Chicks In Chainmail Books in Order

Chicks In Chainmail is not one long story with recurring leads. It is an anthology shelf built around a simple question: what happens when fantasy stops treating the woman in impossible armor as scenery and lets her take over the tale?

That joke is only the doorway.

Across Chicks in Chainmail, Did You Say Chicks?!, Chicks 'n Chained Males, The Chick is in the Mail, Turn the Other Chick, and Chicks and Balances, the settings keep changing. Some stories live in classic sword-and-sorcery country, with dragons, taverns, mercenaries, and bad princes. Others wander farther afield. The common thread is that the women at the center are allowed to be funny, competent, irritated, reckless, and fully in on the absurdity around them.

That matters because the series is parody, but it is not just sneering parody. Friesner and her contributors know the old fantasy poses very well, which is why the send-up works. They can tease the chainmail-bikini image, the swaggering barbarian, or the overconfident hero without killing the pleasures of quest fantasy in the process.

So the real appeal here is tone. These books are light on continuity and heavy on voice. You can dip into one volume at random, start with the first, or use Chicks Ahoy! as a sampler of the early run.

If you like fantasy that can swing a sword and crack a joke in the same breath, this is the shelf.