Morally Bankrupt Protagonists I Fell in Love With

As a 6th grade English teacher, one of the first units I teach every year focuses on characters. We do a recap of things they should have learned in elementary school, how to cite textual evidence, and a few other basic skills they’ll need in middle school. My favorite part of the unit, however, is showing them stories where the main character isn’t necessarily a ‘good’ person. While I love a protagonist I can unapologetically root for, I’ve found that I often can’t stop thinking about characters who are a bit more complicated. 

So, here are some of my favorite characters that kept me up at night. They’re complex, charismatic, and addictively readable. When thinking about my all-time top 10, four currently appear on this list. You’ll find redemption, unapologetic villainy, and everything in between. 

Welcome to Forever, by Nathan Tavares
One of my all-time favorite books, Welcome to Forever focuses on Fox. Fox is a memory editor who lost his own memories after a terrorist attack gave him a traumatic brain injury. Turns out his own memories are a jumbled mess because of the meddling he did in his own head. During rehab, Fox keeps returning to his ex-husband Gabe, who died in the same attack. It turns out Fox doesn’t much like the person he used to be; he was jealous, vindictive, and sometimes violent. He’s desperately trying to become a better person, but meaningful change isn’t as easy as the stories make it out to be. This is a book about a deeply traumatized person who has done some unforgivable things and is trying to find a path to becoming someone better. Go in expecting to get lost in a maze of contradictory and confusing memories, without much to ground you in the plot of the story at first. See a full review here.

The Bone Swans of Amandale by C.S.E. Cooney
Maurice is a rat, with all the ratty goodness that implies. He’s a lecherous thing who revels in melodrama, revenge, and self-interest. This novella (free online here) follows his adventures as he helps his crush (a Swan Princess) get revenge on an evil mayor who has been hunting the swans to turn them into musical instruments. It’s a dark and gruesome version of a fairytale world, and there are times where the plot meanders perhaps a bit too much. Cooney’s rendering of Maurice however, is masterful. He’s repugnant on almost every level, blatantly misogynistic, and so fucking charismatic. Cooney avoided narrative moralizing, instead trusting the reader to not agree that everything Maurice says is the gospel truth. It’s rare that we get such charismatic assholes as protagonists, but as my 6th graders would say, Maurice has ‘aura’.  See a full review here.

The Green Bone Saga, by Fonda Lee
The first book of The Green Bone Saga feels uncannily like the Godfather set in a 1950s Yakuza city. The stories and themes expand beyond that in the sequels, but our protagonists remain the newest generation of one of the most powerful Clans in town (technically this is all legal power and they aren’t criminals, but the Mafia/Yakuza comparison is so transparent that this is a distinction without a difference). A major theme of the books are how tradition and duty can be at odds with the moral compass of a reader, and how morality and normalcy are products of culture and upbringing. Of our leads, I’d only call one a ‘good person’, but the others make a ton of decisions that would not pass muster in our world. Taking the ear of a restaurant owner who switched sides to avoid his business burning down, the murder of innocents out of a sense of duty, and familial blackmail all feature prominently throughout the series, and the protagonists all fall at different spots on the tradition vs development spectrum of moral values. See a full review here.

A Conspiracy of Truths by Alexandra Rowland
A grumpy and elderly storyteller is accused of witchcraft and espionage on his travels. He’s guilty of neither, but is willing to lean into the lie if it means saving his own life. Most of this story has Chant in one of a variety of prison cells, manipulating the city’s various powers with his stories and lies. He’s a bit of a curmudgeonly stereotype, but Rowland captures the portrait of a man used to spinning tales for a living wonderfully. By the end of the story however, you wonder if the right thing for him to do would have been to accept his own death, because to save his own life he left quite the trail of bodies in his wake. The sequel, which follows his then-apprentice as a fully fledged storyteller in his own right, paints a very different picture of Chant and his antics in this book. One of the best unreliable narrators I think I’ve read in the Fantasy genre! See a full review here.

The Scarlet Throne by Amy Leow
Based on the Living Gods of Nepal, The Scarlet Thrones is one of my favorite ‘villain’ stories, and I can’t wait for the sequel to come out. Binsa theoretically holds a god inside her, and the priests are eager to move said deity onto the next girl to inherit Binsa’s title. At 17, she’s already far older than anyone else in her position. Faced with a future where she lacks any agency, Binsa takes steps to secure her future. As the book continues, she unravels from morally dubious actions to protect herself into pure villainy. This isn’t Wicked, where the villain wasn’t ever the evil one, but neither is Binsa evil for the sake of being evil. Truly a delightful read, and my favorite debut from 2024. See a full review here.

Angels Before Man by Rafael Nicolás
This book is a queer retelling of the fall of Lucifer. It traces Lucifer’s descent from God’s chosen into madness and cruelty. There’s more than a bit of disturbing imagery in this book, and don’t expect to feel particularly sympathetic towards Lucifer by the story’s end. Of course, God doesn’t come out looking very appealing either. While the opening to the book is a bit slow and the text has some odd editing choices, the second half takes a sledgehammer to your emotions. Rafael Nicolás’ blunt and lyrical style lends itself very well to the story he’s telling. See a full review here.

Not Even Bones by Rebecca Schaeffer
Full of gore and body horror, Schaeffer has written one of my favorite dark YA series. Nita is the daughter of bounty hunters: her parents capture and sell body parts from magical creatures. When Nita refuses to dissect a boy with magic powers, her mother sells Nita to the market instead. Trapped, Nita must find a way to escape before she’s taken apart limb by limb. This book has more of an antihero vibe, as Nita is (mostly) only doing horrible things to people who are pretty terrible themselves.

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
To Devon and the rest of the Book Eaters, a secretive life snacking on books sounds delightful. Unfortunately, Devon is on the run from her own family after being sold off to a husband she didn’t want to marry. Her son is one of the rare members of her family who wants to feast on human brains instead of books. While attempting to secure a safe future for herself and her child, Devon grapples with the morality of murdering sentient creatures to ‘feed’ her son. This is the book that convinced me that I should begin reading more horror (though this more properly lives in between Horror and Fantasy), and that maybe there’s a future where I actually enjoy vampire stories after all.

Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner
As one of the seminal texts of the Fantasy of Manners genre, I’d appreciate this book even if I didn’t like it much. Thankfully, it stands the test of time quite nicely. A scholar and a duelist get dragged into noble scheming for power in the city of Riverside. Their relationship is toxic, codependent, and full of secrets. The scholar is an asshole and the duelist is a murderer. Their antagonists are perhaps even more depraved than they are, especially since our protagonists are fairly reactive in this story.  See a full review here.

Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin 
With three Hugos under its belt, the Broken Earth Trilogy cemented itself within the Fantasy cannon. The world is dark and brutal, enslaving those with magic for the good of all others. As the newest apocalypse dawns, our story follows three people: a girl whose powers have been discovered, a young woman being trained (groomed) at an academy to control her powers under threat of death, and a woman whose magic stayed hidden until her husband killed one child and fled with another. This is a series about how trauma begets trauma, how systems create monsters, and how your definition of ‘goodness’ twists when placed under the hydraulic press of abuse.