A To Z Challenge 2026. Women in SF and Fantasy. U Is For Dolores Umbridge

 Dolores Umbridge is a Harry Potter villain, for very good reason. She is actually scarier than Voldemort. I can’t help wondering where the author got her from. She is very real. She doesn’t have any special powers, she hasn’t created any Horcruxes. She is just a truly horrible person. (One thing we find out about her is that she sent the Dementors that nearly got Harry expelled.)

We have probably all met a Dolores at some stage. I know I have, as a campus principal at my school. She didn’t have the power to hit or otherwise assault students, no teacher here does, but she did have the power to make her staff miserable. I remember one, a very good teacher, who was so badly treated that she had to leave the school and definitely had PTSD. And no, the kids didn’t like her either - she went on a bus tour interstate with them and some of the kids told me what she did on the bus and… Oh, dear! 

Dolores Umbridge first appears in Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix, the fifth book in the series. She wears pink and has pictures and plates with kittens in her office. She might be mistaken for someone nice, but Hermione picks up just what she is at the first feast of the term. 

Dolores was sent by the truly idiotic Minister of Magic, who refuses to believe that Voldemort is back. She makes sure that she does what she was sent to do, including not actually teaching Defence against the dark arts, tortures students, including Harry, and sacks staff she doesn’t like. She replaces Dumbledore as principal, so Harry and his friends get together to learn DADA as a hidden group they call Dumbledore’s Army. Harry is very good at the subject, so is able to teach the others what he knows, including how to summon a protective Patronus which usually comes in the form of an animal. Oddly, as you are supposed to start with a very happy memory, Dolores has one herself, a cat - scary to think what her happy memory is!

When she catches up with them, she wants Snape to give her a truth serum, but he lies and claims to have run out and not have the time to produce more. He is, after all, a good guy.

After all this, Hermione persuades her that there is something she is after in the Forbidden Forest and lures her there, where she is carried off by a herd of angry centaurs. They don’t kill her, because she turns up again in the last book, working for the Death Eater government. But she isn’t as smart as she thinks she is, is she? 

She is one of the nastiest villains I have encountered, and scary because she is just human. 

Have you ever met a Dolores Umbridge? 

No need to tell you the books are all in print, because of course they are. But if you want an audiobook, there are many on YouTube as well as for sale on Apple Books and Kindle, and all of the ebooks have an enhanced edition which have some interesting features.

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in SF and Fantasy. T Is for Tiffany Aching

 Today’s female character was created by a man, Terry Pratchett. But Terry Pratchett wrote wonderful women, from witches Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, to Susan Sto Helit, Death’s granddaughter, from Angua the werewolf police officer to the evil  Queen of the elves. 

Tiffany Aching is the heroine of a number of children’s novels which show her growing up and training as a witch. The first novel is The Wee Free Men. She is discovered by Miss Tick, who travels around looking for girls who have a talent for witchcraft. 

Tiffany lives in the Chalk country, on a sheep property. Her family have been shepherds for generations, like her grandmother, who was much admired, though she has passed away before the novel begins. Tiffany suspects that she was a witch herself. 

The Chalk is based on the area of England that is made up of chalk and has the White Horse of Uffington(which appears in these novels). When Miss Tick first finds Tiffany she is surprised because chalk country is considered too soft for witches, but Tiffany feels a connection with the land.

The wee free men of the title, the Nac Mac Feegle, are small beings who love fighting and booze. They were kicked out of Faerie for being drunk. They think they are dead, living in a fabulous afterlife because how else to explain so many things to fight, and so much great booze to drink?

They help Tiffany when her little brother, Wentworth, is kidnapped by the Queen of the fairies(who are not remotely nice). They are all men except their Kelda, who is mother of them all. Tiffany becomes Kelda for a time, for convenience. Once they get one who is small enough to actually do the job, they still revere Tiffany and continue to help her throughout the series. 

After the first book, she travels to Lancre(the home of Granny and Nanny) to start her training. 

In Wintersmith, she unintentionally attracts the romantic attentions of the Wintersmith when she joins in with the dance called the Dark Morris, slotting herself in to a space meant for a spring goddess. He creates snowflakes with Tiffany’s face and icebergs also Tiffany-shaped.

By the second last book, I Shall Wear Midnight, the teenage Tiffany is the village’s witch, and a leader. I haven’t yet read the final book in the series, The Shepherd’s Crown, because it was Terry Pratchett’s last book and … you know. I have decided to reread all the Discworld books first. 

Just a brief bit of amusement. Terry Pratchett’s fandom is huge. Once, when he was on tour, a bunch of fans turned up, danced a Dark Morris in complete silence, as in the book, and left.

All of Terry’s books are easily available. It is unlikely any of them will be out of print in the near future, so if you haven’t yet discovered Discworld, what are you waiting for? 

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Fantasy And SF. S Is For Snow White.

Today’s post is about Snow White in fiction. She does appear quite a number of times in novels and short fiction. 

I can start off with a short story of my own, “Brothers”, published in an anthology of fairy tale themed stories called Mythic Resonance, which is available in ebook. It’s seen from the viewpoint of the Seven Dwarfs, and the Princess, Blanche, is a lot more intelligent than the girl in the fairy tale. They have to protect her until she is able to return to the palace, where the Queen is about to take over. She does fall under a spell, but no glass coffin, not even an apple, just a spell. 

Sophie Masson’s novel Hunter’s Moon does have a glass coffin, no spoilers, but it’s not a kingdom. It’s a chain of department stores in a 19th century setting somewhere in Europe. The heroine actually admires he beautiful, elegant stepmother until she tries to kill her. A fabulous novel, very cleverly done so you can see the fairy tale it comes from. 

Jim C Hines wrote a number of fairy tale novels featuring fairy tale heroines, including Snow White, who have to repair problems that happen afterwards. The first one is The Stepsister Scheme in which Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Snow White get together to rescue the kidnapped Prince, Cinderella’s husband. Snow White wears a choker made of glass that forms the basis of her magic. Trust me, these are terrific books! 

The late Tanith Lee, a British fantasy writer, wrote a collection called Red As Blood, which featured a story of the same name. All the stories in that collection twist fairy tales around, and this is no exception. Princess Bianca is a born vampire. She doesn’t have seven dwarfs but seven dwarf trees, twisted ones. The Queen, her stepmother, is not harming her but trying to save her soul. I first read it in the magazine it appeared in, but it’s worth finding the collection just for this story. The other stories are also good. 

Finally in this post is a book by Neil Gaiman, with beautiful illustrations, and an audiobook/radio play of it. It’s called The Sleeper And The Spindle.  It doesn’t name her, but the young queen is obviously Snow White, about to marry her prince. On the eve of her wedding, she is visited by some of the dwarfs. They tell her that weird things are happening elsewhere in the kingdom. People are falling asleep and not waking. It’s spreading and if something isn’t done, the entire kingdom is likely to sleep. They aren’t human, so not affected.

The queen kisses her prince, puts on armour, then goes with them. The sleep is connected with the story of Sleeping Beauty. I won’t tell you too much more, because spoilers, but there is a twist you might not expect. I do recommend it. In print if you can get it, because the illustrations are exquisite. But you should be able to find it in ebook. The audiobook is a play. 

There is plenty more in the way of fiction based on the fairy tale, but I’ll leave it to you to find them. 

There is even a list on Goodreads. Here it is.

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/25937.Snow_White_Retellings

A To Z blogging Challenge 2026. Women In Speculative Fiction. R Is for Gillian Rubinstein

 Gillian Rubinstein is a children’s/YA author who was born in England, but moved to Australia in the 1970s. She has written quite a few books, including a children’s picture book, Prue Theroux, The Cool Librarian, about a really cool school librarian. I read it with my two oldest nephews, David and Mark, when they were children. They loved it and read it to their own children. They told me that as far as they were concerned, I was Prue Theroux. Sweet!

But the first novel of hers that I read was Space Demons, in which some children find themselves trapped in a computer game which was brought back from Japan. Some dreadful things happen in the game, as they are angry with each other. There are two sequels, Skymaze and Shinkei. It turns out that it was never meant to be negative; they were getting it all wrong. It was their own behaviour that made the game scary. Space Demons won several awards, including an Australian Children’s Book Council Award.

Galax-Arena featured children who are kidnapped by aliens and taken to another world where they are forced to perform acrobatics for the aliens. 

There is a long list of her books in Wikipedia, too long to list them all here, so I will put in a link at the end of this post.

These were books for children, but the Tales Of The Otori series are YA. They are written under the pen name Lian Hearn. 

The first of the series, Across The Nightingale Floor, came out in 2002. The main series is made up of five books, but there are other Otori stories, including a free short story in ebook, His Kikuta Hands, which I have just downloaded from Apple Books. You can also get her books on Amazon, including Kindle. 

They are set in an alternative universe Japan in the Sengoku era, which was in the fifteenth/sixteenth century. The hero, Takeo, has lost his family, members of a clan known as the Hidden, whom we would think of as ninjas. The premise is that, in this universe, ninja assassins actually do have magical powers. In our world, of course, they were only thought to have magic, because they were very, very good at what they did. 

This book is also a prize winner. 

Her books have sold in the millions and been translated into forty languages. 

They are available in print, ebook and audiobook.

Here is a link to Gillian’s Wikipedia entry, where you can find her full list of publications.

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

A To Z Blogging Challenge 2026. Women in Speculative Fiction. Q Is For Elli Quinn

 Today we are going back to a character from Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, Elli Quinn.

The Vorkosigan saga is a space opera series, centred around Miles Vorkosigan, son of Count Aral  Vorkosigan and his wife Cordelia, on the planet Barrayar. The Vor are a military caste, as Miles has to keep explaining to people who think they are the aristocracy. Early on in the series, Miles founds the Dendarii Free Mercenaries, or, rather, he takes over an existing mercenary corps, by bullshitting them into believing he is an Admiral, Admiral Naismith. All this while he is only seventeen years old!

Elli Quinn is Miles Vorkosigan’s second in command when he is with the Dendarii.

In one novel, Ethan of Athos, he has sent her on a mission to Kline Station, a space station where she was born and grew up. There, she meets Dr Ethan Urquhart, who is from Athos, a planet whose population is only men. They have ovarian cultures to produce children(all boys) in uterine replicators, but their ovaries need replacement. Ethan has never met a woman before and Elli needs to look after him while carrying out her mission. Miles is not in this novel at all. In fact, this takes place while he and his cousin Ivan are on the planet Cetaganda, at an Empress’s funeral, in another novel, Cetaganda.

Elli is one of Miles’s romantic interests over the series, and he proposes marriage to her before he leaves the Dendarii. She loves him, but is not interested in leaving the fleet and moving to Barrayar. For one thing, she has been living in space all her life. Living on a planet doesn’t appeal to her. For another thing, if she was willing to settle down on a planet, Barrayar wouldn’t be it. It’s improving in many ways, but it’s still behind where its treatment of women is concerned. She couldn’t join its military. It’s ironic, because Miles’s mother was a spaceship captain in her time, but fell in love with Aral, and had to flee her own world, Beta Colony for her own reasons. She had saved Barrayar during a civil war.

Elli tells Miles she might consider marrying him if he wasn’t leaving the fleet, but he can’t stay. (Check out the novel Memory to find out why).

When he leaves, Miles appoints her as the new Admiral, something for which he feels she is more than ready.

Elli is only mentioned in “Winterfair Gifts”, a novella in which Miles finally gets married, but she can’t get to the wedding. But she plays an important role without being there.

I must admit, Elli is one of my favourite characters. 

All the books in this series are easily available, in print, ebook and audiobook. 

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.