Persist, Resist: 7 Women in Sci-Fi & Fantasy Books Who Won’t Back Down. Ever.

God’s War, by Kameron Hurley
Nyxnissa so Dasheem is a Bel Dame, a licensed bounty hunter who cuts off heads on behalf of her government on the ravaged, war-torn colony world Umayma. She’s a veteran of the front lines in the planet’s never-ending Holy War. Her body has been destroyed and rebuilt so many times, she’s not even sure if she’s still human. And she has not an ounce of compassion for you or anyone else. Hurley’s brutal Bel Dame trilogy is filled with brittle, fascinating, alienating characters, none more so than Nyx, who is a self-destructive madwoman who cleaves to no principals other than her own self-interest, and God help you if you make the unfortunate decision to become her ally, because it’s probably not going to turn out well. She is perhaps the fiercest female character in all of genre fiction, unapologetically vicious, shaped into a monster by a remorseless society and a heartless world. Oh, and her most dangerous opponents tend to be her fellow Bel Dames, women enhanced with strange, bug-based tech that gives them powers akin to magic. You don’t want to be a dude on Umayma. (No one wants to be on Umayma.)

Koko Takes a Holiday, by Kieren Shea
The only other character on this list who might be able to take down Nyx in a brawl is Koko Martstellar, ex-government mercenary, now the owner of a hi-tech brothel on the lawless pleasure archipelago The Sixty Islands. She’s out of the game, dedicated to stretching out her days with drinking and whoring, until a former comrade targets her for assassination. Koko does not like this. Koko gets pissed. Koko is highly trained, cybernetically enhanced, and very, very angry. Shea’s gleefully, obscenely bloody debut features scene after scene of Koko taking revenge on her attackers in increasingly over-the-top battles that leave heads split and organs scattered.

Barrayar, by Lois McMaster Bujold
Being a badass isn’t all gun battles and beheadings (well, sometimes—spoilers!). Playing politics is also key. Cordelia Naismith is the only Betan on the colony world of the Barrayarans. Where the Betans favor liberal social policies and egalitarianism, the Barrayarans are feudal, warlike, and paternalistic. Which makes things awkward for Cordelia’s marriage to Count Aral Vorkosigan, prime minister of Barrayar. Cordelia manages to thrive in a society that counts her as less than a person, almost single-handedly putting a stop to a backwards revolt and giving no quarter when the life of her unborn child is threatened.

Caliban’s War, by James S.A. Corey
This second installment of the stellar space opera series The Expanse is by far my favorite, and it has mostly to do with two strong female characters: Bobbie Draper, an elite Martian Marine, and Chrisjen Avasarala, a bigwig in the future Earth’s United Nations. Where Bobbie is all muscle and anger (and guilt at having been the only one of her squad to survive a massacre by a twisted alien monster), Avasarala is cool and cunning (not to mention extremely foul-mouthed). The plot hinges on the disparate actions (and eventual unlikely alliance) of these two, who make series protagonist Captain James Holden look like the bumbling, idealistic dolt he pretty much is.

Up Against It, by M.J. Locke
Like Cordelia Nasmith, Jane Navio is political player who runs circles around those who oppose her. She is the resource manager on the asteroid colony Phoecea; her management of the floating rock’s meager resources and technology means life or death to its small population of miners and engineers. When a freak accident depletes the colony’s supply of water and results in the creation of a malevolent artificial intelligence, Navio must defy immense political pressure, not to mention threats on her life, to make sure that everyone she knows and cares about doesn’t wind up dead. She’s the smartest, toughest person in any room, and that’s a good thing, because things are about to go from bad to worse (did we mention the space pirates?).

The Quantum Thief, by Hannu Rajaniemi
Born in the Oort cloud, forged in the fires of Venus, Mieli is a warrior who sacrificed her humanity to a goddess in exchange for post-human technological upgrades that turned her into a one-woman arsenal on a mission of revenge. She’s got a fusion reactor in her thighbone, her body is studded with hidden weaponry, she can enter “combat autism” that allows her to slow down time and react to threats with lightning speed, she has freaking wings. Mieli can take out an entire room of mercenaries without breaking a sweat. Her ownly weakness is her incredible anger, and when you’ve got a fusion reactor in your thigh, that’s not much of a weakness at all.

Midnight Robber, by Nalo Hopkinson
When her father commits an unforgivable sin, Tan-Tan is banished along with him to the alien world of New Half-Way Tree, where the castoffs of a technologically advanced future Earth must eke out a primitive kind of survival among a strange alien race. Brutalized by her father, Tan-Tan kills him in self-defense, and flees into the forests, where she must contend with hardship, integrate herself into an alien society, and plan her revenge against those responsible for her situation. By the time she takes on the mantle of the Midnight Robber, a Robin Hood-like character who takes from the rich, Tan-Tan has hardened herself to the point she’s hardly recognizable. Hopkinson’s novel is a painful, ultimately triumphant look at the terrible reservoirs of strength it takes for an abused, controlled girl to emerge from the shadows of her past as her own strong, independent woman.