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!