The best books that give the reader a mythical creature’s point of view

A unicorn believes she’s the last of her kind and undertakes a quest to find where the others have gone. This might be my favorite book!

It plays with the fantasy genre in a way that few books can. It seamlessly mixes the whimsical with the mundane and it gives us memorable characters who are unique twists on old tropes.

What I love most about this book is seeing life through the eyes of the unicorn protagonist. She’s a timeless creature—unaging, unchanging—who finds navigating a mortal world to be puzzling, inconvenient, and, at times, terrifying.

Can you imagine being immortal and suddenly being forced to confront your own impossible mortality? Read this book and you will.

The myth of Medusa as told by her and her two Gorgon sisters. I’ve read many versions of Medusa’s story but I particularly like this one.

She’s typically treated just as an obstacle for the hero Perseus but in this book, she’s a given a voice—as an assault survivor, as the unjust victim of a god’s anger, as the baby sister of two immortal “monsters.”

The Gorgons completely rearrange their lives to accommodate the needs of their mortal sister who they love more than anything in the world. And Medusa, though she’s called a monster, makes the conscious decision to live in solitude rather than endanger others with her deadly gaze.

The definition of “monster” gets so blurry it becomes meaningless after reading this book.

The story of two mystical creatures stuck in 1899 New York who have to make their own way in the world.  Despite their different natures, they become unlikely friends and have to work together to survive. 

While I enjoyed the perspective of both supernatural beings in this book, I found the golem especially engaging. Through her eyes, the reader gets an amazingly detailed view of turn-of-the-century New York as well as the intricacies of human behavior. 

The jinni faces different challenges—he’s lost a chunk of his memory—but he also has to adapt to life among people. Wrapped in a rich tapestry of historical details, the story walks us through their processes of acclimating to human society and facing the dangers of their pasts.

In Kolkata, India, a college professor agrees to transcribe a stranger’s collection of notebooks, old parchments, and scribbles on human skins. 

Through his translations, the reader learns about a race of werewolf-like creatures that eat humans and absorb their memories and souls in the process. One such creature, Fenrir, fathers a child by a human woman out of a desire to create life instead of destroying it. 

This book contains a lot of violence but through the eyes of the shapeshifters, the reader gets a sharp look at gender fluidity and relationships between sexes. What I remember most from the book is Fenrir’s point of view being both unnerving and thought-provoking. He’s devoured the knowledge of many humans yet he can’t differentiate between love and hate.

Grendel is the original monster from English literature who killed many warriors and did battle with Beowulf. 

This poignant book tells the story from his point of view. It’s never completely clear what Grendel is, only that he seems to exist somewhere between humans and beasts. He is frustrated by how emotionally drawn he is to the singing he hears in the humans’ mead hall but is equally frustrated by the stupidity of the animals he encounters. 

He knows from first-hand experience how cruel men can be but because he is so alone in the world, he can’t stop himself from seeking them out. Reading this book is a hard look at loneliness, a long walk at the side of a creature whose very existence is painful.