The Women of Natasha Pulley: Everyone Else

This is the third and final part of a series. Here’s part one and part two.

If you hadn’t gathered by now, Natasha Pulley’s novels are heavily male-centric. The protagonists are men, usually surrounded by men, and the women who do get a place on the page come second to them in every way. Where The Watchmaker of Filigree Street and The Lost Future of Pepperharrow both maintain one major female character per book, the women of The Bedlam Stacks are mostly incidental; in every case, they are sorely lacking next to their male counterparts. Nitpicky though it may seem to dissect this shadow cast of minor characters, I think it’s interesting to see the portrait of femininity that emerges from it and what it says about Pulley’s fiction more generally. (Mild spoilers for The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, and The Bedlam Stacks.)