Recommend me some companion animal books for someone who hates high fantasy and series
Recommend me some companion animal books for someone who hates high fantasy and series, if you please!
Companion animals: Bond creatures, telepathic or magical companion animals; think anything from Valdemar's horses and Pern's dragons to His Dark Material's daemonsa non-human with an incredibly powerful and meaningful link to a human.
Not high fantasy: I'm fine with second-world fantasy; it's high fantasy's typical tropes and archetypes that I dislike: elves, dwarves, magicians; made up languages, capitalized nouns; rambling epic quests that bridge twelve books.
...or series: Stand-alone novels within a series are fine, whether or not they benefit from knowing the rest of the seriesjust please point me towards those individual books, not the series as a whole (if they all stand alone, then point me towards the best one or perhaps the best starting place). A short-running, completed series (around three books) may work if you think it truly shouldn't be missed, but honestly I'd prefer to avoid those. Stand-alone books with no connection to series are my favorite, and I detest ongoing and/or sprawling epics.
Almost every companion animal book list I can find is a list of series, so this is me asking for individual booksif they come from series, fine, as long as I don't need to read all dozen books of them.
I have read some Valedmar (Heralds of Valdemar, The Last Herald-Mage), His Dark Materials, A Companion to Wolves (but not yet the sequel), Tepper's Grass, but have not actually read any Pern. I prefer almost any animal to dragons, but could give dragons a try; I like my books more dark, psychological, and id-driven rather than fluffy, although I get that this subgenre tends towards wish-fulfillment.
Companion animals: Bond creatures, telepathic or magical companion animals; think anything from Valdemar's horses and Pern's dragons to His Dark Material's daemonsa non-human with an incredibly powerful and meaningful link to a human.
Not high fantasy: I'm fine with second-world fantasy; it's high fantasy's typical tropes and archetypes that I dislike: elves, dwarves, magicians; made up languages, capitalized nouns; rambling epic quests that bridge twelve books.
...or series: Stand-alone novels within a series are fine, whether or not they benefit from knowing the rest of the seriesjust please point me towards those individual books, not the series as a whole (if they all stand alone, then point me towards the best one or perhaps the best starting place). A short-running, completed series (around three books) may work if you think it truly shouldn't be missed, but honestly I'd prefer to avoid those. Stand-alone books with no connection to series are my favorite, and I detest ongoing and/or sprawling epics.
Almost every companion animal book list I can find is a list of series, so this is me asking for individual booksif they come from series, fine, as long as I don't need to read all dozen books of them.
I have read some Valedmar (Heralds of Valdemar, The Last Herald-Mage), His Dark Materials, A Companion to Wolves (but not yet the sequel), Tepper's Grass, but have not actually read any Pern. I prefer almost any animal to dragons, but could give dragons a try; I like my books more dark, psychological, and id-driven rather than fluffy, although I get that this subgenre tends towards wish-fulfillment.