Top Ten Tuesday #328

Hi everyone! I hope you’ve all had a good week since I last did one of these, mine was fairly quiet, I was mostly working and watching the Olympics again, it was a little strange yesterday when I woke up and there was nothing on! I’ve got an exciting week coming up though, I get my second vaccine dose on Thursday so I will finally be double vaccinated, and I’m going to see Hairspray on Saturday, which I’ve waited a whole year for after it was cancelled last year. It will also be my first time in a West End theatre in almost two years (the last time was when I saw Waitress in October 2019) and I can’t even explain how happy I am about it!

Anyway, it’s Tuesday, which means another Top Ten Tuesday courtesy of Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. This week we’re talking Secondary Characters Who I Wish Had More Page Time. Often I love secondary characters even more than main characters, so this week’s topic was really fun for me. Here we go, secondary characters I’d like to have seen more of:

1. Zuzana-Daughter of Smoke and Bone Trilogy-Laini Taylor

I fully admit, I loved Karou’s best friend way more than I loved Karou! Zuzana is super funny and feisty and I like her love story way more than Karou and Akiva’s. I really loved Night of Cake and Puppets where Zuzana was the main character, and though she didn’t really fit all that well in the second book, I would much rather have seen more of her than Karou. If Laini ever does a full length Zuzana book, I would be super happy to read it.

2. Sonia Rhienschild-Unwind Series-Neal Shusterman

Sonia is a super interesting character, she and her husband Janson are the architects behind the technology of unwinding, with the intention that it be used to improve organ donation and not the horrific process it eventually became. She becomes a leader in the resistance against unwinding, and rescues AWOL unwinds. I found her whole backstory super fascinating, but though she’s a really important part of the series, she only really appears into two of the four books. I would have loved to see more of her, and if Shusterman ever wanted to write a book, or even a short story about the Rhienschilds one day, I would definitely read it.

3. Razu-Daevabad Trilogy-SA Chakraborty

Razu is a fairly minor character in the Daevabad trilogy but I would have loved to see more of her. I feel like she was kind of a missed opportunity, because she and Nahri had the potential for a really beautiful friendship (they’re both thieves and have a similar sense of humour and just seem like they get on really well) and this wasn’t explored enough.

4. Lourdes Alfero-The Shadow Game Trilogy-Amanda Foody

Lourdes is the catalyst for the whole series, as Enne goes to the City of Sin to find her, and yet, we only really get snippets of information about her life through the series. From what we do find out about her though, she sounds fascinating, she’s a journalist, genderfluid, supported the monarchist cause and was involved in the Revolution of the New Reynes. I would have loved to maybe have had a few more flashbacks to her in the main series, we learned a bit about her life, but there’s still so much more to discover. I said in a previous TTT post that I’d love her to have her own book, and I stand by it. We’ve barely scratched the surface of her adventures!

5. Shazad Al’Hamad-Rebel of The Sands Trilogy-Alwyn Hamilton

I feel like poor Shazad really gets short changed in the latter two Rebel of The Sands books. We get to see quite a bit of her in the first book, and her friendship with Amani is a real highlight. However in Traitor To The Throne, and Hero At The Fall, her role decreases significantly which I thought was a real shame, because she was such a strong character in the first book.

6. Eliza-Stalking Jack The Ripper series-Kerri Mansicalco

One of my biggest gripes with the Stalking Jack The Ripper series is that Maniscalco focuses more on Audrey Rose’s relationship with Thomas, than her friendships or family relationships. I really loved her cousin, Eliza, or Liza as she’s known in the book but she has a fairly background role, only really popping up briefly in Books 1 and 3, and I wish we’d got to see more of her and Audrey Rose together, as I feel like it was a missed opportunity for female friendship and camaraderie in these books.

7. Evrane Nihar-Witchlands series-Susan Dennard

Evrane for me is one of the most interesting characters in the series, she has a really interesting power (Waterwitch with a healing speciality), and she’s a Carawen monk, but we know very little about her life, how she came to be a monk, her relationship with Aeduan, I feel like there’s a lot more to fill in about her story and would love to see her get more page time in future books, or maybe even her own book one day.

8. Nehemia Ytger-Throne of Glass series-Sarah J Maas

I think we all know that Nehemia gets the short end of the stick in the Throne of Glass series, she should definitely have been expanded beyond the Black friend who dies to fuel the white main character into action, because that is a super problematic trope. Nehemia is probably a more interesting character than Aelin in all honesty, and I would have loved to have seen more of her work with the rebels from Eyllwe.

9. Renata Galygina-The Crown’s Game duology-Evelyn Skye

Honestly, even four years after reading the books, I’m still super miffed with how Renata was treated. Her only purpose is to have a crush on Nikolai and pine after him and she doesn’t get at all developed beyond that. I felt so bad for her because she’s basically a prop of a character, an obstacle between him and Vika, and even after it’s established that Nikolai doesn’t return her feelings, she doesn’t get any more of her own character development. If this book could be done over, I definitely think it should have included more of a plot for Renata outside Nikolai.

10. Yuilana Romanov-The Crown’s Game duology-Evelyn Skye

Again I wish Yuilana had been expanded more. She’s typecast as the stone cold bitch because she’s clearly far more suited for ruling than her brother but not given the time of day because she’s a girl. She’s so underutilised, I think there’s a lot more to her than the book presented but because we never really get to see her POV, she just comes across as a flat one-dimensional villain. Again if these books could be done over, I would definitely have expanded Yuilana’s role.

So there we go, those are some secondary characters that I think should have had more page time. Do you agree with me? Have you read any of these books? Which characters did you include on your list this week? Let me know in the comments!

I will be back next week with another Top Ten Tuesday, the topic is meant to be Favourite Places To Read, but I read in one of about four places and that’s it, so I’m going to tweak it slightly and do a Part 2 to a topic I did a few years back, Books I Read On Holiday.