As players on a lion sim game, my guess is that many of you enjoy role play and wild animal characters. However, I’ve noticed that there’s very few stories with animal protagonists being written anymore that aren’t children’s books aimed at a middle grade audience or younger. Even in YA and adult fantasy the focus is overwhelmingly on humans or humanoids.

This has always seems strange to me. For me personally, I find most non-humanoid characters more interesting and easier to relate to than most human characters. My favorite book is Yellow Eyes, a hard-to-find book written about a cougar’s struggle to survive, written back in the 1930s. (There is also a real lack of certain species like wild felines or hyenas in fiction, especially as sympathetic characters.) Do publishers assume we lose the ability to relate or sympathize with animals once we reach our teens?

I’d like to discuss why there aren’t more of these stories out there, and good books you’ve found that feature an wild or fantasy animal’s point of view. I’m mainly looking for less well-known books beyond the older classic novels (White Fang, Watership Down, etc) and current popular series (Erin Hunter books, Wings of Fire, etc), since I’m sure there’s discussions about those already. What are some books with animal protagonists you’ve liked or disliked?