only too happy to help, along with his top knights.

Really, it’s just an excuse to show what Arthur and his knights can do; they are very much pre Malory. No Lancelot, for a start. And they have magical powers as folk tale characters. They use them.

Ysbaddaden quite understandably isn’t keen to agree to his daughter’s marriage, because he knows that when she marries, that will be the end of him. So he gives a long list of things the heroes must do before Culhwch can claim her.

The name Olwen means “white tracks” because everywhere she walks, white flowers spring up. It sounds rather goddess-like to me. In fact, there is a story(non Arthurian), Einion And Olwen,  in which a shepherd goes to the Underworld to marry her. That Olwen is the mother of the bard Taliesin. There are scholars who do think she is a solar goddess. 

Who knows? It makes a great story, anyway. 

As we might have guessed, Culhwch, Arthur and his knights do complete the quest. Ysbaddaden gets a haircut and, as prophesied, dies, so the young couple are allowed to marry.

If you’d like to read it, you can get it in the Mabinogion, which has some other wonderful stories in it. I have the original translation by Charlotte Guest, in ebook, but there are others, including one I read years ago for English Literature when I was at university. 

For some of the other stories in the Mabinogion, there are four novels by Evangeline Walton. I haven’t come across a novel based on this story, though. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Speculative Fiction. N Is For The Nightingale

 The Nightingale is a novel by Kara Dalkey. It is part of a series of novels inspired by fairy tales, edited by Terri Windling. They were published long ago enough to be out of print, but this one is still available in Kindle ebook; if you only have Apple Books you are out of luck. 

Kara Dalkey has, however, written quite a few other books, including some in Apple Books, if you are interested. 

If you read the stories of Hans Christian Andersen, you probably remember the story on which this is based. In case you haven’t, here is the story outline. 

A Chinese Emperor is befriended by a nightingale which sings beautifully. He is happy with the bird, until he is given a mechanical nightingale. The fake nightingale also sings beautifully but, like other devices, eventually breaks down. Death - as the Grim Reaper - comes for the Emperor and only the original nightingale can save him.

The novel is set in feudal Japan, in a vague time period. In fact, it tells us at the very beginning that it “took place in ancient times” and asks the reader not to ask when. It is “before shogun and samurai ruled the land.” The author knows a lot about Japanese history and culture, so that is what she writes, though this was only her second novel.

The nightingale of the title is a young woman, Uguisu,  not a bird. She plays the flute brilliantly. Instead of an artificial nightingale she is replaced by a courtesan who also plays the flute. 

It starts with her asking a family ghost to help her decide the best way to commit suicide because she is not allowed to marry the young man she loves due to her father’s plan for their minor noble family to rise in power with a marriage he wants.

The ghost has better plans for her and tells her not to be silly. She gives Uguisu a beautiful flute and tells her to practise it by the river. By doing this she will attract the attention of the highest in the land. As she does.

I loved it when I first read it years ago, and still do. 

I have recently bought it in Kindle ebook. 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. M Is For Madeline Miller

 Today’s post will be short, as I have mentioned this author before, in a review, and have only read one of her books. She has, at this stage, only written two novels anyway, though another one, Mestra,  is coming in September 2026, and she has done a short story, Galatea, published individually as an ebook and audiobook. I have been advised several times to get around to reading The Song Of Achilles, which, by the way, took her ten years to write, but for now, I’ll stick to the book I have actually read, Circe. 

All of her work seems to be centred within the world of Greek mythology, There are quite a few novels with a Greek mythology theme, but they are not all fantasy as such. Mary Renault’s Theseus novels, for example, explain how he might have been in the real world, and there is even a reference to the historical Thera explosion. 

Circe is not historical fiction. It’s straight Greek myth. Circe, the heroine of this novel, the sorceress whom  Odysseus meets in  The Odyssey, is the daughter of the Sun god Helios. Her sister is Pasiphae, wife of King Minos and mother of the bull-headed Minotaur - literally. No attempt is made to explain that he is anything else. Her brother is Aeetes, of Golden Fleece fame. Medea is her niece. She turns nymph Scylla into the horrible sailor-eating monster we know from mythology as revenge for sleeping with Circe’s boyfriend, the sea god Glaucus.

And so this Circe lives her way through the myths we know. She takes lovers such as Odysseus and Hermes. She has a very good reason for turning men into pigs(not a long way to go!). She helps Penelope when Odysseus has turned out not to be nice after all. 

Despite her poor reputation im the myth,  Circe seems to be the only decent person in her family. 

The novel doesn’t mess around with the Greek myths; everything in this story happened in the myths.

The book has won or been shortlisted for several awards. It’s easily available in ebook or print. 

Here is a link to my review of the novel.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2018/05/just-finished-reading-circe-by.html

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. L Is For Margo Lanagan

 Margo Lanagan is an Australian YA author who has won many awards. I will put a link to her Wikipedia entry at the end of this post, so you can find out how many awards she has won over the years. 

I will talk here about some of those I have read.

The first of her books I read, Touching Earth Lightly, was not speculative fiction. To be honest, I didn’t care for it. And she wrote quite a few mainstream novels under pen names.

But then I began to read her fantasy books, both short stories and novels and loved them. 

Tender Morsels was based on the fairy tale “Snow White And Rose Red.” That story is about two sisters living in the forest and being helped by an enchanted bear, as well as trying to help a very ungrateful dwarf. In this novel the bear is a young man who comes from another universe in bear form. 

It was controversial in the US, due to violence and rape elements(their mother had been raped by her father). There were also complaints that it was not YA fiction). That didn’t stop it from winning several awards - the World Fantasy Award, the Ditmar Award(Australian SF and fantasy award) and making some shortlists and honour books - the Shirley Jackson for horror fiction, the Printz Award honour book for YA fiction, the Aurealis shortlist(Australia), and the Locus Award. 

Personally, I loved it. 

Another novel I really enjoyed, which started as a novella, was Sea Hearts, known overseas as The Brides Of Rollrock Island. It is set on an island in nineteenth century Scotland. A young woman - very unpopular locally - finds that she can turn seals into human form, as selkies. She has some selkie ancestry herself, as there were human/selkie marriages in the past. If you are familiar with these stories you will know that the man who wants a selkie wife has to hide her sealskin or she will return to the ocean. And they always find their skins and go back, in the folk tales. 

But in this novel, the selkie brides are effectively Stepford wives. They are not robots, but they are beautiful and they do as they are told. It gets to the point where all the island’s men want one, even the married ones. That is very profitable for the woman who produces them. The only problem is that the children born of them are all boys, as the girls can’t survive on land and have to be put back into the ocean, where they become seals. When the island’s human women decide they have had enough and leave, there are only men and boys left.

I won’t spoil the ending, just read it! It also was an award winner, starting with the CBCA Award, for Older Readers. It won several awards within Australia and was at least shortlisted for others. 

A beautiful book!  

Most of her speculative fiction was short stories and published as collections, such as Black Juice(2004), featuring the rather sad story “Singing My Sister Down”, which won the World Fantasy Award. The collection itself also won several awards, and it was only the first of several more collections. 

Here is a link to Margo Lanagan’s Wikipedia entry, where you can find a list of her books and the awards they have won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margo_Lanagan

The books are still available in ebook, print and audiobook.

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction.K Is For Ambelin Kwayymullina

 Ambelin Kwaymullina is an Indigenous Australian children’s and YA writer, who also has a day job, as an Assistant Professor of Law. We first met at a science fiction convention and this delightful lady helped me get a school visit by Alice Pung to my disadvantaged school, for which the Stella Award folk paid. 

She is also a talented illustrator and has done some picture books.

What I particularly remember her for, though, is her YA Tribe trilogy, starting with The Interrogation Of Ashala Wolf. At the end of this post, I will link you to my interview with her on this site. 

The universe of the Tribe books is in the very distant future,  when supercontinent Pangaea is back. The good news is that people are finally looking after the planet and the environment. The bad news is that in other ways, the world is a dystopia. There are people with powers of various kinds, including the heroine, and they are put into concentration camps. 

Some of them escape and go into hiding. They call themselves the Tribe.

The novel is very Australian, understandably, and the villain is named after a real person, a “protector of Aborigines”. If you don’t live in Australia you will probably not know about these dreadful people who did anything but look after the needs of Indigenous Australians! Thankfully they are long gone. 

There are two sequels, The Disappearance Of Ember Crow, and The Foretelling Of Georgie Spider. It was an amazing trilogy. 

She and her brother Ezekial also wrote Catching Teller Crow, a YA novel with a ghost heroine, which won the YA section of the Victorian Premier’s Literary Prize and a Notable in the CBCA Award. The Notables are the long list (I actually got a Notable myself for my novel Wolfborn!)

The books are easily available on line, in ebook, print and audiobook. Do try them!

Here is my interview with the author. 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2014/06/the-interview-of-ambelin-kwaymullina-on.html

PS It IS a trilogy though she said in the interview it would be four books.

A to Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction.J Is For Juliet(Marillier)

 Okay, sort of cheating again, using her first name, but I do love this woman’s work. She lives in Australia though she is a Kiwi. I hadn’t heard of her before one of our students asked me to buy some of her works. I haven’t read them all, but I have read enough of her books to share with you. I have reviewed some on this site and even had an interview with her, done by my former student Thando Bhebe, who contacted me only recently - hi, Thando! 

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2010/12/interview-with-juliet-marillier.html

Juliet has been nominated for, and won, many awards, including six Aurealis  Awards(Australia) and the Julius Vogel Award(New Zealand), as well as the Tin Duck Award(Western Australia). She also received a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement, in 2025.

I’m not surprised. Her novels are very readable stuff and, as they tend to be inspired by fairy tales, they are familiar when you read them. 

For example, Heart’s Blood is sort of based on “Beauty And The Beast”. It’s set in Ireland during the Norman period in England. The heroine isn’t left there because of her father’s actions, she is a scribe there doing a job for the summer. 

Here is my review of it.

https://suebursztynski.blogspot.com/2009/11/hearts-blood-by-juliet-marillier-sydney.html

Her Sevenwaters series, also set in mediaeval Ireland, starts with Daughter Of The Forest, based on the fairy tale “The Six Swans” about a princess who discovers that her brothers have been turned into swans by their evil stepmother. The only way she can save them might cost her own life. 

Ireland isn’t the only setting for her fairy tale fiction; one of her YA novels, Wildwood Dancing, is set in Transylvania and is based on “The Twelve Dancing Princesses”.

More recently, she has written the Blackthorn And Grim series, first a trilogy, then a sequel about the characters’ children. It’s not based on on any particular fairy tale, but is set in the same universe as the Sevenwaters series. Blackthorn is the woman, Grim is the man who helps her and they eventually fall in love. It starts with Blackthorn being saved from execution by the book’s villain, by an elf whom she had once helped. The deal is that over the next seven years she must never deny help to anyone who asks her for it. There are Arthurian elements in it, but you need to read it to get that point. Grim is lovely, by the way. I’d be pleased to have him for a boyfriend.

The books are easily available online in print and ebook format, and some in audiobook. Do check them out!