Favorite character from books I’ve read recently (not counting re-reads)? Um. As Rachel says above, this is something very subject to change depending on the day, the phase of the moon, what I had for lunch today…yeah. Heck, some of this varies because I’m only now catching up on certain books; I hadn’t ever read the Vorkosigan series until a couple of years ago, and now I want to build a shrine to Cordelia.
However, I’m going to go with Tiffany Aching, from Terry Pratchett’s The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, and Wintersmith. Tiffany’s just starting out as a witch and has to deal with stolen (borrowed!) sheep, missing baron’s sons, small blue drunken fighting pictsies, and incursions from Fairyland — but to sum it up like that ignores so much of the elements that make the books wonderful. She’s clear-eyed, intelligent, strong-willed — and stubborn, very sure of her own intelligence, and capable of making huge mistakes. And she’s growing up, through the course of the books. I love reading about her, wincing when I recognize some part of my history in hers (using big words despite not knowing how to pronounce them? check) and cheering for her as she learns the hardest parts — not of magic, which is comparatively easy, but of living in the world and caring for it.
(It probably says something about me that one of my all-time favorite characters is Granny Weatherwax.)
Granny and Rincewind are two of my all-time favorite characters. Rincewind takes every convention of the word ‘hero’ and bends it into a nice pretzle…then tosses it on the ground and stomps on it. Hmmm…pretzles….
Oh…and DEATH. How can one NOT love a man who likes cats?
I’m just now halfway through Wee Free Men and was already planning to pick Tiffany for my post before I saw yours. I knew about A Hat Full of Sky, but I didn’t know Wintersmith was another Tiffany book. Yay!
Rincewind amuses me, but I don’t connect with him nearly as much. Not sure why. And DEATH, well, DEATH is DEATH.
Wintersmith is fantastic. Hope you like it!