I'm looking for something a bit specific.
Needs:
– Not something human adjacent, like an elf, vampire or a dwarf. Something more akin to an anthro/furry animal or a full on animal, a robot, or a demon! Just something that doesn't feel like a human with extra features.
– Something culturally/world building different. So not just a modern-setting story where the characters are replaced with animals/robots.
– Not a book made for children. preferably something with a demographic of young adult at the very least, preferably older.
– The main character CAN have a human form as long as they spend the majority of the story not in it.
– Similar to the last one, they can start as a human, and transform into something else, as long as this is something that lasts and preferably isn't just changed back at the end
– With the needs I guess I'm just trying to say "I want something that feels like more than just a human with a tail" pretty much.
Preferred (not necessary but appreciated :3)
– Good world building!!
– Queer themes!!
– Well written characters.
– Doesn't just have to be a novel, can be a graphic novel or manga.
I think that's about it really. Sorry if it's a lot!
by noowis
16 Comments
The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells
The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie
The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
Raptor Red is cool it’s all from the POV of a dinosaur.
The Bees is also interesting. POV is a bee living in a bee hive. They have an interesting social structure and religion. It’s not a nonfiction fiction book about bees.
The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper? About a queer capybara pirate
Well, I was going to suggest my favorite book, Watership Down, but it is definitely a “human” story told through the eyes of wild rabbits. A lot of social commentary weaved in there with some great rabbit folklore thrown in for good fun.
The Hollow Kingdom main character is a bird
I don’t know if SciFi is your thing but I recommend the entire Bobiverse series. The main character starts out as a human who died in an accident, his consciousness serves as a blueprint for an AI, the AI gets loaded onto a ship and sent into space, from there he starts producing copies of himself and they work together to establish colonies and rescue humanity from soon to be uninhabitable Earth.
So yeah, the main character is a fleet of ships. They’re all named Bob. It’s amazing, trust me.
Have you heard of the Bobiverse? It’s a 5 book series (idk if it’s completed tbh, last one was 2024) where a man from the 20th century dies and is frozen to be used as the basis for an AI space probe.
I won’t spoil much else, that happens in the first few minutes, but it results in Bob having multiple alien android forms and they’re mostly furry – but not in a Furry way.
It’s a charming, fun series with good worlds building and cool sci-fi concepts. fairly short, the first two are only 10 hours each.
We are Bob/We are Legion is the first one.
Both massively different books but
The Island of Missing Trees
Children of Time
Both feature non human characters/narrators.
Ooh this is a tricky one. You might enjoy The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet- the main character is human, but there’s a lot of major important non-human characters on the crew. It’s sci-fi set on a spaceship, aimed at adults. There’s definitely queer themes and very well written characters.
The Last Dragon of the East is a YA romance where the main characters are reincarnated dragons and spend some time in dragon form. It’s set in unspecified ~historical~ china. There’s a queer relationship between two characters which is central to the plot, but…don’t go into it expecting a fluffy romance from them.
Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun is told from the view of a robot designed to be a companion for a human. In some ways she’s human, or at least tries to be what she thinks a human should be. But the gap comes through both in the plot and in the narration (Ishiguro is a master of first-person voice)
*The Last Werewolf* by Glen Duncan.
Open Throat by Henry Hoke. The main character is a queer mountain lion.
Someone You Can Build a Nest In
Main character can pass as human but is very much not human
Check out M C A Hogarth, specifically her Dreamhealers series! Furry sci-fi/space opera. Dreamhealers is the coziest, about a skunk-centaur guy at space medical school who ends up roommates with an alien elf prince dude and they become BFFs. I know it sounds bonkers (and it is) but it is so enjoyable.