Numbers. Malazan is simply not as big as the other series on this list. Of course I don’t know exact sales numbers, but Malazan’s been going for almost twenty years, and Erikson’s never hit #1 on the NYT Bestseller List that I can see. And Malazan’s certainly not on the list of bestselling books of all time like the rest of the entries on this list, Rothfuss excluded.

If I were going to refer to a smaller series with excellent female characters, I would go with one written by a woman, of which there are many—which have largely been underpromoted by their traditional publishers, which is the whole point of this article. The tentpole series of the whole fantasy genre ARE the tentpole series because a bunch of old dudes decided to promote them harder.