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Notes -
Vlad Taltos series by Steven Brust. The books are fun to read. They do explore issues of racism and serfdom, but in a way that doesn't correspond to the modern world, and the main character retains a grounded, no-nonsense attitude.
Both the Dresden Files series and Furies of Calderon by Jim Butcher. The latter is a six-book completed series, with a cool fantasy-meets-Roman-Empire theme.
Joe Abercrombie's First Law trilogy has some of the most vividly developed characters I have ever read in a fantasy novel.
I also considered the first law, but despite the morally grey main characters, it had a modern western feeling to it. The main party includes a woman, who is also a strong, physical fighter. The opponents engage in slavery and dark magic, while the main characters, for all their faults, have clear red lines on that front. Modern-style romance and gender relations in general are quite clearly implied to be the morally correct option. It has been quite some time since I read it so I may be misremembering/forgetting some parts, though.
The Union has gulags out of sight in Angland; one of the main characters had run such a gulag just prior to the novels, and sends people there during.
The penal colonies are imo quite clearly presented as bad, and Glokta likewise as a cynical anti-hero literally broken by life.
Also, this reminds me of another thing that gave it such a modern western feeling: West hangs out a lot with the Prisoners because he gets along with them well, while the prince he is supposed to be with is a complete idiot asshole. This is mirrored in the cast of PoV characters; By far the most insufferable person, and deliberately so, is Jezal, the nobleman, who only redeems himself through the adventure the story is about. The king, meanwhile, is a fat, drooling senile. The first law consistently portrays the aristocracy as vain idiots with few exceptions, and even those exceptions make up their intelligence with malice. On the other hand it idealizes the wretched.
In history however, meritocracy didn't succeed because commoners are better than nobleman, but because the best of the commoners are better than nobleman. However, the average nobleman had always been better than the average commoner in most ways you could care about. Nobleman often suffered higher casualties than commoners during wars due to their bravery, even common-born upstarts would prefer spending time with the noble-born due to their sociability and commoners in general often engaged in the kind of dysfunctional self-hurting behaviour that contemporary lower classes still exhibit much more than contemporary middle and especially upper classes. And this is and was true even more so once you compare criminals with the nobility.
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Her abilities get represented as highly unusual in that world, and the reason for her deviation is important to the plot. Unfortunately, the author provides no such reason for the protagonist of "Best served cold" set in the same world and time. So skip that one, if martial females mess with your enjoyment of the story.
I don't really mind it too much in itself. It's a question of frequency and presentation; It's annoying and stupid that it has become the default, especially so if it's not justified through fantastic elements. But it seemed relevant to the OP.
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Seconding the First Law, with the caveat that some of the (six) protagonists fail pretty hard on the hypocrisy metric.
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