Welcome to Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly bookish meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl that features a different bookish topic every week.
Today’s topic is Ten Characters Authors Surprisingly Redeemed (which characters did you not like at first, but grew to love by the end of the book?)
Topics like this one are difficult because while I’ve definitely got a whole bunch of characters I didn’t like that I ended up liking, I can never think of them when I need them! But I did some digging and went through my books read and managed to come up with ten, whew!
Top Ten Redeemed Characters
- Glokta from The Blade Itself (and the whole The First Law Trilogy) – He’s a royally sanctioned torturer and inquisitor and does a lot of bad things. But he’s also a very interesting character and may be my favorite character in the series.
- Mary from The Secret Garden – She starts out really spoiled and contrary, which to be fair, isn’t really her fault, but becomes such a lovely person in the end.
- Colin from The Secret Garden – Another spoiled and annoying child who becomes a much nicer person.
- Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol – He starts out so horrible and stingy that his name has become synonymous with stinginess.
- Jaime Lannister from A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire series) – There are several other characters who have redemption stories in this series, but I think Jaime’s arc is one of my favorites.
- Naomi from You Deserve Each Other – Naomi and Nicholas, listed below, are the MCs of this book and they are both insufferable at the beginning of the book to the point that you don’t know how you could enjoy the story at all. I was happily surprised to be wrong.
- Nicholas from You Deserve Each Other – See above.
- Linus from The House in the Cerulean Sea – Linus wasn’t evil or anything, just naive and maybe too much of a rule-follower, but sometimes the people who are “just doing their jobs” can cause a lot of harm. Glad to see things change.
- Cardan from The Cruel Prince (The Folk of the Air series) – He was such an insufferable bully. I hated him. Then I loved him.
- Boromir from The Lord of the Rings – Maybe one of the most well-known examples of redeemed characters? Or maybe it’s just because LOTR is one of the most well-known books! Either way.
Have you read any of these books? Did you like any of these characters? Who are your favorite redeemed characters?
