Last year, young adult fantasy author Tamora Pierce’s books got a new look. New covers, specifically, were created, and broad praise for her work was given from today’s up-and-coming female fantasy authors.

Leigh Bardugo, of Grisha trilogy fame, wrote of Pierce’s first and most famous series, The Song of the Lioness quartet: “Tamora Pierce didn’t just blaze a trail. Her heroines cut a swath through the fantasy world with wit, strength, and savvy. Her stories still lead the vanguard today. Pierce is the real lioness, and we’re all just running to keep pace.”

Lioness was originally conceived as one novel for adults, but Pierce was convinced to split it into four novels for young adults instead. The first book in Lioness was published in 1983, titled Alanna: The First Adventure. This series is often mentioned by both female authors and readers as the series that revitalized female fantasy. So, 30 or so years on, how is female-written fantasy holding up?

The Song of the Lioness follows Alanna of Trebond, a young girl living in a patriarchal fantasy kingdom where noble girls are normally sent to the convent to learn to become ladies. Alanna, however, has other ideas. Having never wanted to be a lady, and knowing her twin brother Thom would rather learn to be a sorcerer instead of a knight like their father wants, she arranges for them to switch places: Thom, originally meant to go to the capitol, will instead go to the City of the Gods to become a sorcerer, while Alanna will become “Alan” and learn to be a knight.

The series touches upon issues of inequality, feminism, bullying, and gender, to name a few.

For example, as “Alan,” Alanna fights bullies and continually practices one of her weakest skills (sword fighting) with her non-dominant hand, partly to prove she can, and partly to prove that girls, in general, can do boys’ work just as well. As the series goes on, Alanna also begins to wear dresses, showing that her desire to be a knight didn’t change her gender. Pierce’s subsequent series, set in two different fantasy universes, also advocate the necessity of strong female and male characters, as well as the perils of inequality in its various forms.

When most people think of the fantasy genre, two names immediately jump to mind: J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. Tolkien, due to the popularity of The Lord of the Rings, is considered the father of modern high fantasy, while Lewis is well-beloved for his children’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. While both authors’ fame is deserved, neither of them were particularly nuanced in how they dealt with female characters.

Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit has no women characters with significant page time, for instance. Susan Pevensie, from Lewis’ series, is excluded from Narnia in the final novel; the alleged reasons as to why are, however, controversial. Popular authors in the emergence of modern fantasy generally treated female characters more carefully than later writers.

Female-written fantasy slowly became more female-centric as time passed:

Vivian Van Velde

Vivian Van Velde, who has been writing speculative fiction for children and young adults since the 1980s, divides her characters and narrators between girls and boys. Her 2002 novel Heir Apparent is a science-fiction and fantasy mix, as a 14-year-old girl enters a total immersion virtual reality fantasy video game, playing her way to becoming king of the land. She must think on her feet and make informed decisions that will affect an entire kingdom of people.

Diana Wynne Jones

Diana Wynne Jones’ Howl’s Moving Castle series, begun in 1986, pitches a strong-willed young woman against a wizard as they work to combat curses.

Megan Whalen Turner

Megan Whalen Turner is known for her Queen’s Thief series, which began in 1996. It primarily focuses on the titular thief, Eugenides, but also dwells on his complex relationship with the beautiful but powerful Queen of Attolia.

Alison Croggon

Alison Croggon’s Books of Pellinor, published starting in 2001, take on the Chosen One trope with the main character, Maerad, and features powerful male and female characters throughout Maerad’s travels. Croggon also touches upon the horrors of war and illness, and the paranoia that both can bring.

Though a much longer list exists elsewhere, it is obvious that female-written fantasy definitively made room for female-led stories as years went by.

Now, the young adult genre is exploding with diverse novels, particularly with the recent campaign urging minority authors to write down their own stories: #OwnVoices. Current authors are dipping into their cultures to tell new stories, ones that aren’t simply rooted in European-centric worlds.

Leigh Bardugo’s Grisha series is primarily set in a fantasy version of Russia, and the sequel series Six of Crows starts in a version of the Dutch Republic, before moving to Scandinavia. Both series enforce the theme of strong male and female characters. They also touch upon the issue of immigrants, as well as the drug crisis. Laini Taylor also features strong male and female characters in her Strange the Dreamer duology, which, set in a Middle-Eastern-esque world, focuses on a librarian and a goddess discovering a lost city.

Recent fantasy has dealt with the emergence of strong female characters. One element is the passage of time from when Tolkien and Lewis were writing, but the history of the women’s rights movement is surely also a factor.

Now, women are leaders, politicians, doctors, warriors, lawyers, and architects, as well as housewives. Why wouldn’t we want to see that reflected in our literature for young adults? Female-led narratives also deal with themes that male narratives occasionally don’t, such as inequality, sexism, and bullying. When the female characters in question are minorities, this multiplies tenfold. For example, the main characters in Natasha Ngan’s Girls of Paper and Fire must put up with sexism, racism, and threats of rape, particularly since they are concubines in their world, there for a man’s pleasure.

If Tamora Pierce didn’t begin the female-led fantasy genre, she certainly embraced it, and engineered its success for future decades. Her novels discuss gender, racism, sexism, bullying, class struggle, and feminism. Her heroines’ struggles provide mirrors to our own. Alanna, as well as other heroines, showed that women could be warriors, too.