Badass Bookworm / Literature

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• The 39 Clues gives us Amy Cahill, who is very booksmart and generally shy and nonviolent, but if you pick on her brother or break her heart, then watch out.
• The "Four Horseman" — a quadruplet of small-town D&D nerds, wargamers, and dirt bikers — in 1632. Jeff Higgins in particular reveals his exceptional poise under fire starting with the Last Stand in the high school and escalating from there. Even his glasses add to his badass cred, to downtimers: they believe that they enable him to see his victims better, instead of more modern general interpretations of glasses wearers as being wimpy.
• Dalton in Along The Winding Road. On top of being hailed as a genius (and smart enough to work as the team medic despite not getting the chance to get through college), he's apparently trained in bojutsu.
• Harry Creek from The Android's Dream arguably counts — born a geek, raised a geek, created the world's first (well, second) artificial intelligence, survived one of humanity's worst military excursions, and managed to bring an opposing stellar government to its knees by surrendering.
• Snowball from Animal Farm is very intelligent, designing a windmill and setting up committees and leading the animals to victory in The Battle of the Cowshed, where he sent Mr. Jones into a heap of dung and was wounded in the process.
• The Andalites from Animorphs are a species of badass bookworms. Members of their military are expected to embody the ideal of "scientist, warrior, artist."
• Matilda: The title character is a girl who reads a lot of books and uses Telekinesis to get rid of a horrible teacher and could hold her own against adults. She is also mild-mannered and polite.
• The Arts of Dark and Light:
  • The mild-mannered scholar Marcus is a Non-Action Guy when he first appears in Summa Elvetica, and remains a bookworm first and foremost thus far, but gradually gets tougher over the course of the series until he can qualify as this. It helps that he becomes a reserve officer and gets real military training, in addition to his studies.
  • Bessarias. He is a reclusive, somewhat crankish old natural philosopher of some repute—as well as an archmage who is one of the setting's most eminent examples of a Person of Mass Destruction.
• The Aubrey-Maturin series features Stephen Maturin, a 5'6", gaunt, clumsy, "small, indefinably odd and even ill-looking" man as well as a doctor, polyglot, natural philosopher and all-round intellectual, and Britain's greatest spy. Over the course of the books, he is seen shooting the pips out of playing cards, winning several duels, operating on himself and dispatching his enemies in very badass ways. And then dissecting them. Yet, somehow, he never quite develops the ability to board a ship under his own power without falling in the water.
  • In one story, Stephen's choice of weapon is a surgeon's knife with a 1-inch blade, and he matter-of-factly tells the skeptical Aubrey that it is eminently deadly in the hands of one who knows exactly where to cut. The point is later proved when Stephen knocks an enemy agent unconscious with a paper weight and then calmly finishes the job by using the knife to slice the man's carotid artery.
  • In The Nutmeg Of Consolation, Maturin casually mentions to his friend Martin that "My practice has never lain among children, though I have of course dissected a good many." This isn't so much badass as it is an illustration of the pure academic detachment with which he practices his profession. Although in a previous novel, he and a friend efficiently dissected the corpse of one of Maturin's mortal enemies, which I suppose is kind of badass, even though the enemy in question was killed by someone else's hand.
• Isis McDonald in Babylon Rising is a philologist whose main interest is ancient codices and inscriptions... but she is also willing to join a risky expedition to dig them out if needed, and more than pulls her weight when the expedition is threatened by an Ancient Conspiracy.
• Barnaby Grimes. He spends his spare time in the basement of Underhill's Library for Scholars of the Arcane reading dusty old articles. He also takes on werewolves single-handed.
• Bas-Lag Cycle: Isaac Dan Der Grimnebulin, in Perdido Street Station: while he is supposedly just a rogue scientist, he holds off an attack by the corrupt government's trained militia and faces off against monsters so scary that demons are afraid of them. He's described as a fat and gets winded when walking up a flight of stairs, but he's also quite large.
• Noriko Null from Beyond the Impossible is five feet tall and without any experience in fighting, but she’s able to wipe the floor with trained assassins armed with machine guns. In her underwear. It helps that she has all the knowledge of mankind downloaded into her brain, including every known martial art.
• The Black Company:
  • All the wizards fall into this category, especially the Taken. The setting averts Squishy Wizard, hard. One particular Taken has a building collapsed on him and survives without permanent damage. A later scene has a single Taken fighting off his attackers while outnumbered five to one and treating the severing of his right arm as little more than an inconvenience. It's noted that a different Taken eschews physical weaponry entirely, knowing that his sorcerous talents afford all the protection he needs. Bonegnasher is another Taken, a One-Scene Wonder who is described as a giant man who is shown fighting his foes by tearing them to pieces with his bare hands.
  • Croaker himself probably counts. What time he doesn't spend writing the Company's annals, patching up the wounded, or studying ancient documents, he spends either playing cards or fighting on the front lines (despite being in his forties by the start of the second book, though he notes that he prefers to be an archer who's out of the thick of the fighting by then).
• Black Dogs: Lyra Volfrieds starts off as a clumsy, unathletic and naïve bookworm at the start of the story, but towards the end she picks up enough combat skills, practical magic and street smarts to work as a highly competent bodyguard, beat the crap out of the people who murdered her family, and defeat an evil sorcerer with her bare hands.
• Stephen King and Peter Straub's Black House features a whole gang of bikers each with master's degrees in philosophy who own and operate a microbrewery with full knowledge of the chemicals processes at work. They're still badass enough that most of the town knows to leave them the hell alone.
• Bone Street Rumba: has two as of this writing:
  • Jimmy in Salsa Nocturna who is a high school age nerdboy genius and does research as he learns about the world he now inhabits.
  • Dro in Half Resurrection Blues who is equal parts researcher and warrior.
• Bruce Coville's Book of... Monsters II: George Pinkerton, a librarian and monster hunter who makes the first of three appearances in this book.
• Captive Prince: Invoked by Laurent, a bookish child who threw himself into combat training at age thirteen after his brother's death in battle. He doesn't draw attention to the fact, leaving his men amazed when he gets drawn into a duel and effortlessly, humiliatingly, slowly dismantles his opponent.
• Lois McMaster Bujold's Chalion:
  • The Curse of Chalion stars Cazaril, who is a Broken Bird and tutor to the Royesse Isselle and her handmaiden, who wants nothing more than a quiet life, a chance to read and perhaps write undistinguished poetry. He's also a former soldier who has marched the length of his nation and back again in a series of wars that have drained it and left him betrayed and sold to the galleys for two years, making him a deadly The Determinator Combat Pragmatist who will stop at nothing to protect and serve "his ladies".
  • Penric of the "Penric's Demon" and "Penric and the Shaman" stories. A scholarly book-lover who is skilled with a heavy hunting bow, keeps a scarily powerful demon under control, and has looked a god in the eyes to plead for the continued existence of said demon.
• Circleverse:
  • Tris Chandler deserves special mention. She constantly has her nose in a book, but you do not want to be the one who pisses her off. She keeps hurricanes, lightning, tidal waves, earthquakes, and more braided up in her hair.
  • Briar counts too, after Tris teaches him to read.
• Codex Alera: Tavi and Ehren. Neither of them are very physically imposing — well, Tavi isn't until his twenties, though Ehren remains a self-proclaimed glorified "messenger boy" forevermore — and both of them are less then talented with the world's magic. However, both are extremely intelligent and kick much ass as they're much stronger than they are allowed to let on. For example, Tavi beats a couple of powerfully gifted bullied senseless without any furycraft; he's also told by an instructor to mimic the mistakes his classmates regularly make so that they'll be more vigilant about them because his own skill is sufficiently advanced. Ehren becomes a bit of a knife-nut, a spymaster, and a chessmaster.
• The Collegia Magica trilogy by Carol Berg has some prime examples: Portier has been described as a walking encyclopaedia, Dante, the strongest magician in 200 years is a self confessed bookworm and Anne, potentially stronger than Dante in magic, knows seven languages and can describe theories of gravitation and optics in detail. Oh, and loves to read.
• Brandon Sanderson's The Cosmere Shared Universe setting features copious examples, Sanderson being quite fond of the trope:
  • Mistborn:
    • The Terris Keepers. Their primary goal has been to collect and preserve knowledge for a thousand years, only to give it back to mankind after the Collapse of the Final Empire. However, their feruchemical powers also allow them to store physical abilities (strength, speed, sight, etc...) to use it later. Making them very powerful warriors.
    • Sazed stands out even among the Keepers. He is almost always mild-mannered and reserved in his actions, and generally one of the nicest characters in the series. But threaten the innocent, particularly his friends, in his presence, and... well, he doesn’t store all that strength and speed for nothing. In the first book, Sazed manages to fight off a murder of Steel Inquisitors and later breaks Vin from the most fortified prison in the world. In the second book, he single-handedly holds the city gate against a horde of Koloss for hours on end, then fights and nearly beats the strongest Inquisitor alive. Come book three, he winds up inheriting the powers of both Ruin and Preservation, effectively ascending to godhood and restoring the world with his accumulated knowledge..
    • Elend Venture is an even more literal case of this trope. Initially a scholarly young noble with little interest in political intrigue or combat, he nevertheless steps up to prevent excessive bloodshed during the revolution and winds up being made king for his efforts (and because he was the least inconvenient candidate for all parties involved). The second book, therefore, is mostly focused on him having to actually start acting the part, undergoing rigorous tutoring to become fitter, firmer, prouder and generally more of a leader. And all that before Vin turns him into a Mistborn to save his life, graduating from Badass Normal to Magic Knight. By book three, he has become a Frontline General and The Good King working to save all of mankind… and still keeps a book on him for special occasions.
    • Marasi Colms, from the sequel series Wax and Wayne, also has heavy shades of this. Though she is first and foremost a university student with prodigious and extensive knowledge in criminology, legal justice and forensics, she also has a fascination with outlaw stories and is quite handy with a rifle due to joining the local target club. These skills eventually wind up making her a full-fledged constable, a high-ranked one at that. And though her allomantic ability (speeding up the time around her) seems initially useless to her, the handy addition of some South Scadrian magitech turns her power into an excellent form of non-lethal neutralization by book three.
  • The Stormlight Archive:
    • Shallan Davar is a quiet scholar with a talent for drawing who is ostensibly a Non-Action Girl to an almost pathological extreme. She also becomes a Shardbearer and Surgebinder with a surprisingly high number of kills under her belt, even if you're only counting the ones she kills personally.
    • Jasnah Kholin, the princess whom Shallan is seeking in the beginning of the series and finds herself apprenticed to. An iconoclastic scholar and literal genius who will turn you into smoke if you threaten her. She begins the series already largely aware of the greater plot and her feats only grow from there, including surviving her own assassination, traversing alone across Shadesmar, leading the defense of Thaylenar and eventually becoming the Queen of Alethkar.
    • Navani Kholin, Jasnah's mother, is proof this trope really does run in the family. An elderly stateswoman who has spent most of her life helping her husband and son administer their burgeoning realm, Navani's true passion lies in fabrial research and her designs are of unparalleled quality (though she is too humble/insecure about them to take much credit. By the fourth book, having bonded the Sibling and created anti-light to finally end the forever war, she has pretty much become a certified Science Hero.
    • And then there's Ishar, one of the ten divine Heralds. He's basically the Herald of the priesthood, focused on learning and guiding others. His role among the Heralds was The Smart Guy; he was the one who figured out the pattern of the Desolations, and made some important theories regarding the Oathpact. But he was still a Herald, and personally fought in multiple world-breaking wars. When Surgebinders first started appearing among common men, he created the Knights Radiant and threatened to personally destroy any who didn't step in line. No one seemed to think he would have any trouble fighting countless superpowered rebels. When he reappers centuries later, delusional and only partially sane, he still manages to prove himself as The Archmage and handily fights off a cohort of lesser Radiants.
  • Warbreaker:
    • Vasher is a rugged, unkempt, anti-social Anti-Hero with No Social Skills and a Hair-Trigger Temper. He is also one of the most proficient Awakeners on Nalthis, being able to cast complicated commands on the fly while fending off multiple opponents with any weapon at hand. As it turns out, this is because he was a member of the Five Scholars, the most accomplished group of magical researchers on the planet, and as such has literal centuries of study and research under his belt, as well as several impressive discoveries such as Awakening steel.
  • Sixth of the Dusk:
    • Vathi is a young scientist and explorer who by any right should have no business surviving on an island as inhospitable to humans as Patji, yet she manages to not only survive and aid the much more experienced Sixth, she is the one to actually kill the local Super-Persistent Predator with a primitive gunpowder rocket, awing even Sixth.
• Cudjo's Cave:
  • Penn is a Quaker schoolteacher who defiantly faces and calls out a lynch mob that comes after him even when his beliefs keep him from fighting back. And once he proves willing to compromise those beliefs for the safety of his allies, he is a deadly combatant.
  • Pomp got an education in medicine and other subjects in Paris when his first owner took him there, beat his second owner into the ground when the man abused him, and is a crafty woodsman who uses his skills against the rebels.
• The Daevabad Trilogy: The djinn prince Alizayd spent his life training to become The Good Chancellor to his older brother, so is both an excellent scholar and a Master Swordsman even before gaining Making a Splash powers from the marid.
• Dance Of The Butterfly has a few of these, but the standout is Lilja, librarian and curator of rare books at a prestigious university and a self-defence instructor. She is attacked by a would-be rapist in an opening scene, and she subdues him until the police arrive.
• Alan Ryves from The Demon's Lexicon is a sweet, sensitive, mild-mannered guy who works in a bookstore and lives with his brother and crazy mum. Also, you mess with either of the aforementioned family members and he'll shoot you down before you know you've been hit.
• Perhaps it's a bit of a stretch, but Chip, a cowardly bookworm from the web fiction serial Dimension Heroes, exhibits power that matches that of his teammates when push comes to shove.
• The Discworld books:
  • Mr. Slant, zombie attorney and president of the Guild of Lawyers, whose death only made him work through lunch breaks. He can quiet a roomful of attorneys with a glance, and he has an encyclopedic knowledge of case and precedent because he was there and helped write it.
  • In Night Watch, a young Havelock Vetinari is bullied by his schoolmates in the Assassins' Guild for reading books with some interesting ideas about camouflage. Also chastised by one of his teachers for not being seen in any of his camouflage classes. He attended them religiously. Later vindicated when he manages to avoid the fate of the assassin who took the contract before him, the aptly named Sir John Bleedwell.
  • Most senior wizards, and of particular note, Mustrum Ridcully. He may seem stupid, but anyone who could get to be a level 7 wizard under the old system was either very smart, or very cunning.
  • Unseen Academicals gives us Mr. Nutt, a goblin who spent time in the libraries of Lady Margolotta (one of Uberwald's most powerful vampires) and damn near memorized them. He works as a candle dribbler at the Unseen University, and is extremely courteous, softspoken, and loquacious. He's also not a goblin; he's one of the last few orcs on the Disc. Orcs were originally bred as a super-soldier race for the Evil Empire. So when Mr. Nutt finally gets in touch with his orcish nature, he's able to tell an opponent he's got in a headlock just how much force it would require to rip his head off, and what muscles and bones would get in the way.
  • There's Ponder Stibbons, who rises by stealth to become effectively the third most powerful wizard on the Disc after Ridcully and the Dean. In Unseen Academicals, he lays the Lore down to both, with a vengeance. And they accept he's right.
  • Watch Adjutant Inspector Pessimal wields power. And he is feared for it. You know you're good when you can make zombie lawyers attempt to sweat bullets over the mere threat of a possible forensic audit.
  • Tiffany Aching may be only nine, but she's read the dictionary cover-to-cover, mostly because nobody ever told her not to. She also whacks a monster with a frying pan, befriends the Nac Mac Feegle, takes on The Fair Folk to rescue her unpleasant little brother, and studies witchcraft with the intent of stopping future witch hunts in their tracks. And this is just the first book she appears in.
  • The Librarian of the Unseen University is about as "book" a bookworm as you can get. He's not very "worm", though, because he's an Orangutan, and therefore strong enough to tear your arms off. He also frequently handles cursed books, and can safely navigate his way around the kind of timespace warping and monster infested environment that arises from having so much magical knowledge in one place.
• Dracula:
  • Professor Abraham Van Helsing. The fact that he has "M.D., D.Ph., D.Litt., etc." after his name yet still hunts vampires should attest to this.
  • Jonathan Harker had been a quite ordinary young lawyer from London until his life and death (or to put it better, undeath) were at stake. It takes some badassery to escape while locked in a castle populated by vampires and then hunt the vampire boss himself throughout Europe. With a Kukri nevertheless.
• Randolph Carter in H. P. Lovecraft's Dreamworld stories, a scholar who repeatedly goes up against horrifying creatures. While in his first story, "The Statement of Randolph Carter", he's described as a nervous wreck, Lovecraft actually Retconned that in a later novella, "The Silver Key", where Carter is described as having PTSD at that time — he'd been shot in WWI while serving with the French Foreign Legion.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Ivy is introduced as a seven-year-old girl who fawns over Harry's cat in her first appearance. She's also the Archive, the sum total of all human knowledge, including live updates. Since knowledge basically equals power, particularly when it comes to magic, she has a lot of power. The only time we see her actually fight she is able to literally reduce multiple Fallen Angel powered individuals into dust while under a severe handicap, although she is still relatively weak physically, as she is a young girl. Most people in the know consider her to be one of, if not the, most dangerous human magic users on the planet.
  • Wizards in general. Harry has on several occasions described himself as a "magic nerd". Most of these folks spend a hundred years or so learning how to lay some serious hurt on anyone in their way. Harry manages to pull off a laundry list of incredible feats throughout the series, but there are other wizards with literally hundreds of years of experience on him.
    • Special mention goes to the Merlin of the White Council, Arthur Langtry. He is, quite simply, the most powerful wizard on the planet. In Dead Beat, Harry is told that the Merlin held off the entire Red Court with a single, impromptu ward in the spirit realm with no magical foundation to ground it to, meaning it is far weaker than it could have been if say it is cast to protect a home with people living there.
      Harry Dresden: You don't get to be the Merlin of the White Council by collecting bottle caps.
• Liet-Kynes in Dune, a hard-working ecologist who is half-Fremen.
  • Not to mention his father, also an ecologist, mentioned in the appendix as having impressed the Fremen in the first place by immediately killing some Harkonnen flunkies that were threatening them, using a weapon that's described identically to an Assassin's Hidden Blade.
• Prince/Shah Raschid of the Fangs Of Kaath book series. He is a quiet scholar whom everyone thinks is a brainy wimp compared to his sociopathic brother, Abbas. However- with the advice of his wily girlfriend, who helps with practical matters of command- he displays formidable combat, command and diplomatic skills guided by his good nature that make him a triumphant and inspirational army commander.
  • The sequel introduces Meng, who- despite lacking any sort of charisma or combat ability- was so determined to share knowledge with the new Shah that he travelled from China to Arabia, mostly on foot, and with a metric crapton of scrolls strapped to his back.
• Barrons from Karen Marie Moning's Fever Series. He owns a bookshop, is named after a publishing company, and is pretty mysterious and badass, with being immune to shades, Living Shadow and all.
• Rafael in Gives Light. A bit of a subversion, because he's not smart as the trope would ordinarily entail. Instead, he comes across as a bit slow witted.
• The Goblin Emperor: Cala is even-tempered, kind, and often implied to be absorbed in his studies when he's not occupied with guarding the emperor. He casts a death spell on a would-be assassin.
• In the Gone series, Computer Jack is highly capable in computers... And kicking your ass. As of Fear this trope applies to Astrid as well.
• Good Omens:
  • Aziraphale. Despite his mild, kindly, book-obsessed exterior, he's actually a sword-wielding angel who's been on Earth for the last six thousand years, has seen everything at this point, and ends up going against Heaven's own directives in an attempt to prevent the apocalypse from occurring, despite all of Heaven and Hell being pro-Armageddon. Oh, and he's sort of secretly best friends with a demon, Crowley.
  • Anathema Device. She has a mind like a Crossword Puzzle dictionary and an encyclopedic knowledge of occultism. She also has a very large bread knife.
• The Harry Potter novels feature many examples, since studying magic makes you badass.
  • Hermione Granger is a notable example, being a know-it-all bookworm whose studies grant her significant magical power. She comes into her own in the last book, where nothing would have gotten done without her hyper-organization and constant vigilance. In the films, she even slugs Malfoy in the face, though it's only a slap in the books.
  • Dumbledore, a prime example of how knowledge equals power.
  • Professor McGonagall, Professor Snape and most of the Hogwarts teachers are all examples, being academics and experts in various fields of magic. Over the course of the series, there are hints every now and then, but in the final battle in Deathly Hallows, it's shown exactly why you do not screw with a Hogwarts teacher.
    "Us teachers are rather good at magic, you know."
• Wild Rhona from A Harvest of War has written several books including a history anthology from which the book's opening quote is supposedly lifted. Other Wilds are shown reading in their leisure time. Still other characters are presumed to be well-educated, such as Guinevere Thyll and Ayan.
• Leland de Laal, the primary protagonist of Steven Gould's Helm, was generally held in contempt by his father for spending every spare moment of his time studying in the library — until, at the start of the book, in defiance of his father's proclamation, he scales a three-hundred-plus meter high granite formation known as the Needle solo to take the titular Helm that rested atop it. His feats only grow more impressive from there.
• Laura of the H.I.V.E. Series is slowly but surely becoming one of these. While she doesn't have to use it very often because she always has Shelby with her, she occasionally displays an ability to aim and fire a variety of weapons competently and quickly. In books seven and eight, she is a student of the Glasshouse, where she trains in hand-to-hand combat. She isn't as good as some of the other students, but the fact that she even survived puts her well above average.
• C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower, who becomes a great Nelsonian seadog by his mathematical ability and his research skills. He also fights countless battles hand-to-hand, steals enemy ships by night, swashbuckles with the best, and duels a sadistic ship-mate who is so disturbed that he scares all others crapless.
• Hurog: In Dragon Bones, Ward spent a lot of his time in castle Hurog's library before the events of the book conspired to drive him out of his home. He then goes on to prove that he's also a badass swordfighter. One of his favourite methods to annoy people he doesn't like, but to whom he cannot show this openly, is to quote ballads at them, or bore them with explaining the differences between two sheep species, and how those differences are relevant to his plan for getting into the wool-business. The facts seem to be correct, even though he intentionally uses them to bore the hell out of his listeners.
• InCryptid: The Healy-Price men tend to be this, while the women are mainly Action Girls.
  • In the Covenant, Alexander Healy was "sworn to the pen and the page", meaning his strengths lay in research. However, he still has extensive combat and survival training, and is a force to be reckoned with. In Buckley, he's the town librarian.
  • Alexander's son Jonathan is also a town librarian, and he often gives off a professorial vibe. At the same time, he's always armed with a variety of weapons and is capable of subduing most foes lethally or non-lethally.
  • Thomas Price was "sworn to the pen and the page" like Alexander, meaning his primary focus was in research (though he's still trained in many forms of combat and survival). His collection of books, although miniscule compared to the Healy family library, and practically nothing compared to the Covenant's, is still extensive, and includes notes on cryptids from all over the world.
  • His son Kevin Price continues the family tradition, spending much of his time on research, and actually has a job as a researcher at a local college.
  • Kevin's son Alex is much like his namesake. He's the nerdiest of the three Price siblings, he actually got a graduate degree, and there's no question that he'll follow in his parents' footsteps as a cryptozoologist, unlike Verity (who's torn between that and dancing) and Antimony (who's drawn to magic).
  • James Smith is really good at research, since he had nothing else to do for most of his time in New Gravesend.
• David Weber's In Fury Born mentions a planet of academics who get invaded by the Rishathan Sphere, an army of lizardlike aliens:
  El Grecans might have been highbrows and philosophers, but that hadn't meant they were airheads, and the Rish soon discovered that they'd caught a tiger by the tail. The academics of El Greco warmed up their computers, set up their data searches, and turned to the study of guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and assassination as if preparing to sit their doctoral orals. Within a year, they had two divisions tied down; by the time the Sphere gave it up as a bad deal and left, the Rishathan garrison had grown to three corps...and was still losing ground.
• In The Invisible Library, protagonist Irene is a Magic Librarian, but is also competent at hitting attackers over the head with chairs, if the situation calls for it. It is hinted at that she went to a boarding school that prided itself on preparing its students for all the dangerous situations they could encounter in life.
• Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan in The Hunt for Red October and other novels. He is a quiet academic whose job and hobby is to study naval trivia for the CIA. However, he manages to win a shootout amidst a Pile o' Nukes, and beats up a bunch of Irish terrorists with his bare hands.
• Kirsty from the Johnny Maxwell Trilogy. In addition to having an I.Q. of 165, she's won a regional tournament in shooting and knows karate. The people who underestimate her tend to do so for a very short time.
• Journey to Chaos:
  • To be a mage in this universe, you have to do a lot of studying. That fireball spell requires a working understanding of mana and the basics of how fire operates. Over the course of A Mage's Power, Eric learns to do just this and more.
  • Annala is not a professional warrior like other Action Girls in this verse, but her vast knowledge of monsters and magic, combined with a special bow that she created herself, enables her to be a terror in battle.
• In Journey to the River Sea, Miss Minton's most valued possession is a box full of books. She is a Stern Teacher at first, but eventually evolves to become a Badass Bookworm. And throws her corset into the River Amazon, a moment that symbolizes her defying the societal norms she was brought up with.
• Fisk in the Knight and Rogue Series. Drawn to books due to being raised by a scholar, and adept with a knife.
• Known Space: Humanity as a whole fit this trope at the opening of the first Man-Kzin War. Having become intellectual pacifists, humanity is viewed by the Kzinti as weak and cowardly... except humanity had given up war because they were too good at it. Four destroyed battle fleets later, the Kzinti finally started to catch onto this.
• In Lightning Dust, Dr. James Melfton, Klaus' father, is more than capable of protecting himself and others, if necessary; he's actually a very good fighter, believe it or not.
• Parodied by the Chinese text of Lion-eating Poet in a Stone Den, where the title character is a poet who... kills and eats lions. It's more of a tongue-twister, mainly because all the words are pronounced the same, only with different inflections. Also, he's parodying the Chinese poets and authors as they were well-known for spicing up their characters, like in Journey to the West.
• Most of the main cast of The Locksmith are bookworms with either magical power, or sheer determination.
• In The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is incredibly wise and looks like an old man, but he mixes it up with the rest of the heroes with spell and sword. Faramir is another example.
  "Nor were the 'loremasters' a separate guild of gentle scribes, soon burned by the Orks of Angband upon pyres of books. They were mostly even as Fëanor, the greatest, kings, princes and warriors..." The Peoples of Middle-earth, "The Shibboleth of Fëanor", J.R.R Tolkien.
  • The Silmarillion: Among the Eldar of House of Finwë were some of the brightest scientific minds in Arda's history, and they were also fierce warriors.
• And then there's Lord Peter Wimsey. Also extremely clever, he looks like an effete aristocrat (in Murder Must Advertise he's described as "Bertie Wooster in horn-rims"). He's slightly built, and only 5'9" tall... but he was also a highly decorated World War I veteran, judo-trained and capable of holding off large beefy antagonists on several occasions. He is also a champion cricket player, a brilliant detective, a great student while at Oxford, and a famous expert on incunabula.
• The Lost Redeemer: Nahlia loves to read. She starts out as a librarian’s apprentice, and then goes on to learn magic from books since few living people believe in it.
• Alice of The Magicians. Already established as one of the most intelligent and studious of all the Brakebills kids, she's not only boosted into the second year ahead of schedule, but participates in the Fourth Year exam - walking naked to the South Pole - using an improvised magical technique that would have barbecued her alive if she'd gotten it wrong, beating Quentin to the finish line by two days. Then, in the climax, she's the first of the crew to really take the fight to the Beast, showing off her superior knowledge of magic by countering his Unskilled, but Strong powers with every technique she's learned so far, even drawing him into a Shapeshifter Showdown in which she tackles him in no less than six different forms. She ends by performing a Heroic Sacrifice that transforms her into a Niffin - and wins the battle hands-down.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • Jace Wayland is very knowledgeable of classical literature and very talented at killing demons.
• Old Kingdom:
  • In the first book, Sabriel is at the top of her class in every subject, most notably Swordfighting and Magic (with Music close behind), and, while well-liked, certainly gives very little indication to her school friends of her real powers.
  • Lirael, in the second book, is a much more extreme example. Aside from being the Second Assistant Librarian, she hardly ever talks to anyone in the Clayr glacier, and never tells anyone of her after-hours activities, which regularly include awakening horrible Free Magic creatures locked in the deepest dungeons of the library and destroying them with the help of her freakishly powerful dog.
• In Outlander, Jamie speaks at least 5 languages, is classically educated, is fantastic at chess, and for a while runs a printing press where he also writes political pamphlets. It's also a formidable Scottish warrior who leads troops successfully in several battles.
• Beatrice Löwenström in Överenskommelser by Simona Ahrnstedt is a highly intelligent book lover, but she can also compete with a man in ice-skating and horse-riding (which is quite remarkable for a woman back in the 1880s) and assists a doctor in a surgery (and even though she has no formal training as a nurse and is close to fainting, she does a good job with it). And she is also brave enough to stand up to abusive men, who are much stronger than her physically (even if that seldom does her any good).
• Toni Ware and Leonard Stecyk in The Pale King. Thanks to spending childhood as a drifter, Toni is well-read but borderline homicidal. Leonard's extensive knowledge of medical techniques helps him saves someone's life and jump-starts his character development.
• In A Pearl for My Mistress, Lucy Fitzmartin is, in her own words, "weak and pale". However, she is a superb writer, so colorful and persuasive, that she could sell snow to the Inuits (and pro-German views to World War I survivors...).
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians:
  • Annabeth reads architecture books in Ancient Greek at the age of twelve, although she has a supernatural familiarity with the language. She is also a brilliant but brutal strategist and fights with a bronze knife. We guarantee that she can kick the butt of almost any mythological creature you care to name.
  • Daedalus is also a brilliant swordsman who also happened to create the labyrinth, the most brilliant piece of architecture ever.
• In Elliott Kay's Poor Man's Fight, our protaganist Tanner Malone is a self-confessed bibliophile who other characters describe as "... gentle. Nice. I never saw him hurt anyone. All he wanted to do was work with furry animals and estuaries and stuff." Because of crushing student debt, he joins the local militia and has to Take a Level in Badass. True to this trope, he reads every manual on the ship. By the end of the FIRST book, he ends up conducting a one-man boarding action against space pirates after his ship is shot out from under him, killing dozens of the pirates in close combat and spacing hundreds more. Before storming a SECOND ship to free the pirates' hostages. It get's even more badass after that.
• Hari Seldon in Prelude to Foundation prequel. Turns out his entire homeworld knows kung fu.
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Mistress Heyerwif, half-giant librarian with a mental library, with a formidable psychic presence that scares off an Enemy Mime that was Curbstomp Battling the party, and wields a "long-bladed polearm" that she summoned out of a book.
• Gen from The Queen's Thief books; he's small, lives in a library, and is much happier when he is skulking about and stealing things than when he's forced to practice any sort of martial art. However, he's a master swordsman, able to take down in an instant alone three assassins who ambushed him, and also able to spar with and beat a good portion of a company of elite guards in a single morning. Also, he as a hook for a hand, and uses it to deadly effect.
• John le Carré's The Quest for Karla: George Smiley. He's a portly, middle-aged man whose eyesight is going, and whose wife gives him more than his fair share of problems, yet he was one of Britain's very best spies in his prime. He's still badass enough for "the Circus" to call him out of retirement when they need help in finding a mole. His skills are more in his gift for bureaucratic trickery, however, than any physical prowess.
• Tim Noonan is the Gadgeteer Genius of Rainbow Six, but he was also "poached" from the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, as we are reminded from, among others, his quick takedown of PIRA terrorists during their attack on the hospital.
• David Drake's RCN: Adele Mundy is a research librarian who is an expert shot with a pistol. She never misses, even in free fall, even if rotating in free fall from her previous shot.
  The Sissies were proud of their Signals Officer: the lady who'd as soon shoot you as look at you, who knew everything, and who never missed....
  Hogg: She cleaned out this enclosure. She did it. Tovera said she just walked in and shot them all.
• Matthew Reilly:
  • William Race from Temple is brought on a secret mission to translate an ancient manuscript. Somehow, despite having no military training, he gets dragged along to every battle and ends up being the last man standing.
  • The Great Zoo of China: Dr. Cassandra Jane "CJ" Cameron is a reptile expert, not a trained soldier. By novel's end she's pretty much single-handedly saved the day and gone toe-to-toe with actual fire-breathing dragons and won.
• In the Rendezvous with Rama series, Richard walks out multiple times into the unknown, sometimes with nothing on him but his brains, despite being a geek. He keeps supplies, but goes where they're not enough - he walked over to the avian layer after he and Nicole had been expelled in a last attempt to convince them to help, using nothing but a screen with an animation. When in New Eden, and his family is under suspicion during political upheaveal while humans are blasting a way into the Avian/Sessile/Myrmicat environment, he hauls out of New Eden with a backpack and falls int the avian environment, where he climbs up rows of spike, ignoring the defenders, both to save his life (from his immediate pursuers) and to warn them so they can save themselves. Nicole is less of a tech geek, but she does use her knowledge of biology and of the monitoring devices inside the cosmonauts to solve riddles in the second book, leading to her encounter with the main villain. In her case, besides being a bookworm now, she was an Olympic athlete.
• John Ringo really has a habit of placing badass bookworms in his stories.
  • Into the Looking Glass has William Weaver, Ph.D., a theoretical physicist who does most of his work in his head... while mountain biking, rock climbing, participating in kung fu tournaments, and fighting off an alien invasion. Except for the last, Ringo's co-author in the series after the first book, Travis S. Taylor, actually does everything attributed to Weaver, in Real Life.
  • The Legacy of the Aldenata is rife with them.
    • Micheal O'Neal, a Sci-Fi geek who gets placed in charge of an ACS battalion. O'Neal mostly gets his position because he's the only one with a clue how to effectively use the ACS's, though he is described as being very powerfully built.
    • The Combat Engineers in Gust Front deserve mention for routing a Posleen force through creative use of demo. By the end of the book, the smart God Kings refuse to go near anything with an engineers' symbol on it.
  • And then we have Talbot in the Council Wars series, who is a historic re-enactor and one of the main characters. Though he is more a badass who became a Bookworm after retiring from Badassery.
• Riley McDaniels: Aaron Kaplan is a storekeeper who is known for his love for classical music and fine literature, but he is also an ex-boxer who has lost none of his old skills.
• Serah in Rogue Sorcerer starts out as just a bookworm, but she grows into quite the formidable fighter by the book's end.
• Too many to count in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Zhuge Liang, who causes a larger enemy army led by the quite competent Sima Yi to retreat without battle by opening the gates of a city he had occupied and sitting on the wall, playing his lute. Sima Yi fled rather than "fall" into another of Zhuge Liang's traps, not finding out until much later that Zhuge had only a few hundred troops with him., Zhou Yu, Lu Xun, Jiang Wei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan, Pang Tong, and quite a few others. Hinted at in the button-masher spin-off video game Dynasty Warriors, insanely important in the strategic RTS and career sims called Romance Of The Three Kingdoms. Especially interesting as this is a case of Truth in Television, as these men did exist (though their legends and histories are quite different). We still have the books some of the figures of that era wrote.
• In William Makepeace Thackeray's fantasy The Rose and the Ring, Prince Giglio is raised to become a skilled swordsman, and wins many academic prizes in college.
• Soul in Saga of Soul is the Junior Goddess of Kick Your Ass. Also, a fledgling scientist.
• Tuck and others in The Saga of Tuck are D&D geeks, sci-fi bookworms and math geeks. With a piquant overlay of close arms fighting and covert counterintelligence ops.
• In Salamander, Coelus is just a harmless academic and theoretician, right? A reasonable assumption to make, up until he breaks out of a royal prison via creating a self-sustaining flaming tornado.
• The Saltwater Chronicles: Devil bureaucrat Essimore Darkenchyl has large chunks of the Agency's book of legal codes memorized and is a walking encyclopedia of pirate lore; she's also a red-eyed devil and one of the most powerful magic users on the planet, and that's before she eats an ancient monster's heart.
• Scaramouche: Andre-Louis Moreau, a lawyer, discovers - from studying fencing theory - a technique that will defeat even the most experienced opponents.
• Schooled in Magic: Emily is a neglected young girl who found safety in the library. She especially loved books of history. When she was taken to a fantastic world of magic and dragons, her love of reading became a huge advantage to her as she is now equipped with knowledge that will change the world and give her great power.
• Sixtus Claudius Julianus, a character in Search the Seven Hills, is over seventy years old and lame, long retired and isolated inside his big, deteriorating mansion writing a work on Eastern Cults. He can also take down two healthy, armed men less than half his age in less than a minute.
• The bookish and unimposing Achamian from Second Apocalypse is constantly underestimated and thought weak even by his friends. As well as being strong mentally, he is a sorcerer of vast destructive power he rarely has reason to unleash.
• Two of the three suspects in The Secret Files Of Dakota King: Operation Black Fang are tough scientists.
  • Vicktor Herbert is a decorated World War II paratrooper and renowned expert in the fields of biology and genetic engineering.
  • Lucille Dorman is the Hyper-Competent Sidekick at Doman's laboratory, being responsible for their biggest research development. She's also an avid hiker, rock climber, skydiver (having recently done her 1000th parachute jump), and black belt. She nearly defeats Dakota and Long Gonh, two highly-trained secret agents, when she catches them during a break-in.
• Sherlock Holmes:
  • Holmes is a brilliant detective, violinist, and black belt. His scarecrow physique hides surprising strength. In "The Speckled Band", a villain tries to intimidate him by bending a solid metal poker with his bare hands. Holmes is unimpressed and casually straightens the poker afterwards while chatting with Watson. In "The Solitary Cyclist", he easily beats up an unruly suspect. In "Hound of the Baskervilles", he's noted as an extraordinarily fast runner. Some viewers of the Guy Ritchie adaptation criticized the film for making Holmes into an action hero, but feats like engaging in bare-knuckle boxing matches are actually canon for the character.
    “Not Mr. Sherlock Holmes!” roared the prize-fighter. “God’s truth! how could I have mistook you? If instead o’ standin’ there so quiet you had just stepped up and given me that cross-hit of yours under the jaw, I’d ha’ known you without a question. Ah, you’re one that has wasted your gifts, you have! You might have aimed high, if you had joined the fancy.” -From The Sign of Four
  • Also, "The Three Garridebs" shows what happens if you seriously get him pissed, especially if it involves his friend's wellbeing. Hello, Evans manages to do this by shooting said friend, in front of a detective-which leads to Watson being BEGGED (yeah, that's right, begged) not to be hurt and leads to Evans being calmly threatened-with his life. Uh-oh. If you manage to really get him PISSED, you're in real trouble.
  • Watson is a marginal example. He is a practicing London doctor, but also an ex-soldier who holds his own whenever Holmes's adventures get messy. However, he's described as being rather handsome, so he probably doesn't look much like a weakling. Many film adaptations turn him into a pudgy goober without much combat ability. The ITV Granada television version is closer to canon reality.
• A few characters apply in A Song of Ice and Fire.
  • Tyrion Lannister is a bookish dwarf with no love of physical exertion, but he goes into battle twice, once taking down a knight by accident and in the second performing great feats of heroism.
  • It is also hinted that Petyr Baelish, a short, noncombatant financial genius, is an expert with knives and fairly nimble on his feet.
  • Rhaegar Targaryen was well known as a reclusive, scholarly prince who one day out of the blue decided to take part in a tourney against the best knights in the kingdom... and won, despite only ever reading about tourneys. He then promptly ran off with the protagonists' sister, unintentionally helping to set off a Civil War (though his Caligula dad did most of the work by killing some nobles in horrible fashion for no reason) by pissing-off her betrothed, hot tempered Action Hero and future king Robert Baratheon, and the only man in Westeros who doesn't think Rhaegar was the most awesome badass Worthy Opponent who ever walked the Earth. The two eventually fought and though Rhaegar lost, he is said to have fought valiantly and bravely in a truly epic battle.
  • Samwell Tarly. Chides himself constantly for being cowardly, fat and useless. Yet, he actually manages to kill an Other. By accident, but still. Also, his extensive knowledge makes him into a non-combatant badass, either way.
  • Stannis Baratheon weaponizes his fantastic memory, as well as quiet love of historical and tactical minutiae that, frankly, bore most other people rigid when brought up in general conversation, as one of the setting's premier battle strategists.
  • Rodrik Harlaw is an Ironborn noble and therefore a raider and pirate, but he is also nicknamed Rodrik the Reader for his obsession with reading. He is 'constantly' seen reading, including e.g. while captaining his longship. A few of his peers seem to despise him for that, but not most - he is well respected among the Ironborn and largely seen as a good leader and warrior with an unusual hobby.
• Soon I Will Be Invincible's Dr. Impossible. He's the smartest man in the world and not particularly intimidating physically but is superhumanly strong and tough.
• The Southern Reach Trilogy: In the first book, the biologist rarely alludes to it in her point of view but she notices that she's significantly stronger than the surveyor, who is the team soldier. Later on, she reminisces about how the entire expedition was given extensive physical conditioning and weapons training before they went in. In the second book, where the physical descriptions of many of the characters are given, Control notes that the biologist is almost the same height as him and judging by the muscles between her neck and shoulders, looks very strong. Finally, the biologist survives 30 years in Area X before succumbing to it and turning into a monster that's alien even by Area X standards.
• Spellhacker: Professor Aric Silva is an elderly, mild-mannered scientist. Despite this, his magic is powerful enough to fend off several MMC guards.
• Harold Lauder from Stephen King's The Stand probably qualifies, although it's somewhat subverted in that years of being bullied, ignored, and rejected leave him bitter to the point of using his considerable skills and intelligence for evil rather than good.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • Annihilation presents Jedi Master Gnost-Dural (who had previously appeared in other media), who is both a Jedi Archivist and a Master Swordsman with proficiency in most, if not all, of the different lightsaber combat styles.
  • Darth Plageuis from the eponymous novel Darth Plagueis. Like most Sith, Plageuis is a lethal combatant, able to kill hundreds of opponents at once. However, unlike most Sith, he studies the Dark Side in a manner similar to a biologist.
  • Darth Bane has Darth Zannah. In contrast to her Genius Bruiser mentor Darth Bane, Zannah is fairly lean. But, she's a master of force sorcery that requires intense study and academic dedication.
  • Senior Anthropologist Hoole, first introduced in The Illustrated Star Wars Universe, is a professional academic, Bold Explorer, and Shi'ido shapeshifter known for going to incredible lengths to document obscure planets. In his first appearance alone, he crosses the deserts of Tatooine alone and unassisted, dodges the worst of the planet's criminal underworld, and outruns the Tusken Raiders. As a main character of Galaxy of Fear, when he isn't taking notes, he's saving the day with his shapeshifting powers, either rescuing the Arranda twins or getting the drop on the villains with a brawny combat form.
• Neal Stephenson is fond of these:
  • The avout of Anathem study logic, math, and philosophy their whole lives, which makes them the perfect people to storm a super-advanced "alien" space ship. This goes double for Fraa Lio and the avout of the Ringing Vale, who study the science of combat.
  • Snow Crash features Hiro Protagonist. He's one of the world's best programmers and shows equal skill in swordfights and car chases.
  • Casimir Radon from his first book, The Big U, a "skinny, unhealthy-looking nerd" who shows immense courage and near-superhuman strength in every crisis.
  • In Zodiac, Sangamon Taylor is an intellectual environmentalist and a bit of a thrill-seeker who throws himself into many dangerous situations and kills off a few hitmen with his driving and seamanship. Even on his daily bicycle commute, he plays chicken with heavy traffic.
  • Nell in The Diamond Age is basically the literal embodiment of this, as nearly everything she knows—including combat—she got from her “magic book”, which is actually “a parallel computer of enormous size and power, carefully programmed to understand the human mind and give it what it needed.”
• Half-Human Hybrid Shane Myers from Strange Little Band is one of these. He's generally quiet and unassuming. More interested in his research and family than anything else. He can also kick ass both physically and psychically when he needs to.
• Cletus Grahame in Gordon R. Dickson's Tactics of Mistake. He's a librarian. With a Medal of Honor. He's also The Chessmaster.
• Rowan Longstripe in Tasakeru is a quiet, even-tempered, philosophical type. He also carries around a gigantic morning star as big as the other characters' heads. And it has spikes.
• Aramis from The Three Musketeers: His life ambition to become a priest and his writing a thesis on the hand positions used for ritual blessings in the Catholic Church does not prevent him from being a member of an elite military unit and having martial skills on par with his less intellectual comrades-in-arms.
• Time Scout: As a rule, time guides and time scouts have to be very, very knowledgeable about the past. Clothes, weapons, language, dialect, accent, dancing, fencing, fighting, shooting, riding...
• Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife would like to be just a simple librarian, but his chronological-impairment tends to leave him in situations where he needs to mug people for pants. As such, he's managed to become very good at beating the crap out of people. (He's mostly self-taught.)
• Atticus Finch of To Kill a Mockingbird follows this well. Scout actually calls him "feeble" when compared to other fathers, pointing out that he's nearly fifty. He spent most of his time inside, reading and working as a lawyer and always giving fortune-cookie-ish advice to the kids. But when a rabid dog comes slinking into the neighborhood, he dispatches it cleanly with a rifle and Miss Maudie reveals that he was formerly known as "One-Shot" for his expert marksmanship. One reason he won't hunt anymore is that he's too good and it's not fair to the animals. After this day, Scout never thinks of him as feeble again.
• Tortall Universe
  • The Immortals: Numair Salmalín was university-educated in Carthak, he is The Archmage of Tortall, and so absentminded he might accidentally put you under a mild hypnotism just by staring at you.
  • In Protector of the Small, Kel's best friend, Nealan of Queenscove, was studying at the university to be a healer before he switched to knighthood, so he's incredibly knowledgeable and trained in debate technique to boot.
  • In the Trickster's Duet, Dovasary Balitang might not be an Action Girl, but she's so sharp and politically savvy it becomes badass. If she does need to put down her book, she's quite good at archery. As Prince Bronau discovered.
• In the Bizarro Universe Transformers: Shattered Glass, the Decepticons have quite a few Badass Bookworms, and the Autobots also have a few. But the two most notable are probably:
  • The Decepticons have Razorclaw, a diminutive wolf-former who is The Professor and a Team Dad/Mentor who likes to lecture his two students. When it's time for battle, though, he's ferocious and quite capable of ripping the heads off of Autobots much bigger than he is.
  • And the Autobots have Blurr, a Wicked Cultured ex-professor who's usually very calm and unassuming, but is a member of Optimus' elite attack squad and can absorb kinetic energy to become a quick and deadly warrior when needed.
  • And in the G1 cartoon spinoff Transformers: Wings of Honor, when the Elite Guard finds itself low on members, they take in two "desk jockeys" as volunteers—one of which turns out to also be a sharpshooter, and the other of which once dispatched Decepticons using a desk stapler.
• Harry Turtledove’s "Trantor Falls": Gilmer, a Galactic Conqueror with an army large enough to take most of Trantor is impressed by the students-turned-soldiers when he visits the University, which is the one sector of the City Planet that he hasn't won by force. These college students had fought his soldiers back multiple times, and he was invited to discuss terms for peace. The Dean of the university is their general, the head librarian is their chief of staff, and their dietician is their quartermaster.
• Vibeke from Valhalla is the brains of the group, but is as tough a warrior as the rest.
• Christian Ozera from Vampire Academy. His intelligence is mainly spotlighted in the first novel, when he figures out the nature of Lissa's magic. He is very intelligent and observant, deducing things out of simple clues. He proves to be badass in Shadow Kiss, when his fire powers kill many Strigoi.
• Two from The Vampire Chronicles:
  • Marius de Romanus. Marius is a reserved and knowledgeable scholar who would much rather study than fight. But, he's also one of the most powerful vampires in existence. An example of this is in Blood and Gold, when he destroys an entire room full of enemy vampires through his fire-manipulation abilities.
  • Pandora. She is a scholarly tomboy who rebelled against he father and be like the rest of the guys. However, she's more than capable of beating down a group of would-be rapists.
• Victoria has John Rumford, a captain of the US Marine Corps. Rumford is by temperament a bookish scholar type, who has read everything from Tacitus to Tolkien, but also a charismatic, hands-on officer and leader. After he is cashiered from the Corps for sexism, he forms a vigilante militia to clean up his old crime-infested neighborhood—Which soon comes to play an important part in the greater picture, as the dystopian near-future America of the setting descends into widespread political violence and tyranny.
• Most characters in Void Domain are shown reading books on a fairly frequent basis. Most characters tend to have some element of badass to them as well. Zoe Baxter and Eva stand out.
• In War and Peace Pierre is stout and clumsy with big hands and an awkward manner. He spends most of his time reading or discussing philosophy, but he's also Jean Valjean strong—in an early part of the story, he picks up a fully-grown bear and "dances around the room with it". He seems quite harmless unless the two most important people in his life are involved: Natasha and Napoleon, and then he's threatening to bash your head in with a paperweight, as Anatole finds out.
• Brandark Brandarkson from The War Gods is another David Weber example. Brandark grew up in a place where literacy or any sort of education was considered a sign of weakness. Therefore, the only way he could survive as a bookworm was to be so badass he could beat up anyone else in his clan.
• Sociopathic Hero Jobe Wilkins of the Whateley Universe. Published research papers in biology when he was about ten. Has more biology patents than some entire sections of the United Nations. Just developed a new cure for dysentery. Looks like a scrawny little weasel. Outsmarted a team of trained criminals from the Deville Academy, and then beat the crap out of the one who hadn't yet been infected by the disease Jobe was just researching, in a Moment of Awesome that was also a Funny Moment even though he was giving the villains hideous diseases. In his Combat Final, he nearly beat Punch, who is a TK brick who can knock over a car with one finger.
• The Number Man from Worm is a bookish, spectacled man who normally serves as a super-accountant. His power over complex math, however, is very versatile; it allows him to see the vectors of incoming attacks, plan controlled demolitions on the fly, wallrun horizontally and shrug off multi-storey drops.
• Derek Vandaveer of The Zenith Angle by Bruce Sterling is primarily a computer science geek specialising in networks, but well able to handle himself in a fight and undertake illegal black ops. Part way through the book he spends a lot of time working out his frustrations on an exercise machine, so maybe he's taken a level in badass, but there is a strong implication that the underlying attitude was there all along.

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