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All the recent book threads have got me thinking about some of my favourite characters in fiction. I thought it would be a good topic given the other threads.
I’ll start with a few off the top of my head.
Dave Robicheaux - I love James Lee Burke’s writing style and Robicheaux grows to be a great, complex character throughout the books he’s in.
Logen Ninefingers/The Bloody Nine - Really enjoyed this character from Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series. The fact you never really find out what makes him the way he is just makes him more interesting. He’s the best character in Red Country too.
Odysseus - Pretty self explanatory. Just such a great character. Got to love and root for someone who goes through the wringer.
Roland Deschain - Dark Tower series. Flawed character, utterly driven by his mission and more or less broken. Can’t help liking him in spite of it.
Hap & Leonard - From the Joe R Lansdale series. Just a great comedy duo
Who are some of your favourites and why?
Ron Weasley. ****ing useless but manages to hide that from everyone. He's my idol.
Totally un-PC (perhaps why I enjoy him so much), but Flashman from the eponymous George MacDonald Fraser books is fantastic.
His cowardice and bluster are winning traits from a reader's perspective.
He's also racist, misogynistic and a bully, so I really shouldn't enjoy reading about him. But I do.
A sort of pub landlord of the Victorian times.
An extract from his Wikipedia entry, but don't let it put you off 😉
Flashman, an insatiable lecher, has sex with many different women over the course of his fictional adventures. His size, good looks, winning manner, and especially his splendid cavalry-style whiskers win over many women, from low to high, including many famous women, and frequent encounters with prostitutes.
In fairness, he's far more complex than that, and his tales of giving in to his fear and moral fragility are epic.
Jeeves/Wooster + company
Thomas Newton of The Man Who Fell to Earth fame, a gifted but naïve alien here to do important stuff but who ends up falling into a hedonistic lifestyle that consumes him and leaves his noble mission tragically unaccomplished.
Spike and Abu from now quite unfashionable Tom Robbins' Skinny Legs and All, both somewhat enlightened and flawed characters who strive to provide middle eastern food and culture in a restaurant opposite the United Nations building.
Jernau Gurgeh, of Iain M Banks' Culture novel The Player of Games. A dedicated boardgamer, initially betrayed by his moral failure in cheating to win a game against a child prodigy, which is leveraged against him by a sociopathic robot who deploys Gurgeh as an unwitting pawn in a series of games where the stakes amount to the very existence of a rogue empire.
Pretty much every character who ends up the subject of mockery in Tom Sharpe's novels - Kommandant van Heerden, Konstabel Els, Gerald Glodstone, Peter Piper et al.
Ford Prefect.
Steven Stelfox from Kill Your Friends/Kill 'Em All
'a ruthlessly ambitious A&R man literally prepared to kill his closest friends to succeed.
He's totally politically incorrect. A psychopathic, racist, sexist, cocaine-snorting, hooker-shagging, homophobic snob who hates everyone and will happily kill them if they get in his way
Apparently largely based on Simon Cowell
I challenge anyone to read those books and not end up actually really liking him, despite knowing that you shouldn't
Another Iain M Bankes suggestion:
Cheradenine Zakalwe
Properly messed up person but he gets the job done. Possibly the only human to defeat a culture Knife Missle which is quite impressive in a geeky way.
Elric of Melnibone
The Marquis de Carabas (Neverwhere)
Any of the Nac mac Feegle. Daft Wullie in particular.
Crivens.
Elizabeth Bennet - intelligent, sincere, and:
'... for she had a lively, playful disposition, which delighted in anything ridiculous.'
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice.
MrCroup and Mr Vandemar, the old firm. from neverwhere. just fantastically evil.
Mr Wednesday, because not all gods are nice.
gandalf, my fave wizard
Yossarian. Because we all feel like him at times
Desperate Dan. You always know where you are with a guy like that.
More Culture novel goodness:
Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints - A psychopathic warship describing itself as "borderline eccentric and very slightly psychotic". It embraces it's heritage as a killing machine unlike a lot of other warships. I just love how gleeful it was when it replayed the space battle back to Lededje.
Bartholomew Bandy.
I read the first three novels as a teenager, A misfit with a face like a horse... gave me some encouragement and made me laugh. Historically fairl accurate as well, although I now realise quite a few of the anecdotes come from VM Yeates who was a WW1 fighter pilot.
"Flash" Gordon after he goes a bit nuts in Piece Of Cake.
Stu Redman out of The Stand.
Quint off of Jaws.
good choices so far.
i’ve always liked Tom Ripley. He’s not the sociopath he’s made out to be in The Talented Mr Ripley. in fact, Tom detests murder unless it is absolutely necessary.
Mostly characters from the discworld, as they were my go to books during my formative years.
Nanny Ogg springs to mind as one of my favourites.
Flashman was the first one that popped into my mind. Closely followed by Charlie Parker, Louis and Angel from John Connolly's books.
Burley Coulter in Wendell Berry's Port William books. A bit of a rogue but a heart of gold and gets all the best lines.
Oh and Charlie Mortdecai for just being so gloriously and unapologetically unpleasant. In the books obviously not the utter travesty of a film.
Gordon Comstock (George Orwell, Keep the Aspidistra flying); Smith in The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (Alan Sillitoe); and of course Prufrock, J Alfred.
There is a bit of a theme with the first two, to some extent reflecting (my) real life. I particularly identified with Comstock.
This dates me doesn't it? But I wear my trousers the normal way.
For humour, Ignatius J Reilly (John Kennedy Toole, a Confederacy of Dunces).
Judge Dredd or Roy of the Rovers.
i’ve always liked Tom Ripley
+1, magnificent
Bernard Sampson from Len Deighton's Ennealogy. Everyone lauds Le Carre but Deighton is so good too.
Another magnificent character is Kenneth Widmerpool in Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series.
Wrong thread
Jack Aubrey. I love the way he laughs at his own puerile jokes.
Cugel immediately departed by an obscure route...
Cugel the Clever from Jack Vance's Dying Earth books. Brilliant trickster / Coyote character - devious schemes never quite come off, but he always manages to evade the angry pitchforks.
Vance also let another author, Michael Shea, write a Cugel book and it is surprisingly decent for what was basically fan fiction at the time (A quest for Simbalis). Shea then channelled Cugel into his own creation Nifft the lean which is legit good, very strong work from a guy who didn't seem to get much recognition over the years.
Jesus of Nazareth - useless carpenter's son mopes around for many chapters and everyone thinks he's wonderful
Shardlake.
I just think he'd be a decent bloke to spend a bit of time with.
Sharpe would be quite good fun, but you wouldn't let him anywhere near your daughter.
I'd like to listen to Rebus' record collection on Morse's hifi, while both of the miserable sods popped off down the pub.
Most of the faculty of Unseen University. At a party in The Shades.
Oh and Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg - basically my Aunts Rita and Martha, respectively.
Wally.
Aragorn son of arathorn from Tolkien’s middle earth marathon.
Harry Potter. Bit of a nob but I like him.
Lyra Balaqua. Bit of a nob but I like her.