Writer's Grove
Go get the male
So, I did an interview thingie last week where I had to differentiate my UF hero, Atticus O’Sullivan, from other UF heroes. The key to the question was the word heroes, not heroines. There are considerably fewer UF heroes on the shelves than there are UF heroines, and if you’re talking about UF heroes written by males, the list gets even smaller.
Aside from being the only Druid lead in UF, Atticus is quite different from other heroes—but I don’t want to re-answer the question right now, especially since the interview hasn’t been published yet. Instead, I’d like to talk about what happened to my brain. Under the intense pressure of the question (GAH! 5 jillion foot-pounds o’ PRESSURE!) I could only think of three male protagonists written by males. I knew there were more—really good ones too!—but only three came to mind. Perhaps that’s my mental max. Here are the ones I didn’t think of at the time but SHOULD have: Harry Connolly’s Ray Lilly, Mike Carey’s Felix Castor, and Jon Levitt’s Mason. (And I know there are more out there but I haven’t read them yet.) The ones I did list were Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden, Ben Aaronovitch’s Peter Grant, and Anton Strout’s Simon Canderous. Everybody’s heard of the first guy. I’d just gotten finished reading Midnight Riot by Aaronovitch, so it’s no wonder I thought of him (good book!). But as I was twitching out my last muscle spasms from the adrenaline high born of INTENSE PRESSURE, I got to thinking how Simon Canderous stuck in my head. I found Dead to Me, the first book in his series while browsing in the bookstore (“Oh, cool!” I said. “There’s actually another dude hanging out here!”) and since I was all caught up on my Butcher and looking for something different, I bought it. Turned out to be quite entertaining—Strout is fond of puns, which makes me fond of him, and Simon Canderous has a really interesting magical power (Psychometry!) with some complicating side effects in his personal life. I found myself smiling as I read it and occasionally laughing out loud. I love it when I run across good reads like that. But why did I have to find this guy by accident?
A bit later on, I got myself invited into the august body of authors known as The League of Reluctant Adults and discovered that Anton Strout was a founding member. This confirmed my strong suspicion that he is cooler than me (but I suspect that of nearly everyone). Indisputably, though, he has a gigantic pair of titanium balls because he is the Sworn Mortal Enemy of Patrick Rothfuss. I mean, if you have THAT on your resume, there’s simply no way people can doubt the capaciousness of your sack. He even survived a concerted effort by Rothfuss to have him assassinated through the powerful medium of fortune cookie suggestion! Behold:
I have since traded some amusing emails with Anton and read more of his books—I just got finished with my sneak peek of his latest, Dead Waters (out February 22).
He continues to entertain and poke fun at urban fantasy tropes, and Simon Canderous deserves to be among the top male protagonists in urban fantasy. He is among the top in my mind, clearly. If you’ve never tried him out, there are four Simon Canderous novels to choose from: Dead to Me, Deader Still, Dead Matter, and the above Dead Waters. Time to go get the male!
If you’d recommend any other male protagonists in UF, please do in the comments! Might as well swell the TBR pile!
