Action Heroine Fans discussion
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Currently reading a book with an action heroine?
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by
Mike (the Paladin)
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Aug 13, 2013 03:04PM

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Thank you!
Peace,







All of this is by way of preamble to the fact that the narrator here, Lockwood operative Lucy Joan Carlyle (who's about 15, just slightly younger than Katniss in the Hunger Games trilogy) is, unexpectedly, a pretty good teen version of an action heroine herself. She regularly faces supernatural menaces in life-threatening and physically challenging situations, where she needs guts, agility, speed and skill with a silver-tipped rapier to come out alive; and she's equal to the challenge.






The most obvious parallel for our lead character is of course Katniss, but I prefer Tris. She has that teenage girl insecurity, but it does not come across as whiny the way the hunger games books present their heroine.


Interestingly, I've never really seen Katniss as whiny (though so far I've only read the first two books of the trilogy). There's no question that Collins has her spend quite a bit of time describing horrible situations and her fears about them, and her feelings about things she's going through. But since she's a first-person narrator, we can't know about any of this unless we experience it through her eyes and voice; and it would be impossible for these kinds of circumstances not to bulk pretty large in the first person narrative of any person who's actually experiencing them. She actually does a better job of rolling with the punches than many teens would, IMO; but maybe that's just me.

Well, maybe I just didn't appreciate the teen girl POV - having never been one, and stuff. But I thought she was whiny. If it weren't for my adoration of Jennifer Lawrence, I would probably be done with Katniss.
Divergent has elements of Hunger Games (dystopia, action, etc), Harry Potter (the clan model feels like the Hogwarts houses on a macro scale), and some Starship Troopers (the training scenes).
It only takes a few hours to read it, even at 500 pages. (about the same as a couple of Hunger Games books). I'll get around to the other two books in the series when they come in stock from the library.



I'll have to see that the college library where I work gets the Divergent series. (Being in charge of book selection has its rewards. :-) )


No question book 3 is awful, and a large part of it is the way Katniss is used. Won't say anymore since we have a few folks here who have not read it.





Sounds like an action heroine to me.


Peace,





Good action. Some creepy gore. I got a little tired of our heroine always feeling the need to prove herself in combat with everyone she meets. I also wish she would have shut up about "no one would call me beautiful", when men are throwing themselves at her feet left and right. It smacks of false modesty.
And the fact that she's apparently ridiculously powerful seems a little too easy. Even Anita Blake didn't start piling on the sudden convenient powers for half a dozen books.


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