princesselwen

 So this is a sequel to the last post, with some more great heroines:
Orual--"Till We Have Faces," by C. S. Lewis. Ever since I read this book, I've found its heroine fascinating, because she's so very different from so many others I've read about. She's sympathetic, yet deeply flawed; very unattractive; successfully holds a man's role in a male-dominated society (including fighting in battle); and her main story arc is her relationship with her younger half-sister (Psyche--the story is a Cupid and Psyche retelling) and not a romance. This story is also an example of how to reinterpret a villainous character from a legend as sympathetic without excusing the bad things they did.
Daylily and Imraldera--Tales of Goldstone Wood. A Christian fantasy series that sadly didn't sell well enough to get more than seven books, but I wanted to mention it because of how fascinating one of its characters is. Daylily is initially introduced as a classic 'Other Girl' rival to the heroine Rose. She's a stunningly beautiful noblewoman who is supposed to marry the prince, Lionheart, and does treat Rose badly at a couple of important points in the story. However, when she gets her own POV in book 6, she becomes a much more fleshed out character, and ends up a heroine in her own right, (after tumbling through a portal to the past. getting drawn into a fairy's dance, getting mindcontrolled by a cult, and finally saving her fiance in mental combat.)
I mainly brought up Imraldera (who has plenty of awesome moments of her own, like her willingness to sacrifice for her little sister, and her bargain with a fairy queen) because she's a nice, friendly, compassionate character without being a pushover.
Addie and Meryl--"The Two Princesses of Bamarre," Gail Carson Levine. This fairytale is enjoyable because of the way it flips tropes--Meryl wants adventures, Addie doesn't--and yet it ends up being Addie who has to go a quest to save Meryl. Addie gets a great character arc where she learns to be brave. There's also a romance with a charming young sorcerer, and a decidedly snarky dragon (sort of like a female Smaug).

Sutcliff recommendation.
The Mark of the Horse Lord.
TW for suicide. highlight to read.

An ex-gladiator is brought in as a substitute for a blinded Scottish chieftain, and battles an evil Pictish queen who has some traits in common with Viviane. (She's the head of a matriarchal earth-goddess-worshipping religion, and she has a thing for incest, given that she tries to marry her own nephew.) This story has a lot of focus on the religious conflict between the earth-goddess worshippers and the sky-god ones, but neither side is presented as all bad or all good. Its a lot more complicated than that. The protagonist also has an interesting romance with the villainess' daughter (who actually turns out to be nice), which is more developed than the romances in some of Sutcliff's other books. But the reason I stuck this behind a spoiler tag comes with the theme of the sacrificial king, which gets developed throughout the novel--the idea that the king choosing to die for the people protects them. At the end, the protagonist gets captured by the Romans, and can only be ransomed by the tribe's young men joining the Roman Legions and getting sent abroad (which would cripple a tribe that has already lost many of them in the recent war). So rather than stay in captivity, which he doesn't want because he grew up in slavery, or purchase his freedom at the cost of his tribe, he chooses to kill himself so his death will protect the people. (He does have a potential heir because his wife is pregnant at the time.) And that's where the book ends. Its a good book, but I understand why some readers wouldn't want to read it.