Ever since I was a child, I’ve always wondered what animals thought of humans. Do they see us as loving caregivers, servants who simply feed them, or strange lumbering bipedals? Seeing these questions explored in the likes of Narniaand Tamora Pierce then cemented a life-long love of animal and creature companions in literature. There is something having a protagonist paired with something non-human that I find both endlessly fascinating and revealing. So, of course, it’s a theme that crops up frequently in my own stories, from ghost rams to dingoes to the human-avian rarkyn, creature companions are my happy place in fantasy.
This is the book that made me want to be an author. The worldbuilding and characters so vivid they felt like living, breathing beings whenever I opened the pages. I also blame this series for making me miss a bus, not once, not twice, but four times in one afternoon, I was that enthralled.
I’m also a sucker for stories written in the first person. Call it vicarious living, escapism, or perhaps a bit of both, but the voice of Fitz drew me in and didn’t let me go until the final page. If you love lush worldbuilding, deep (deep) characters, politics, assassins, companion animals, beast magic, and coming of age, this is one I highly recommend.
Voyager Classics - timeless masterworks of science fiction and fantasy.
A beautiful clothbound edition of Assassin's Apprentice, the first book in the critically acclaimed Farseer Trilogy.
In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals - the old art known as the Wit - gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if…
The Cloud Roadsis the first tale of the Books of the Raksura series but can be read as a standalone. It follows Moon, an orphaned young man with the ability to turn into a be-scaled and be-winged flying creature. Not knowing what he is, he has spent his life hiding his other self from his groundling community—until he meets another just like him: Stone.
The imagination that has gone into this world, cultures, and characters second to none. Wells is a master of writing non-human points of views. Her storytelling draws readers into the alienness of her characters yet keeps them relatable as she weaves in the importance (and challenges) of family, community, and belonging.
Nominated for the 2018 Hugo Award for Best Series. "Wells...merrily ignores genre conventions as she spins an exciting adventure around an alien hero who anyone can identify with."-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
Moon has spent his life hiding what he is - a shape-shifter able to transform himself into a winged creature of flight.
An orphan with only vague memories of his own kind, Moon tries to fit in among the tribes of his river valley, with mixed success. Just as Moon is once again cast out by his adopted tribe, he discovers a shape-shifter like himself . . . someone…
Okay, perhaps it’s a little strange to have a human companion on this list but hear me out. The protagonist of this story, the wise-cracking Bartimaeus, is a djinn and is the servant of his human summoner Nathaniel, so technically that makes Bartimaeus and Nathaniel companions to one another.
In the story’s alternative London, magicians rule and compel djinn to grudgingly do their bidding—unless they slip up a summoning and become the breakfast of their Otherworldly servants. The banter in this book is superb, along with hysterical one-liners and amusing (often snarky) footnotes that represent Bartimaeus’s ability to think on several different planes at once. If you want a fun, easy-to-digest read with lots of laughs, this one ticks all the boxes.
The first volume in the brilliant, bestselling Bartimaeus sequence.
When the 5,000-year-old djinni Bartimaeus is summoned by Nathaniel, a young magician's apprentice, he expects to have to do nothing more taxing than a little levitation or a few simple illusions. But Nathaniel is a precocious talent and has something rather more dangerous in mind: revenge. Against his will, Bartimaeus is packed off to steal the powerful Amulet of Samarkand from Simon Lovelace, a master magician of unrivalled ruthlessness and ambition. Before long, both djinni and apprentice are caught up in a terrifying flood of magical intrigue, murder and rebellion.
If you want a feisty, rodent-come feline companion with a taste for eyeballs, then look no further than Sabastien de Castell’s Spellslinger series. Along with a neat magic system and desert worldbuilding, we have Kellen, a young and staggeringly unskilled magic user who is on the cusp of his test to become a mage. If he fails, he’ll become a slave among his clan. Unfortunately, the latter is looking pretty likely, until he meets an Argosi, a mysterious travelling nomad with a deck of cards, and everything Kellen thought he knew and valued is called into question.
While Kellen narrates the story, his squirrel cat companion, Reichis, often steals the show. The first in this series, Spellslinger, is a quick and entertaining read for teens and adults alike.
Kellen is moments away from facing his first mage's duel and the start of four trials that will make him a spellcaster. There's just one problem: his magic is gone.
As his sixteenth birthday approaches, Kellen falls back on his cunning in a bid to avoid total disgrace. But when a daring stranger arrives in town, she challenges Kellen to take a different path.
Ferius Parfax is one of the mysterious Argosi - a traveller who lives by her wits and the three decks of cards she carries. She's difficult and unpredictable, but she may…
If you love the assassin trope mixed with companion creatures, Nevernightby Jay Kristoff is a must-read. When I was first asked to describe the book, the closest comparison I could think of was Hogwarts for assassins. With blood, swearing, and sex scenes. Our protagonist is Mia, a sixteen-year-old girl who has sworn vengeance on the man who orchestrated her family’s fall from grace. She’s determined to join the Red Church, the famed assassin school. But Mia is no ordinary student, she is a darkin, able to bend the shadows to her will. And at her side is Mr. Kindly, a talking shadow cat and familiar to Mia on her bloody quest. Dark fantasy lovers, this is one you don’t want to miss.
In a world where the suns almost never set, a woman gains entry to a school of infamous assassins, seeking vengeance against the powers that destroyed her family. Daughter of an executed traitor, Mia Corvere is barely able to escape her father's failed rebellion with her life. Alone and friendless, she wanders a city built from the bones of a dead god, hunted by the Senate and its thugs. But her gift for speaking with the shadows leads her to the hearth of a retired killer, and a future she never imagined. Now, Mia is apprenticed to the deadliest flock…
Lyss has heard her father’s screams; smelled the iron tang of his blood. She witnessed his execution. And plotted her revenge. Then a violent encounter traps Lyss in a blood-pact with a rarkyn from the otherworld and imbues her with the monster’s forbidden magic. A magic that will erode her sanity. To break the pact, she and the rarkyn must journey to the heart of the Empire. All that stands in their way are the mountains and the Empire’s soldiers—and each other. But horrors await them on the road, horrors even rarkyns fear. The most terrifying monster isn’t the one Lyss travels with... It’s the one that’s awoken inside her. Monsters of a feather flock together.
Growing up in New England, my mother had a set of books that she kept in the living room, more for display than anything else. It was The Works of Edgar Allen Poe. I read them and instantly became hooked on horror. In the seventh grade, I entertained my friends at a sleepover by telling them the mysterious clanking noise (created by the baseboard heater) was the ghost of a woman who had once lived in the farmhouse, forced to cannibalize her ten children during a particularly bad winter. And I’ve been enjoying scaring people ever since.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunged off a waterfall to her death, leaving behind a legacy shrouded in secrets. Her great-niece Julia, a struggling journalist recovering from a divorce, seeks answers decades later.
Tasked with retrieving Dr. Greer’s discovery–a flower that could have world-changing properties–Julia unearths a story rife with hidden agendas and a missionary community unwilling to share the truth. As she confronts the eerie legends and a fellow traveler with his own motives, Julia finds that the longer she stays, the thinner the line between reality and the fantastical becomes until she…
From the award-winning author of Dead Souls and Poe comes an all-new bone-chilling novel where a mysterious island holds the terrifying answers to a woman's past and future.
In 1939, on a remote Pacific island, botanical researcher Irene Greer plunges off a waterfall to her death, convinced the spirits of her dead husband and daughter had joined the nightmarchers-ghosts of ancient warriors that rise from their burial sites on moonless nights. But was it suicide, or did a strange young missionary girl, Agnes, play a role in Irene's deteriorating state of mind?
