Thanks, all. I'm not seeing a lot of female characters in the listings.
I was thinking of this a bit more narrowly than some of you, and I can see your points. I'll pick up a few of these recommendations.
This is an interesting point, and one I noticed too. Antiheroes seem to be most common in the modern Grimdark subgenre, which is 100% male writers from what I can tell (there are women, like Kameron Hurley and Anne Bishop, who write really dark stiff, but their names never come up when people list Grimdark titles and authors).
Antihero characters tend to run male too, though Abercrombie has some female characters who may qualify. I suspect that female characters seem to be under more pressure to be "likeable" still, as are girls and women in real life. Mark Lawrence has a female protagonist in his
Red Queen series. I haven't read it, but I'm guessing she may have some antiheroish qualities, if his earlier (male) characters are anything to go on.
Some of the characters in Melanie Rawn's
Dragon Prince series and in Katherne Kurtz's Derayni books (however it's spelled) may be what you are looking for too. It can be hard to tell antagonists from protagonists. They were writing back in a time when it was more common for fantasy protagonists in general to be male, but they did have some female characters in their ambitious, competitive, duplicitous mixes. Their books are sometimes discussed as precursors to the Game of Thrones archetype--many characters competing for success in a somewhat dark, backstabbing world.
