I am currently in the middle of reading CJ Cherryh's really very good Ealdwood books - a superior example of the fantasy-knights-slip-into-faerie subgenre. Cherryh is an exceptionally skilful craftswoman and a brilliant prose stylist - one of those who Stanley Fish called the 'tribe of the sentence-watchers': every single sentence of hers is polished like a gem. There is not one sloppy word, one bad or clunky phrase, one stumble or misjudgement in the many books of hers that I have read so far. I would put her firmly in the category of the 'best of the rest' - not a genre-surpassing talent like Wolfe, Tolkien, Lewis, etc., perhaps, but among the very finest that SF/fantasy literature has to offer within the bounds of genre writing itself.
She is also an interesting example of that fairly rare phenomenon in the field: a female writer who often uses male protagonists. This makes for a fascinating experience - it gives the characters much more of a complicated inner emotional life than they would otherwise have. In fact I would probably use Cherryh's fiction as a good case study into the phenomenon of sex differences in authorial voice - she is, ostensibly, quite a stereotypically 'masculine' writer in terms of subject matter, but it is still I think fairly obviously writes the male perspective from a feminine point of view. I will of course cover my backside as required these days and point out - this really ought not to need pointing out - that there is no value judgement implied in making the observation. But there really is a difference, by and large, between male characters as imagined by male writers, and male characters as imagined by female writers - just as, as we all know, male authors will tend to write female characters very differently to how female writers do. There is nothing wrong with this, and in fact it makes life much more interesting to acknowledge and study it.
That is a bigger subject that might be for future posts, but in the meantime reading Ealdwood got me wondering about other examples from the genre of female writers who often use male protagonists. The other notable one that springs to mind is Lois McMaster Bujold (we can take it as read that JK Rowling is included); are there any other recommendations you would like to make?