I just noticed! My bookshelf lacks a certain feminine touch

Believe me when I say I am an out and proud social justice warrior. Yes I know. We spend more time on our soapboxes than down in the trenches actually trying to change things, but I like to think I do my small part of griping and getting my hands dirty. Imagine my surprise when I went to pull a book off my shelf to read for the umpteenth time and I noticed a very ugly trend.

My bookshelf is a sausage fest. Excuse my vulgarity for a moment. I am a black woman that loves everything about being a girl. The glitter, the underpants, even the shoes and I support woman every chance I get and frankly for a raging feminist like me to have a bookshelf bulging at the seams of male writers left me flummoxed.

How could this have happened? When did it happen? How could I have not noticed? Me, who always makes a point of waxing poetic about the need for diversity in literature and pop culture has more male authors gracing her shelves than female.

Where did I go wrong? I think I may have gotten dazzled by the brilliant stories and the wonderful worlds and nuanced female characters of these male writers.

Well let's dissect some of my favorite books. The Artemis Fowl series by Eoin Colfer. Colfer hit upon two of my treasured things. Bad boys and fairies. Artemis is a boy genius who turns his massive intellect on reclaiming the family fortune. He accomplishes this by defrauding The People, what we would call fairies, out of their gold. He does this with the help of the massive built and expertly trained Butler, no first name given. The most intriguing this about the series isn't Artemis, yes he is cute and yes he is smart, but Holly Short, Captain Holly Short is the standout for me. She is the only female in the LEP Recon unit. She is efficient, highly regarded in her line of work and very good at her job. Especially if it involves shuttle and solar flares. She is great at reading suspects and she always gets her man, or dwarf or pixie. Whomever the perp may be. And I can't talk about awesome female characters in the Fowl series without mentioning Opal Koboi. Sure she is the bad guy, but she is one of the better Moriarty reincarnations I've read in a good while. From the moment we meet her she is pulling Fowl's strings left and right, and even through time and space. She is maniacal and utterly diabolical with just the right amount of maybelline.

The Rangers Apprentice and Brotherband Chronicles by John Flanagan. I'm a fantasy girl through and through sure, but I do like what we in the business call low fantasy. Books set in alternative settings with little to no magic whatsoever. The Rangerverse fits snuggly into that category. I love that in this series girls don't have to prove to anyone that they can do anything a man can do and sometimes do it better. Its just accepted that woman are a vital part of life and that sometimes they can be called upon to defend their countries, or rescue wayward Oberjarls.

The Millennium Series by Stieg Larsson. I've heard it all. Savage rapes, sexual abuse, attempted murder, incest, child abuse and pedophilia just to name a few of the travesties committed against the female characters in the books, but I can't help but love and root for Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth is wickedly smart. Painfully smart even. She is calculating and exacting. Above all she is uncompromising. She has her own brand of morals and will not stray from them for anyone. Salander is a woman who has been brutalised beyond measure but she will never call herself a victim. Now I am not saying that woman who do aren't strong. That is a topic for a different blog, but I like her coping mechanisms. She didn't mope around, she duct taped the sucker and gave him a dose of his won medicine. Even Erica Berger is a great character that grew on me by the end of The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. She was smart, sassy and not afraid to have her cake and eat it too.  

Now don't misunderstand me, I read female writers. Some of my favorite writers are women. JK Rowling of course, she saved my life. Not as in she herself personal, but a copy of Harry Potter and Philosopher's Stone stopped me from eating a bullet from my father's gun. So she will always be on my top ten. I've got 4 fan fiction stories based on the Potterverse. Angie Sage, author of the Septimus Heap series and the newly penned Pathfinder series is just a joy to read. Her cast of characters almost rivals George Martin, with backstories just as extensive. And a great friend to have on facebook if you are so inclined. Mercedes Lackey, a prolific female in the fantasy genre, has been fascinating audiences for decades. Personally I am in love with her Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdom series. I'm a sucker for fairytales what can I say.

Should I forgo reading books by men even if they have great female leads and female characters even though I champion female writers? Does it make me a bad feminist to have more male writers on my bookshelf than women? Is NOW going to revoke my feminist card? What's a girl to do? How do I reconcile reading more male authors than female authors?

Book Babblings

Dark Currents: Agent of Hel by Jacqueline Carey 

The Nitty Gritty: Tail lashing agent of Hel, the Norse god of the dead, is a part time file clerk for the local police in the small Midwestern resort town of Pemkowet. Being Hel's agent means keeping the local eldritch community in line and the mundane humans safe. Daisy acts as the liason between the magical and the mundane. Mostly that involves taking her best friend Jen to Twilight Manor to plead with her sister to forsake her vampire boyfriend and come home or scaring off a milkweed fairy from kidnapping a changling child. Seems easy enough.  

Till a college student bodies floats to the top of the river and it smacks of otherworldly involvement. Its left up to Daisy the the Down Low wolf is cop's clothing Cody Fairfax to solve the mystery before the Christian right raze the underworld and purge their community of the hell spawn.

Opening Line: "It was an idyllic summer evening in Pemkowet the night the Vanderhei kid died." 

What's the 411: I must say the title is what pulled me in. though I readily understood that this was not a story about a actual agent of Hell. I was intrigued enough to pick it up. The story blurb further pulled me in. It took me longer than I planned to read this because I have the literary attention span of a ADD kid on crack. I can read nearly seven books at one time and I was trying to devour two George R. R. Martin books and a Mercedes Lackey book at the same time on top of struggling with a new job and Vacation Bible school planning going on. Suffice to say my brain was quite happy to get one thing off my plate.

Its a wonderful concept in this world of fan fiction turned sellable art and regurgitation of the classics. A hell spawn actually ok with what she is and actively trying to control her inner most demons, no pun intended I assure you is quite the plot. Nevermind the fact that the magical and the mundane live side by side without all the ugly backlash. The few instances of blowback are feeble and weak. Of course this couldn't be urban fantasy without werewolves and vampires. Glad to see the vampires played a ever so minor role in this book and I hope to not see any more of them in the coming books.

Since this is the fitst book in the series I don't know if I should be irritated at the hotter than allowed werewolf Cody. Honestly are all werewolves hot and sexy? Can't there be a over the hill wolf with a Budweiser belly and bad teeth? Just asking. We shall see if the hot werewolf gets on my nerves, but I have high hopes that Stephen the sexy ghoul will stay in rotation.

This book did have pacing issues. The spaces between the action and the filler chapters was a little too long. It felt like a long drive through Texas. When you high the brights lights of a big city its a fun ride and you drink it all in, but when there is nothing between you and that long stretch of burning asphalt it gets tedious and mind numbing.

On the whole with this book I expected I don't know a bit more action. A lot more magic. It seemed like the book s was struggling with itself on how much to revel and how much to hold back. Well it held back too much for my liking. Well we got to see naiads and fairies. Which is nice but also over done. We only for a few mentions of the ogre and Hel herself which was the main attraction for me. norse mythology save Thor and Loki is sadly lacking in urban fantasy if you ask me. 

I know the first book is supposed to tease you enough to prompt you into buying the next book but I'm not a huge fan of tease. I like everything laid out on the table in plain sight. If I like the book I'm going to like. I don't need smoke and mirrors.

The Good: Well the fact that there wasn't any sex to distract from the actual plot of the story was a good thing in my book. I really hate to say it but a lot of female urban fantasy authors are churning out nothing but porn these days. Their characters have lost their edge. Blunted by the hard cock of whatever flavor of the month. Sorry to be so blunt but its true and I'm getting damn tired of it. I find it highly ironic that its the female authors that are guilty of this. Harry Dresden, the brain child of urban fantasy author Jim Butcher, is a man that hasn't suffered from a lack of willing ladies lining up to keep his bed warm in the 11 books about his life as Chicago's only outed wizard. No to be fair he did enjoy the company of a few of those willing participants, but you never had to read about his rolls in the hay. They were never used as plot devices to keep the book going. The actual plot did that! Since it hasn't happened I'm not going to get myself worked up over what might or might not come to pass.

I did like the introduction of Ghouls in this book, especially ghouls as the good guys. In the few books that I've read with ghouls they always got the short end of the stick. To be fair there are some pretty nasty ghouls out there and the fact that they survive on the emotions of humans is a little gross to be sure, but on the whole I do like that Carey painted Stephen in a positive light. How bright that light shines in the coming books remains to be seen, but for now I like him and her characterization of him.

The Bad: Like most urban fantasies with a female lead the female just has to have a long line of suitable and unsuitable bedmates. While this first book reined in its heroine's libido I fear that won't last long. Which is a shame I rather like Daisy. She does suffer from the repetitive word usage, namely the word Gah. Which I can't fathom would ever pass by anyone's actual lips. She isn't as whiny as most females in her shoes would be. After all she is literally Rosemary's Baby with a flicking tail, and believe you me all the flicking did grate on my nerves slightly. After all I doubt Cody would have commented on that fact that he didn't wear boxers because his tail would have gotten angry with him. I likened it to her commenting about flicking her hair out of her face so it got to be very annoying because it was mentioned nearly every page.

Carey needs to take a lesson in small town building for Charlaine Harris. Pemkowet just feels like she took a large city and squeezed it into a small town. Albeit with a few fairies and ogres sprinkled in. Don't get me wrong she had all the right ingredients  Long family histories, the town drunk and occasional wife beater, the good ole boy police chief, even a cross dressing shop owner and thrown in for good measure a "magical negro". I do love it when white people become self aware. Its almost like they think minorities will give them a pass. We don't but its fun when they try.

Anyhoo, I'm not buying the small town vibe in this book. It might have worked if A) I hadn't went to high school in a small town and B) I hadn't read books with better small town building in them. Harris might have lost her creative edge with the passage of time but the woman can still paint a pretty convincing picture of small town America. Maybe I am trying to impose a southern small town vibe on a midwestern small town, but the two can't vary that greatly. Never been one for the midwest myself so maybe I am off base here.

I'm still a little iffy on the whole white female authors writing about interracial relationship with their white female leads and black males. Its starting to be an alarming trend without any of the social implications attached. Maybe I wouldn't be so touchy if they didn't feel like experiments to the female characters. Its almost like Daisy is saying "Well I'm attracted to a ghoul and a werewolf why not a black guy." Like there has to be a justification for her being attracted to a black guy. Without the ghoul and werewolf would the black guy still be as beautiful? Would he still feel like an experiment? I think that's what pisses me off the most. The relationships with black men is put into the same category with vampires, elves, werewolves or whatever supernatural creature is the hunk of the year. Are we animals? Are we exhibits to be experienced? A one in a lifetime attractions that can't be missed?

It reduces everything that is wonderful about black men into a cheap parlor trick used as a plot device.

Final Thoughts: For now I will keep reading about Daisy's adventures. My hope is that Carey leaves what goes on behind closed doors to the imagination. It was a fun ride.