Dark Action Girls in literature.
- Animorphs: Rachel begins as an Action Girl but gets closer and closer to this trope as the series goes on. Taylor could be seen as an actual villainous example, though she generally avoids using her unique fighting skills in favor of psychological manipulation.
- Angel of Death: Pretty Pink Ponytails is a highly skilled, sadistic, and unstable fighter. Thus far, she's the only human to survive direct combat with Cody, and the only reason she didn't win is because he, who has super strength and speed and the ability to fire bursts of magical energy from his hand, called the police on a mortal.
- The Blade of the Flame: Makala both before her in-backstory death and after she gets bitten by a vampire. Exhibits Clingy Jealous Girl traits after the spoilered event too.
- Captain Underpants: Wedgie Woman is one of, if not the most badass villain. Jennifer the Alien and Trixie the Robo-Booger are also pretty tough, and they are implied, but not explicitly stated, to be female.
- The Chronicles of Dorsa: Joslyn saves Tasia from a skilled assassin who it turns out is a woman, Ty'Tsana, and nearly equals her skills. It turns out she's from the Order of Taghren, who are all-female witch assassins working against an unknown enemy.
- Codebook of the Cosmos: Pernica the Swift faces as many as four street robbers in a row with a double set of knives, and wins. In The Dominion Device, she even confronts a hall full of Germanic warriors. With a drinking horn. And earns their respect by giving black eyes to a couple of them.
- Codex Alera: Phrygiar Navaris is a psychotically obsessive swordswoman and one of the top five blades in her civilization—she normally hires herself out as a mercenary and has racked up a kill count in the hundreds during her life (and those are just the ones we know about). Aquitainus Invidia from the same series is more like The Vamp, The Chessmaster, and a traitor all in one person, but she's more than capable of getting her hands dirty if she has to.
- A Court of Thorns and Roses: In centuries past Amarantha was one of the King of Hybern's top generals and fought in the war against the humans. These days she's more of an Orcus on His Throne type and conquered Prythian through guile rather than force, though she's plotting to invade the human realms soon.
- Dark Heart: Wyre is a gleefully sadistic assassin who volunteers her service as a bodyguard to the heroes Myrren and Raine. Later on, Myrren takes a level in badass and becomes one as well in order to fight Wyre when she realizes her real intentions.
- Dragonlance: Kitiara is beautiful, a skilled warrior and, above all else, she is cold and calculating. Power-hungry, she has never been truly able to call someone a friend. In many ways, she and Raistlin are much alike. Neither would hesitate to betray an ally if presented with a guarantee at supreme power.
- The Draka: Exaggerated. The eponymous, ultra-militarist Draka state conscripts all citizen women and have them perform military service just like men, and even their Air Force pilots consistently beat the male infantry veterans and special forces operatives of the United States in hand-to-hand combat thanks to their uber training. In other words, every other random Mook is one of these. One book even lampshades how improbable this is, given their inherent handicap in size, reach and physical strength.
- The Dresden Files: Lara Raith alternates between being Harry's Friendly Enemy and a reluctant ally. Being a White Court vampire, she is superhumanly strong, fast, and durable, but still needs to feed on the life energy of humans.
- The Empirium Trilogy: Queen Rielle is the most powerful elemental in existence. Not only can she use her powers without the need for a casting, but she can manipulate all seven elements; as well as heal any wounds and even resurrect the dead. She can also kill anyone with a single flick of the wrist and even murders her own husband by ripping his heart out.
- The Final Girl Support Group: Stephanie Fugate turns out to be a rare Faux Action Girl version. She is the accomplice of the main killer Skye Elliott, and spends the finale armed and trying to kill the main characters, but is very swiftly defeated. It's confirmed at her trial that Skye committed all of the actual murders, including the time she allegedly kicked a Serial Killer out a window to his death. (She did shoot out somebody's eye, though.) This is a bone of serious contention for her. By contrast, the main characters all earned the Final Girl moniker the hard way, by being the Sole Survivors of massacres who defeated the slashers who tried to kill them, and they prove that they've Still Got It even in their forties (and, in Julia's case, being wheelchair-bound from injuries sustained in her last ordeal).
- Girls Don't Hit: Joss is a highly capable assassin who can use a gun and also trains in hand-to-hand combat as it may be necessary sometime. She trains Echo to perform as a hitwoman like her.
- Good Omens: War is as deadly as she is beautiful. Considering she's the Anthropomorphic Personification of war, this shouldn't be a surprise.
- The Great God's War: Amandis is a devotee of the Spirit and self-proclaimed assassin. Her temper is unpleasant, her morals are uncertain, and she's very, very quick with a knife, to the point that Bifalt (who is a trained soldier and the veteran of a number of battles) admits that if she decided to kill him, he'd have no way of stopping her.
- Harry Potter: Bellatrix Lestrange is Voldemort's Dragon and a total Yandere for him. She takes great joy in torturing others and murders Sirius Black, Dobby, and Tonks—not to mention permanently hospitalising Neville's parents due to prolonged exposure to the Cruciatus curse.
- The Hunchback Assignments: Miss Hakkendottir is beautiful, thoroughly evil, and considers Mooks a disposable/consumable resource. Extra points for her two half-mechanical attack dogs...
- The Hunger Games: Female Careers, since they've been trained for the games their whole lives like the boys have. This includes Clove from the first book, and Cashmere and Enobaria from Catching Fire. Enobaria in particular even had her teeth sharpened to a point after ripping out someone's throat with her teeth in the Games she won. (Annie is the exception because her arena got flooded and she won by virtue of being the only one not to drown.) This is an Informed Attribute for Glimmer, Cashmere, and the unnamed girl from District 4 in the first book, since we never fully see them in action, but Cashmere at least must have been one in the past since she won her Games.
- InCryptid: Margaret Healy, being a member of the Covenant, is every bit the badass Action Girl her estranged cousins the Price-Healy family are. She serves as a foil for Verity and Antimony, her distant cousins whom she loathes for betraying the Covenant (read: not wanting to kill Benevolent Monsters and Non Malicious Monsters).
- Inkmistress:
- Ina is a powerful fighter, casting fire on enemies. She's even more formidable in her form as a dragon. In her quest to gain the throne, Ina grows very brutal.
- Nismae, Hal's sister, is a trained assassin. There are several other women too in her group of assassins, the Nightswifts, who are capable as the men. She's ruthless and allied to Ina.
- Interviewing Leather: Leather is a mix of Dark Action, Perky Goth, and possible Dark Magical Girl undertones
- The Iron Teeth: Herad the Black Snake leads a group of bandits and is a merciless killer who does indeed like the color black and knives.
- James Bond:
- The Facts of Death: Hera Volopoulos is raised by Konstantine Romanos, the novel's Big Bad, to be the top of her field in combat and assassination.
- DoubleShot: Margareta Piel is a killer with an insatiable bloodlust who specializes in daring assassinations and is attracted to other deranged people like herself.
- Millennium Series: Lisbeth Salander slashes the throat of one thug with a broken bottle and scares his gang off by acting herself, violates her sadistic guardian and blackmails him with evidence of his rape, reveals her solution to her abusive father was to Kill It with Fire, attacks then chases down a Neo-Nazi who she causes to crash before leaving for dead, and that's just the first book. And she's one of the good guys.
- Mortal Engines: Hester Shaw becomes a completely merciless killer. Stalker Fang is at least as much of a bad girl. Being horribly crippled then turned into Brain in a Jar inside a Killer Robot chassis can do that to someone.
- Nick Carter:
- Perhaps the most dangerous dark action girl is Dazaar the Arch Fiend. Her specialty is knife throwing; she can throw a knife hundreds of yards with extreme accuracy.
- Zanoni the Woman Wizard is a skilled hypnotist and chemist (poisons are her specialty). She truly is a nasty piece of work. Once, after being captured by Nick, he warns her not to try to "make love" to him as a way to get out. Her reply conveys her fiendishness: "Have no fear, my pretty man, my cornucopia of driveling goodness. When I make love to you, it will be to your articulated skeleton—to your empty, fleshless skull—to your heart preserved in alcohol and your liver thrown to the dogs."
- Old Kingdom: Sabriel is a subversion of the trope, being a necromancer with stereotypical colouring who inspires fear in her enemies, but is instead the hero of the story, as she is a Hunter of His Own Kind. Clariel fits the trope more and more over the course of her book, eventually completely embodying it when she becomes Chlorr of the Mask, a necromancer and later one of the Greater Dead.
- Parasitology: Tansy in Mira Grant's Parasite subverts this trope by combining it with Genki Girl and working for the least bad of the factions in the story. But she still actively searches for reasons to kill things and without the Morality Chain of her creator would do so for the most trivial of reasons.
- The Radix: Adriana Borgia, modern descendant of 'that' Borgias, is one of the novel's strongest ass-kickers, and a master of Cold-Blooded Torture.
- Redwall:
- Mossflower: Tsarmina the Wildcat Queen doesn't seem like one of these at first. A scheming evil princess who poisons her father and frames her brother so she can become queen, Tsarmina leaves the fighting to others, preferring not to dirty her paws. During the final battle she tries to run away and is cornered by Martin the Warrior, the most famed fighter in the series' history, and you figure, game over. Instead she goes absolutely berserk and proceeds to give Martin the beating of his life, before his Implacable Man status spooks her into a mental breakdown and she runs into a lake. Huge, utterly mad, and capable of shredding chainmail with her claws alone she definitely belongs on this list. Plus, the physical and psychological fallout from this battle scars Martin for the rest of his life.
- The Pearls of Lutra: Sagitar Sawfang, head of Emperor Ublaz's Trident Rats has a reputation as a formidable fighter, and lives up to it when she kills Rasconza, despite having taken a knife through her chest. Corsair ferret Romsca is also a deadly combatant, fighting Monitor-General Lask Frildur to a Mutual Kill; Lask's successor as Monitor-General, Zurgat, is the same sort of slavering monster that he himself was, despite being female.
- Marlfox: Three of High Queen Silth's daughters, Vannan, Predak, and Ziral, are capable fighters, wielding their axes with the same skill as their brothers. Silth herself was purportedly a vicious fighter back in her day, though now, old and sick, she isn't up to much fighting.
- Renegades: A number of villains are women, including The Detonator, Hawthorne and Nightmare, all of whom can go toe to toe with their male counterparts.
- The Stainless Steel Rat: Angelina, supposedly reformed murderess turned Special Corp agent/wife of 'Slippery Jim' DiGriz. Always carries an arsenal of lethal weaponry on her person, and has the ability to produce a .75 calibre recoilless from Hammerspace whenever she thinks her husband is getting too slippery for her taste. Supposedly, her more psychopathic impulses have been removed by the psych-techs, but Jim frequently has to restrain her natural enthusiasm for killing and torture.
- Star Wars Legends:
- Mara Jade (pre-Heel–Face Turn), Aurra Sing, and every female Sith ever are among the most notable.
- Asajj Ventress, Count Dooku's Sith apprentice... cruel, skilled, and a major threat, with a tendency to pull a Not Quite Dead every time she seems defeated. While she ultimately turns against Dooku, it's not a Heel–Face Turn so much as a case of Screw This, I'm Outta Here.
- Fate of the Jedi: Vestara Khai is Ben Skywalker's Sith girlfriend who was skilled enough to earn a promotion to Lord and help kill an evil god alongside him.
- Maul: Lockdown:
- The brutal, undefeated Yuuzhan Vong gladiator champion Maul fights in the opening scene is believed to be female by Warden Blirr.
- Warden Sadiki Blirr is running a Gladiator Games, orders brutal executions without hesitation, and personally kills some of Jabba's enforcers and pet dragons when Jabba attacks the prison.
- Sinister cult leader Komari Vosa is a former Jedi, and her combat skills deeply impress Maul.
- Shadows of the Empire:
- Guri is a deadly female droid who serves as Prince Xizor's personal aide and assassin. She can easily kill most people (only Luke ever beats her). Guri is The Dragon to Xizor.
- Early on, Xizor also hires the Pike sisters as assassins due to their skills as martial artists. He watches a holo where they wipe out eight armed stormtroopers and approvingly notes neither is even breathing hard after. Both are experts in an unarmed combat technique; Shadows of the Empire: Evolution also shows they're equally skilled with blasters.
- Sweet & Bitter Magic: Marlena is alive, it turns out, and the witch using dark magic that has caused all the misfortune in the story. When they finally meet, she and Tamsin fight each other in a brutal Wizard Duel.
- Sword of Truth:
- The Mord-Sith began as Darken Rahl's servants, whom he employed to capture and break his enemy's wizards. Even without their Anti-Magic abilities they were often formidable fighters, with Cara being a particular standout. Under Darken Rahl's control they were and brutal and deadly, to the point that even their mere presence could terrify regular soldiers. Especially when they were wearing their red leathers. A Mord-Sith wearing red indicated she meant business, and your blood was about to end up all over her.note
- Death's Mistress, aka Sister Nicci. She serves the Imperial Order in their war against the "good" factions, a terror to the forces of the New World and a heroine to the Order, and is one of the main threats to Richard Rahl in Faith of the Fallen. Interestingly enough, she is also a Dark Magical Girl, Femme Fatale, and a Stalker with a Crush at times. Eventually, she does a High-Heel–Face Turn and joins Richard's party, and is afterwards their Black Magician Girl.
- Throne of Glass: Celaena/Aelin, especially in the first book. Not shocking, given that she's a conflicted, supernaturally-angry, secretive assassin. The shit well and truly hits the fan when she goes toe-to-toe with fellow DAG, bloodthirsty witch Manon Blackbeak.
- Trinton Chronicles: Sara can count as this with her bone control powers.
- Two Serpents Rise: Malina Kekapania poisons a city's water supply, kills a god, and awakens giant fire serpents to chase foreign sorcerers, whom she saw as an occupying force, out of the city.
- Whateley Universe:
- Vamp, the bad girl of The Necromancer's team. She beat Bladedancer in a fair fight.
- Winter (the daughter of supervillains).
- Cutlass (wants to become a henchwoman to a supervillain), who ripped up the Cadet Crusaders.
- Olympia, who may be closer to Ax-Crazy.
- Zero Sight: Deuteragonist and vampire Rei Bathory employs Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique, is a Blood Knight, feeds on humans and werewolves whenever she has a chance, loves black, and can go One-Winged Angel. Without her Blind Obedience to one of the good guys, she would probably be one of the villains instead of one of the heroes...
