Blogocentric Formulations

Three Things #3: Book Characters

I'm piggybacking on Tornado Dodger 's prompt for blog posts about "three things" in a variety of categories. I'm not sure if this is going to be a daily thing, a "post them all this weekend" thing, or a "whenever I get around to it" kind of thing, but I'm committed to blogging about everything on her list. For reference, the categories are:

Theme: Three Things
Three things you can’t go without.
Three celebrity crushes.
Three favorite book characters.
If you had to evacuate your home because of a natural disaster, what three things would you take with you?
Three pet peeves.
Three things you’d do if you weren’t so afraid.
Three favorite TV shows.

I might as well take these in descending order, so here are my three favorite book characters.


Sand dan Glokta. Joe Abercrombie writes pretty great, gritty hard/low fantasy and his First Law trilogy is certainly no exception. In a series full of memorable characters, there are perhaps none more memorable than Sand dan Glokta, a former handsome, talented swordsman turned twisted inquisitor after capture and years of torture by a rival nation. Abercrombie spends a large amount of time featuring Glokta's external struggles with being a cripple, as well as his internal struggles to come to terms with the fact that he's a broken shade of his former self. As a reader, you vacillate between loving and hating him, admiring and pitying him, rooting for and against him. He's scathingly funny and one of the most original characters I've read before or since.


Lisbeth Salander. She's one of the strongest and most vivid female characters in recent memory. I love the fact that she's both extraordinarily talented and broken, that she's introverted and very possibly has mental health issues, but also has a distinct moral code and isn't at all afraid to act on it when it's in defense of others. What I love most about this character is that she doesn't fit neatly into any one box. You dislike or disagree with her choices as much as you like and agree with them, she could just as easily need your help as be the one helping you... she's a paradox and one that's truly fascinating to get to know over the course of the Millennium series.


Aech. If you haven't read the book or seen the movie for Ready Player One yet and plan to, don't read any further. There be spoilers ahead! I absolutely loved this book (and the movie) from beginning to end, and a big part of it was the way it just kept constantly surprising me with unexpected twists and turns. Whether it was the nuances of the challenges, or the inventiveness with which Ernest Cline managed to combine so many pop culture references, this book was a revelation when I read it. And one of the biggest in-story revelations was discovering that, unlike many of the other characters who have OASIS avatars that are vaguely reminiscent of the players' actual selves, athletic, macho, straight male avatar of Aech is actually played by an African American lesbian named Helen Harris. It was a shocking moment in the book, and the way that Cline handled it (her reticence and fear about revealing the truth, and Wade's acceptance of who she actually is) had a lot of emotional resonance that really made this more than a fun sci-fi romp.