I’ve been realizing a lot of the media I consume is primarily about men or maybe divided 50-50 between male and female casts and often stories about women still heavily feature men as say romantic interests or bosses or something else
I don’t particularly want stories about womanhood or Living with Misogyny Stories TM but rather stories akin to a gender reversed Lord of the Rings where the story just happens to be about women with maybe men on the sidelines
So like the women can have love interests or other men in their lives but they can’t be the driving force of the story. So like it can’t be a heterosexual romance-focused novel
I’m open to lesbian romances, I view trans women as women, and don’t mind heavily featured nonbinary characters.
Can be comedies, scifi, horror. Any genre.
It just needs minimal focus on men.
by particledamage
25 Comments
Outlawed by Anna North
I Who Have Never Known Men (an obvious one) by Jaqueline Harpman
A Woman of Pleasure by Kiyoko Murata
Perfume and Pain
Butter (Yuzuki)
La before the earthquake, the Rachel incident, big Swiss
* Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield (also Private Rites by the same author, but I did not enjoy it as much)
* I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
* Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
* The Empress of Salt and Fortune by Nghi Vo (there are more men in this than my other recommendations, including some hetero partnering, but it’s a queer story about a woman told by another woman to a nonbinary monk)
Anything by Kate Quinn if you want to try historical fiction
*The Stars Are Legion* by Kameron Hurley. Science Fantasy. Meatplanets, revenge, amnesia, monsters, body horror. Not a single man in this world. Delightfully weird and a very fun read.
We Ride Upon Sticks by Quan Barry
Julie Chan is Dead by Liann Zhang
Sisters of the Vast Black by Lina Rather
I who have never known men.
I Who Have Never Known Men
Do you read women’s fiction? It’s one of my favorite genres. Women-centric stories, often about sister or mother or daughter relationships taking center stage. Kate Hewitt is one author I really like.
The Ambrai books by Melanie Rawn. There are men, but it’s a beautifully crafted matrilineal society. She thought of everything. To the point where rich old ladies marry strapping young men and weld gold chains around their waists so they can’t get fat.
The Water Outlaws by SL Huang. Almost all the characters are women.
Fire Logic and the rest of the Elemental Logic series by Laurie Marks. Most of the major characters are women. Lots of queer rep.
The Alpennia series by Heather Rose Jones. All the major characters are women and all the books are WLW romances with lots of politics and magic.
It’s a series and not a single book, but The Locked Tomb fits pretty much all your criteria I think. A lot of women and girls, especially in the first book before more secondaey characters get introduced. A wide variety of character traits, written by a woman. Science-fantasy, very fun and well-written, very creative worldbuilding. It’s long but a page-turner. You might need to come back and reread for full understanding tho, especially while waiting for the fourth and final volume.
Daughters of the North by Sarah Hall
If you do comics, you might want to try *Monstress* by Marjorie Liu and Sana Takeda: there’s no horrific gender-based oppression, but characters will just be “typically” female rather than being “typically” male. However, it’s [a very gory comic](https://np.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/comments/jx6g7e/fif_book_club_monstress_by_marjorie_liu_and_sana/gcwingy/) with many *other* forms of horrific oppression, so it’s not for everyone!
*Joy Luck Club* by Amy Tan
*Mildred Pierce* by James M Cain
*Funny Girl* by Nick Hornby
*Prophet Song* by Paul Lynch
*Turtles All The Way Down* by John Green
Cat’s Eye by Margaret Atwood (tons of Atwood falls into this category)
Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver
I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson
The once and future witches
The Space Between Worlds, by Micaiah Johnson (a woman). It’s a female-centered multiverse thriller.
Honestly Cop Town by Karin Slaughter was such a great police procedural following 2 female cops in Atlanta during the mid-70s.
*A Brother’s Price*, by Wen Spencer, which asks the question: what would society be like if less than 5% of all babies were male?
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/544240.A_Brother_s_Price](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/544240.A_Brother_s_Price)
Well if you want to go non fiction, Eve by Cat Bohannon
Witches and Tiffany Aching books by Terry Pratchett. Tombs of Atuan by Ursala K LeGuin….Left Hand of Darkness is a story about… gender fluid aliens. Also by LeGuin.