Five Book Series Where Women Wield the Power by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

Women and the supernatural powers they wield play a central role in my Wings Rising duology, the second book of which, Wings Unfurled (Meerkat Press), releases on December 6. Two of series’ main point-of-view characters are women, and Wings Unfurled adds a third female perspective, someone who must reclaim her strength by book’s end.  

I’m as guilty as the next author of falling back on recommendations from the SFF canon when asked to list favorites. But when I think about series in which women’s’ might plays a central role in a narrative, the classics simply fall short of more modern storytelling. These five series have all been published over the past 15 years, and they feature women who learn how powerful they are, both magically and at their cores.

1. Binti: The Complete Trilogy by Nnendi Okorafor

This series of novellas is now available as an omnibus collection. The story reads as science fiction, but as it goes along, Binti realizes that her harmonizing, a way of performing quick calculations, extends beyond mathematics and into metaphysics, reshaping her culture and the universe.

2. Redwood and Wildfire duology by Andrea Hairston

This alternate, magical history of 1890s America weds a love for performance with the rising, rage-fueled hoodoo magic of Redwood Phipps. Tragedy makes it clear that she’s outgrown her small Georgia town, and she leaves her mark on it as she escapes. I haven’t read its sequel yet, 2022’s Will Do Magic for Small Change, which follows the grandchild of the main characters.

3. The Devil’s West trilogy by Laura Anne Gilman

In Book 1 of this Weird West series, Silver on the Road, Isobel is named the Devil’s Left Hand. She has much to learn about what her new office means, and the new powers afforded to her. Each new discovery, as she travels the Territory, makes the vein of magic run deeper in the land, in Isobel, and in the reader’s interest.

4. The Legacy of the Heavens trilogy by Tina LeCount Myers

Among its multiple characters, Myers’ series follows the fate of Dárja, an immortal woman raised in a world of men and their wars and political machinations. As the series progresses, she must learn to unleash her true self and new states of being with little guidance and support…but with great Nordic influences in the worldbuilding.

5. The Spirit Binders trilogy by Alaya Dawn Johnson

I must warn you now that this trilogy remains unfinished since the publication of Book 2, The Burning City, in 2010. Johnson throws expectation-defying curveballs along with fireballs that make it hard to anticipate what would have happened in the third book. Regardless, the journey of young jewel-diver Lana as she learns her heritage and how to channel her immense power makes the first two books well worth the read.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rebecca Gomez Farrell refuses to say “Bloody Mary” three times into a mirror, though she’ll write stories about the people who do. She lives in California’s East Bay with her tech wizard husband and two feline co-workers. Her epic fantasy duology, which includes Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, is published by Meerkat Press. Becca’s shorter works have appeared over thirty times in magazines, websites, and anthologies including Beneath Ceaseless Skies, It Calls From the Sky, PULP Literature, and A Quiet Afternoon 1 & 2.

Becca is the communications director for the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (SFWA). She helms a local chapter of the national Women Who Submit Lit organization, which encourages all writers who identify as women and/or nonbinary to submit their work out for publication. She also co-organizes the East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup Group and administers several discussion groups for women, nonbinary, and Bay Area writers.

Over the past decade and a half, her food, drink, and travel blog, theGourmez.com, has influenced every tasty bite of her fictional worldbuilding. Her replicator order is “Absinthe verte, one cube.”

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WINGS UNFURLED by Rebecca Gomez Farrell

BOOK 2 of the WINGS RISING duology

RELEASE DATE: December 6, 2022

GENRE: Epic Fantasy

BOOK PAGE: Wings Unfurled – Meerkat Press

SUMMARY:

The vicious claren that used to plague the reunited countries of Medua and Lansera are long gone. So what are the new dark patches appearing in Lady Serra’s second sight? She rushes to King Albrecht to report the danger, only to discover that he’s ailing and Vesperi, Prince Janto’s wife, has fled far to the north to grieve her disappeared daughter. Vesperi still wields the silver flame, possesses all the authority she’s ever wanted, but nothing can heal the wound of a missing child.

When the silver moon Esye begins to fade, a gnawing fear preys on her for the first time since she escaped her father’s cold rule. Ominous creatures once thought mythical are now rampaging through the countryside. Janto sends Serra to investigate. But without her friendship and Vesperi’s love, he fears he cannot slay this challenge. He failed to find his own daughter, after all. To save the Lanserim, the legendary bird with three heads must fly again. Will Janto, Vesperi, and Serra find the strength to raise it? Or will this menace, with the might to drain a moon, devour them first?

BUY LINKS: Meerkat Press | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

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