We’re delighted to announce Werner Lind is joining the site as a contributor, with a special responsibility for covering fictional action heroines. His first review is already up, and here he is to tell us a bit about himself and his background.
Hi, fellow action heroine fans! My name is Werner Lind, and Jim recently invited me to contribute some book reviews, from time to time, to this site. I’m a librarian (great job for a book lover!), and an avid reader ever since I was six. While I read in quite a few genres, I have a special fondness for strong, brave kick-butt heroines, who fight for justice and the underdog. (And I can get interested in the occasional action-style villainess, too, especially if her character is somewhat nuanced. Of course, just because a lady happens to be on the wrong side of the law doesn’t always mean she’s a villainess, either.) Over on the reading-oriented social network Goodreads, I’m the founding moderator of the Action Heroine Fans group and current moderator of the Girls and Guns group. You can access my Goodreads author page. (The heroine of my vampire novel Lifeblood isn’t exactly an action heroine in the mold of some of those represented on this site –but she does have vampire strength, and she can handle herself very well in a fight!) I also review books on Goodreads, but the ones here will be second (and so more polished) drafts of those.
Jim suggested that I tell you a bit about myself. My wife is the kind of lady in real life that I admire in books; she grew up handling guns for hunting, and bagged her first deer at the age of 11. We have three grown-up daughters (the oldest has a green belt in karate), and four grandkids who keep us busy. Like a lot of guys my age, I grew up having a crush on Emma Peel of The Avengers and the ladies of Charlie’s Angels; and of course, what moviegoer in the 70s wasn’t a fan of Princess Leia in Star Wars? Some of my other favorite action heroine films are both of the Tomb Raider movies, Red Sonja, Bad Girls, and Bandidas. (As for my favorite action heroine books –well, you’ll see those from my reviews.) If you’d like to talk about fighting females in fiction, drama, and real life, join Jim and the rest of us over on the Girls and Guns Forum (“putting the ‘bullet’ in bulletin board” ); we’d love to hear from you!
A quick word about my rating scales! For overall ratings, I use the same scale that Goodreads does. One star would mean I didn’t like a book, and two that it was just “okay.” Three stars means I liked it and four stars that I really liked it, while five stars says that it’s “amazing.” The “kick-butt quotient” for heroines here is my own scale, as follows:
- One star –Heroine can fight (or maybe meet other physical challenges), but doesn’t kill.
- Two stars –Heroine uses lethal force sparingly, and may be conflicted about it.
- Three stars –Heroine uses lethal force occasionally when needed, and takes the necessity in stride.
- Four stars – Heroine kills quite a few people (or she’s a villainess who doesn’t mind killing good guys and innocents).
- Five stars –Heroine counts her kills in the dozens (or more), and can basically wipe out small armies.