This week's Top 10 is . . . The Top 10 Villains, Criminals, and other Nasties in Fiction.
I do sooo love a good baddie, so here goes with my list (in no particular order):
♥ Nils Bjurman - the creepy sadistic bastard who abuses his authority and preys upon lovely Lisbeth in Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
♥ Sauron - the all-seeing eye of Mordor, master of the Ringwraiths, and probably the scariest villain in literature to never make a physical appearance, all in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings
♥ Aslan - argue with me all you want, but what else do you call a 'friendly' lion who convinces a group of children to naively risk their lives in his schemes, only to kill them all, end the world, and basically say thanks for playing (C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia
)♥ Boris Dragonasi - the vampire-controlled necromancer/necrophiliac villain of the first Necroscope
novel, and one of the few villains who have ever truly shocked me (Brian Lumley writes freakier vampires than you will ever read elsewhere, but Boris comes out on top for being human . . . and evil)♥ Immacolata - the beautifully dangerous sorceress who wishes to destroy the Seerkind and their hidden world of Clive Barker's Weaveworld
♥ Ben Cortman - head vampire (and all around cruel guy) from Richard Matheson's I Am Legend
(never once portrayed properly in any of the movie adaptations, I might add)♥ Randall Flagg - the demonic, multi-dimensional, never-quite-dead villain from Stephen King's The Stand
, The Eyes of the Dragon
, and The Dark Tower 
saga♥ Raistlin Majere - the sickly, traitorous, back-stabbing villain (with the hour-glass eyes) of the Dragonlance
Saga♥ Elric - yes, technically he's the anti-hero of his self-named Elric
saga , but any sickly albino sorcerer who wields a soul devouring sword, murders his friends, betrays his people, and destroys the world, counts as a villain in my book♥ Anomander Rake - my favourite villain of the immense Malazan Book of the Fallen
Saga, particularly for the exploration of his sword Dragnipur and the horrors of the demonic prison contained within, to which he condems the souls of his victimsThere you have it - 10 characters I'd very much like to avoid running into on a rainy night.
♥
Nice picks! Sauron made my list as well. Good call with Aslan. I hadn't thought of him! You can check out my top ten here.
ReplyDeleteYay for Sauron! I haven't seen him popping up on too many lists but he made mine. Interesting take on Aslan there!
ReplyDeleteAslan? What? He's my hero.
ReplyDelete-Anne
http://headfullofbooks.blogspot.com
I was taken aback at seeing you have Aslan on your list of villains. But, I've only ever read the Lion, the Witch & the Wardrobe (in which he didn't seem too bad) and I've seen the movie Prince Caspian. So I honestly have no idea how bad he can behave, but it took me by surprise--especially considering the parallels between him and what little I know about Jesus from the Lion, the Witch, & the Wardrobe.
ReplyDeleteAs an adult, I fully understand the Christian allegory in Narnia. I get that Aslan is supposed to be Christ, that the Last Battle is armageddon, etc. I don't like it, and find it a little too heavy handed for my tastes, but I get it.
ReplyDeleteAs a child, however, who loved/laughed/lived with Susan, Lucy, and the boys for 7 books . . . their deaths were not the happy ending I expected. The lion who called on them, who put them through so much, and who then killed them all . . . yeah, he'll always be a villain in my little girl heart.
I don't know many of the people on your list, honestly! :D I've never been able to read the Chronicles of Narnia, so while I was surprised to see Aslan on your list, I can't really argue for or against it, ha!
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