Spoilers ahead!

Strong leading ladies have ruled young adult fiction for the last couple of years. There are countless fierce female main characters, and even supporting characters, that have readers calling for more. Here are just five leading women from popular fantasy authors.

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Nesta Archeron

Nesta Archeron has been through a lot. After playing a pivotal role in her youngest sister Feyre’s story, she finally got her spotlight in “A Court of Silver Flames,” the fifth book in Sarah J. Maas’ “A Court of Thorns and Roses” series.

Some novels appear on BookTok and cycle through quickly; others make a splash and don’t let up for ten years. Maas has dominated the YA fantasy scene with all three of her series and is carrying that success into writing follow-up novels for “ACOTAR,” her second series.

Nesta did not make a great first impression with her treatment of Feyre in book one. She was redeemed slightly in books two and three, when she and the middle sister, Elain, were kidnapped and forced to become fae. Nesta’s relationship with Feyre is still rocky, even into the fifth book, but after this trauma, she is extremely protective of Elain and vital to winning the war in book three.

At the beginning of “A Court of Silver Flames,” Nesta has spent the year since the war depressed, drunk and avoiding her sisters. Feyre forces her to sober up and train with Cassian, a winged Illyrian warrior and general.

During her healing journey, Nesta makes friends with Gwyneth Berdara and Emerie, who are similarly looking for new life. They train and ultimately prove the misogynistic Illyrian warriors wrong when they become the first females to win their coming-of-age ceremony, called the Blood Rite. Together, they revive the lost clan of female warriors, the Valkyries.

Lysandra Enner Ashryver

With the grip that Maas holds on book communities, it would be remiss not to mention her first series, “Throne of Glass,” which is chock-full of inspiring women. She writes them as heroes, villains and everything in between.

One character who represents the struggles of women in a heartbreaking fashion is Lysandra. As a young child, Lysandra used her shapeshifting ability to make herself appear older and more beautiful to survive on the streets of Adarlan. When the King of Adarlan took magic away from the continent, her artificial looks drew the attention of Clarisse DuVency, the madam of the most popular brothel in Adarlan.

Lysandra bides her time and hides her pain, enduring her training as a courtesan and weathering the attentions of Arobynn Hamel, king of the assassins and head of the Assassin’s Guild.

When she first appears in book three, “The Queen of Shadows,” it’s clear she does not have the best history with the main character, Aelin Galathenius. They spent their childhood at each other’s throats, pitted against each other without realizing they were both being used and abused by Hamel and DuVency.

They team up to take Hamel and DuVency down, freeing magic along the way. Lysandra can’t remember what she looked like before, but with the return of her powers, she immediately changes into a ghost leopard, her most comfortable form. When she turns human again she makes sure she is comfortable with her appearance.

Lysandra is the one to kill Hamel, and she forms an unbreakable bond with Aelin and aids her in her quest to save the world and regain her throne.

Alanna of Trebond

Alanna achieved many firsts in Tamora Pierce’s “The Song of the Lioness” series. Alanna becomes the first Lady Knight in Tortall, the first female King’s Champion and earns the title Alanna the Lioness.

Unfortunately, Alanna could only be successful through trickery. When she and her twin, Thom, were ten, they were sent away from home. Alanna was meant to become a lady and Thom to train as a knight, but Thom wanted to learn sorcery in the City of the Gods where Alanna was sent, and Alanna wanted to train as a knight. Naturally, they switched places.

Dressed as a boy she named “Alan,” Alanna arrived in the city of Corus and went through training as a page and then a squire, only revealing her true self to a select few. She was only revealed when she confronted the corrupt Duke Roger of Conté, shortly after earning her knighthood. They dueled in front of the court, and in winning, she proved herself and was allowed to keep her knighthood.

Alanna went on to become one of the greatest knights in Tortall.

Inej Ghafa

Inej Ghafa is a proud member of one of the most beloved found families in the fantasy community. “Six of Crows” is a duology, and the second installment in Leigh Bardugo’s “Grishaverse.”

Kaz Brekker is the tortured leader of the Crows. He’s a criminal mastermind, raised on the streets of the Barrel, the undercity of Ketterdam. While the Dregs are a large gang, operating out of the gambling house, The Crow Club, Kaz has to put together a core team of exceptional people to pull off an impossible heist.

Inej and Jasper Fahey are already on Kaz’s payroll. Wylan Van Eck, Nina Zenik and Matthias Helvar join the crew in chasing the biggest reward any of them has ever seen.

Inej is their spy. She’s infamously called the Wraith, traveling across rooftops, never seen and able to get into impossible places. Kidnapped and sold into slavery at fourteen, she ended up at a brothel known as the Menagerie, The House of Exotics.

Inej met Kaz when he visited Heleen asking for information. Inej managed to sneak up on him and convinced him to buy her contract from Heleen by offering the information he needed. Kaz gave her her first knife, and over time, she built a collection named after her saints, hidden all over her body.

Kaz and Inej have a lot of chemistry throughout the series. However, Kaz is tied to Ketterdam, and Inej always dreamed of captaining a ship and finding her family. In the end, Kaz is the one who gets her a ship and brings her family to Ketterdam.

Vin

Brandon Sanderson is the only male author who managed to make this list. Vin is the protagonist of “Mistborn: The Final Empire,” and throughout the trilogy, she ascends from just trying to survive a thieving crew to noble, empress, deity and finally myth.

While sixteen and living on the streets of Luthadel, the capital of the Final Empire, Vin is recruited by Kelsier, who becomes her mentor, to overthrow the emperor when he realizes she has the power of a Mistborn.

Vin is tasked with infiltrating and spying on the nobility, taking on the guise of Valette Renoux and attending noble balls. She falls in love with Elend Venture, the eldest son of the strongest noble house who goes on to become king at the end of the first book. In the next book, he and Vin marry and begin working to reunite the empire.

When citizens of Luthadel begin praising Kelsier as a messiah, starting the Church of the Survivor, they pull Vin into it as the Lady Heir because she apprenticed under him. In the third book, Vin takes this even further and absorbs the power of the god Preservation. She manages to kill the god Ruin, who was attempting to destroy the world, but dies in the process.

Over the next 300 years, Vin’s story becomes the stuff of myth and legend, and she is known as the Ascendant Warrior.