YA: Your Athenaeum

In celebration of the 2012 summer reading theme across Rhode Island, Own the Night, every Monday our blog will feature two night-dwellers or otherwise creepy characters facing each other down. Vote on one below, or come on in to the Athenaeum to vote in person and see the full bracket of all the contenders!

In this round, two fierce heroines of YA go head to head. Karou is the protagonist of the eerie urban fantasy Daughter of Smoke and Bone. This plucky art student is also the connection between a race of monsters and the human world, which means defending herself against criminals, assassins and even angels. She’s a master of martial arts, arms herself with a pair crescent-moon knives and her beaded necklace is her secret weapon. With it, she can make small wishes. She can’t summon a bazooka or a Bengal tiger, but she can silence the creak of a floorboard as she sneaks up behind you, or give her enemy a distracting itch.

Katniss Everdeen, of course, is the star of The Hunger Games trilogy. She’s smart, quick, and extremely deadly with a bow and arrow. Like Karou, Katniss has experience with opponents that are beyond human or animal - facing the Capitol’s mutts, mutated creatures designed to kill, on more than one occasion.

I’d like to think that under normal circumstances, these two would team up and fight for world peace - but for now, only one can win. So, who’s left standing? Who will own the night?