Once upon a time, I did a month long blog event to celebrate women in March. It was a lot of fun but eventually fell by the wayside the last couple of years. It takes time and devotion and I was apparently lacking both. In those intervening years, I’ve picked up several more female authors that I enjoy and I thought it was time to give them their own spotlight.
Have you read any of these ladies and what did you think?
Happy Easter one and all! Saturday officially ended Women’s History Month but I decided to wait a day for people to get in last minute submissions. I failed myself, to work in one last book review. My brain decided to have a serious case of ADD last night so I’m still working on the last 100 pages of Conspiracy of Ravens.
Here they are:
Man of Tin featured Suffragettes! I love it.
Imperial Rebel Ork threw another curve ball at me and featured my beloved Tank Girl!
Mostly True Stories of K. Renae P. collected her entire contributions into one helpful post. Be sure to check out each one as I learned about some awesome ladies I had never heard of before.
GamersUnitedGG featured a lovely little list of some female fronted video games. Samus Aran will always have a special place in my heart. Not because I’ve ever played a Metroid game, but because my husband who loves the games named our youngest dog after her. 😉
My personal contributions for the last week include; Saga, Volume 4 – Comic Review, The Prey of Gods – Book Review & Favorite Female Authors – Part 2.
Below I am going to link every blog that contributed to this Women’s History Month celebration. You guys are some bad ass mother fuckers for helping a girl with her first blog event. Oooodles of thanks!
Field Notes From Over the Hill
Mostly True Stories of K. Renae P.
I hope everyone had as much fun with this as I did. It inspires me to participate in other people’s blog events. This is definitely a fun little community I’ve wandered blindly into. ^_^
Women’s History Month is quickly coming to a close and I’m trying to squeeze in one more book by a female author. I decided that I needed another edition of Favorite Female Authors. It’s only 5 more because I keep flying by the seat of my pants on these lists.
After my last list of female authors, I added quite a few female authors I hadn’t heard of yet thanks to you guys. I can’t ever run out of things to read (though I think that’s impossible) so keep those suggestions coming!
Published Date: June 13, 2017
Publishing Co.: Harper Voyager
Pages: 400
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Wooo boy, that was a trip.
Humans are the descendants of gods, making each human a demigod/goddess. However they’ve spent eternity ignorant of this small fact. It takes a new illegal drug on the market to begin waking people’s powers.
Muzi is a gay teen struggling with his identity. His grandfather is pushing him to the old ways of their African tribe while living in a world where everyone has their own personal assistant robot to help them through life. Drugs are a release from his daily worries but this new drug, the name of which is fucking alluding me right now, unleashes his ability to control people, bending them to his will.
Riya is a pop star. Selfish, uncaring of the people around her. She hides an illness that causes her great pain. She reveals in drugs and comes across this new substance, she gains power off her pain, off the pain of others, but she can use this power to heal.
Wallace Stoker is a politician. A politician who actually has interest in bettering his country, in improving people’s lives. His mother is pushing for him to become the premier of the country, but he’s not sure he’s ready for that. He’s leading a secret double life and he’s not sure which life is the one he wants.
Sydney is a centuries old demigoddess trying to reclaim her powers. She feeds off of fear. She’s planning mass destruction to help her kill off her newest competition, a tiny girl named Nomvula.
Clever 4-1 is a robot. A robot struggling with the first case of sentience. He finds a way to spread that sentience to other bots.
Nomvula is a small girl in the slums of Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Her mother claims a man in the village raped her in her dreams and lives in a perpetual state of crying in bed. This same man teaches Nomvula that she in fact, is a demigoddess, a strong one. Nomvula’s life has been one of hunger pains and saddness, but this new sense of self comes with a high price.
Here we have a magnificent blend of humans awakening their god powers and a budding AI sentience that could turn the world on it’s head. This story was fast paced and fun, each character relatable. The entire read was intoxicating, unfortunately the ending falls a little flat. I think I came to expect much more from the climax.
Either way, I look forward to reading more by Nicky Drayden.
Wooo! I’m rushing to crush a couple more things into this blog event. Fingers crossed I can get them done in time. 😉
Next Sunday will be the last update for this blog event. March had a whopping 5 weeks in it and you guys really delivered!
Precinct1313 featured the Girl of Steel this week and DC’s expansion of diverse characters.
Leadballoony shared with the world his last banshee. Candy. You probably shouldn’t mess with her.
Mostly True Stories of K. Renae P. kept up her speedy posts and featured yet more women I’ve never heard of. Including, the first women to circumnavigate Earth disguised as a man in the French navy.
Imperial Rebel Ork created one of my new favorite villains, Corlina Rayne, the Wytch of Thorn Pass.
Last weekly update I forgot to link my own contributions so I’ll link them now including this week’s one book review:
Giant Days, Vol. 2 – Comic Review
The Fair Fight – Book Review
This quote from a famous lady has greatly contributed to my take-no-shit-from-anyone attitude since I was a teenager:
Published Date: August 28, 2014
Pages: 448
Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
DNF at page 166.
I did something I don’t usually do. When I could not decide early on, whether to continue, I went and read some reviews on the book. A good percentage of them said that Ruth’s chapters were the best. I was currently reading Ruth’s POV and was not impressed. As I was about to give in, I came upon a George chapter, it was a little more interesting. This lead me to try a chapter by Charlotte. Again, a bit more interesting. But ultimately, a little bit more interesting plus a little more interesting just didn’t equal keeping my attention.
This has been dubbed historical fiction meets Fight Club. I’m not sure that the marketing department has ever read Fight Club. Regardless, I can see where someone might enjoy this immensely. It just didn’t have the punch to keep me going.
Published Date: October 27, 2017
Publishing Co.: Viking
Pages: 341
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
If you want to follow the short road from liberated to disgusted, then this is your book. I don’t mean disgusted in the book, but where people take their power in the end.
The effects of war continue generations later in new, unimaginable ways. Thanks to chemical agents in the world wars that caused a genetic mutation, women have gained the ability to produce electricity from their fingertips. The balance of power shifts from women to men all over the world. Men were not ready for this possibility.
The liberating part; women escaping their oppressors. Women chained in basements in sex trafficking countries, killing and escaping their captors. Women turning the tables across the globe. A revolution among womankind.
The disgusting/disturbing part; how quickly women become the oppressors. I would really like to think that if women ran the world, it would be different, more compassionate. That’s what I would like to think but very well may not be the reality. In this book, that’s definitely not the case. Men become the controlled ones, needing a woman’s permission to do anything. Slaughtered and raped simply because they are men and no longer have the power.
This is definitely a powerful book, all puns intended. The women that we follow through this revolution all come from different backgrounds, all have different parts to play in the making of a new world. The one male prospective that we follow allows us to see the fear of a new world order, the losing of one’s rights.
While this is a fairly serious novel, there are plenty of parts with cheeky humor. The author pulls no punches when it comes to describing just how unbalanced the world is for women and displays beautifully I think, how quickly men fall a part and resort to violence when their power is threatened. People could definitely benefit from reading this book.
It’s only been half a week since March started but a girl has to start the weekly updates somewhere. It’s already been a joy to read the things people have started to post. This is going to be an interesting/informative/fun-tastic month.
I finally finished the massive epic fantasy I’d been working on for half a month and today officially started reading only female authors. The first book beginning this adventure is The Power by Naomi Alderman.
That’s enough about me, let’s jump into what other people have been doing this week!
Field Notes From Over the Hill started off with a trip she took with a good friend that resulted in them attending a Native American pow wow. She took pictures of the beautiful, strong women of the tribe.
Precinct1313 posted in The Week in Geek that Cheetah will be officially challenging Wonder Woman in the next movie and a glance at the new Tomb Raider trailer.
Man of Tin not only posted a lovely photo of his tin figure of Emmeline Pankhurst, but also historical facts about Women’s Right to Serve and their contributions in war.
Ignited Moth posted fan art and historical facts about the one, the only, Madame Marie Curie. There ain’t nothin’ hotter than female scientists.
Mostly True Stories of K. Renae P. posted not one, not two, but three biography sketches AND a trade book. This lady is not kidding when she says she’s an educator and she’s going to make the rest of us look lazy this month. 😉
Leadballoony posted this one day before Women’s History Month started but I’m including it because these are some bad ass female miniatures. (I’m really trying to work on the lingo for this stuff.)
I’ve also decided that each weekly update will be left off with wise words of advice from our foremothers.
I did not give myself the proper amount of time to prepare a comprehensive list of my favorite female authors but some spotlight is better than no spotlight! (As I write this the dogs are staring at me indicating that it is meal time human, but in fact I still have 15 minutes so let’s do this!)
Well the wolves are howling to be fed now (even though I finished this 5 minutes earlier than expected) so I should probably do something about that before I get bit. (Totally joking, they only bite when your fingers are covering too much of the biscuit you’re trying to hand them.)
Who are YOUR favorite female authors??
cupcakesandmachetes 