I considered calling this post “7 Science Fiction and Fantasy Books for Normal People”, as it’s kind of the same, but I’m hoping that having “feminism” in the title will get me a huge amount of clicks! If you’re a long-time reader of SF&F, you know how relentlessly patriarchal the bestseller lists can be. The situation has improved in recent years, but I don’t think female exceptionalism (you know, there is this one girl who happens to be totally different and has this awesome power and kicks butt, but she’s still somehow the only female in the book) is the way to go, at least not every single fgging time. But instead of ranting, I’m going to be constructive and recommend books that people with feminist sensibilities can safely read.

1. The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood. Let’s get the classics out of the way first. I was considering not including this, as it’s such an obvious choice, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to write this list without The Handmaid. Any conversation about the role of women in science fiction (or speculative fiction, as Atwood prefers), is so much poorer without this book. It’s also one of the best novels out there about a totalitarian regime: I personally prefer it to the other two iconic dystopian masterworks, 1984 and Brave New World. This being Atwood, there is more wisdom and style in every single sentence than I manage to display in a month. The science fiction aspect here is almost irrelevant – it takes place in the future and that’s about it -, so I’ve found that most SF-phobes can read it, too.

2. The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin. Another classic, another book I just couldn’t leave out. “The King was pregnant” is one of the best opening sentences in the history of mankind and probably also the sentence that has influenced my thinking on gender more than any other sentence, ever. My poor inflexible brain tried so hard to imagine people who weren’t male nor female that it almost exploded. It is a slim but powerful volume, beautifully written and deeply thought. Everyone should read it when they are 18, but better late than never.

3. The Imperial Radch novels by Ann Leckie. Among the many other good things that reading TLHoD will do to you, it’ll also prepare you for reading Ann Leckie. Because you see, in the Radch Empire, the citizens are not distinguished in terms of gender. You will spend a sizeable amount of both books, Ancillary Justice and Ancillary Sword, trying to figure out who’s male and who’s female and then getting angry at yourself, because why should it matter so much? The first book is more of an epic space opera, the second a novel of diplomacy, in a way. Both are very good.

4. City of Stairs by Robert Jackson Bennett. I have recommended this book so many times now that I feel a bit silly, but I cannot help it – it IS one of the best fantasy novels of recent years. It doesn’t tackle any feminist issues per se, but it does something that is at least equally important: it puts female characters front and center and treats them with respect. If you are interested, you can read my full review here.

5. The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson. Sanderson is another man who writes women well. He is also on the record saying that this is something he thinks about and consciously tries to get right (see the foreword for Shadows for Silence for some insightful comments on how to define a dangerous woman). The Emperor’s Soul is one of Sanderson’s smaller works, but it’s my favourite. It’s a story about a young woman, commissioned to forge the Emperor’s soul. In addition to being a wonderful story, it’s remarkable for the lack of any romance, while including an interesting, meaningful relationship between a man and a woman.

6. The Element of Fire by Martha Wells. The Element of Fire is a swashbuckling fantasy set in a time and place resembling European Renaissance, but with bad fairies. You know how they say that women are great at describing the domestic and the internal, but they are simply not capable of writing believable action? This book is all the counter-argument you need. Wells also makes it clear that women over 30 do in fact not turn invisible and some of them actually have sex. This point is even clearer in her Wheel of the Infinite, one of the few fantasy books I know with an older woman as the protagonist. I highly recommend that one as well. In fact, I highly recommend all her books.

7. Rituals by Roz Kaveney. Jo Walton, whose opinions on reading I revere almost like no-one else’s, calls this one “Adorable Blasphemy” and it is, indeed. If you get offended when religion is treated irreverently, I suggest not reading this. It is also a proper LGBT-fest, with a central lesbian relationship and, somewhat less predictably, a gang of “skateboarding art snob biker drag queen muggers” (see Walton’s review for more details). Of all my picks, this is clearly the least mainstream, but it’s also something that the genre desperately needs. If you’re open to different gender identities and ways of being in the world, do give it a try. I absolutely love it.