Martha Wells recently became one of my favorite authors. She has been publishing books for the past 30 years, mostly covering fantasy and sci-fi, but I didn’t hear about her until the more recent success of Murderbot Diaries.

The Murderbot Diaries started as a series of novellas that follow a self-aware SecUnit (android) on a series of exciting adventures, which generally involve him saving the humans he is responsible for. What I found so loveable about this series is the protagonist’s attitude. I don’t easily empathize with robots, however, self-identifying “Murderbot” is one of the most human characters I have ever lover in a book. Period.

His habits reflect those of someone on the autism spectrum, which makes him increidbly relatable. He likes to believe that he doesn’t have feelings to the point of always calling his friends “associates”. But as any good character, his actions betray him and turn him into an incredibly lovable hero. (The fact that he is a snarky, sarcastic, computer-hacker is also right up my alley.)

The protagonist is reasosn enough for everyone to read and enjoy the series, but the novella style also makes it increidbly approachable. I occassionally have difficulty making time to sit down and read a book, but the shorter lengths deliver just as good a story.

I also have high hopes for the novella format. I have a few of my own that I would like to see published eventually, though I’ve always been concerned that the format wasn’t “traditional” enough for mainstream consumption. Now I have something to inspire me.

The Fall of Ile-Rien is an early 2000s fantasy series that continues the stories that Wells began in 1993. The series follows Tremaine Valiarde through a world-hopping adventure between urban and high fantasy. Tremaine has become one of my favorite female fantasy protagonists of all time. She is brave, intelligent, and self-less in a way that often presents as murderous, sarcastic, and suicidal. Wells does an excellent job of presenting how a character’s strengths can also be their weaknesses. And the rest of the story is good too.

Martha Wells is an inspiration to me because of her incredibly relatable protagonists and her genre-hopping publications. I look forward to reading more of her stories as they release and with following in her footsteps of publishing both fantasy and sci-fi.

Who are your favorite literary protagonists?