Non-Human Protagonists

[lea_hazel]

What books or book series do you know that have non-human protagonists? I know POV characters are almost always human (or very like human), for maximum reader identification, but what about major supporting characters? I remember reading Moorcock's Swords trilogy, where the hero was a member of the long-lived elf-like species. I know there are quite a few books with elf protagonists but they're often not that different from humans.

Urban fantasy of course has a lot of werewolves, vampires and the like, but seems to have less of the people who were born not human, as opposed to humans who were turned into something else. I have a few books on my reading list that have non-human protagonists, but the majority still seem to cast non-humans in minor or antagonist roles. There are a few series I've heard of that flip the perspective and use traditional antagonist species like goblins or orks as protagonists, although I haven't read any of them (yet).

What books have you read with major inhuman characters? Which did you like best, and least? Which species of inhuman would you most want people to write more of? I gotta vote for dwarves.

Comments

[cesy]

Temeraire probably counts as a major non-human protagonist.

Pterry does a fair number of major non-human characters, but they're mostly very similar to humans so you can identify with them.

[machiavelli_imp]

Although they're not technically non-human, Ian Irvine's fantasy decuplet has a world with four distinct quasi-human species: one (old human) was the "normal" human and the other three were long-lived species from the same primate evolutionary branch. His second series (Well of Echoes) had an entire species of non-humans and the main/supporting characters were evenly divided between humans and the "aliens": it turns out that this isn't quite the full story, but I wouldn't like to ruin the ending for anyone intending to read the books.

As long as the characterisation is strong, I don't think it matters to the reader whether the protagonists are human or not (aside from obvious physical abilities changing the plot). What irritates me is the style of writing that propagates the "humans good, non-humans bad" ethic, or that a character is inherently good or bad depending on their race (*cough* Tolkein *cough*), because it smacks of laziness and becomes very dull.

The subversion series sound interesting: I've never come across them before, aside from a short story from a werewolf's viewpoint.

[lea_hazel]

There's a series about goblins by Jim Hines that I never read, and there's also a webcomic about goblins (called Goblins I'm pretty sure) that I've been saving for when I can't afford books anymore and desperately need something new and free to read.

I am with you on the whole good/bad races thing. I can reluctantly accept villains who are "evil to the core" some of the time, but when a whole race is evil I get downright cranky. In my personal LotR fanon, after the Fourth Age of Men comes the Fifth Age of Orcs.

[duowolf]

Lets see The Howling 3 by Gary Brandner has a main character who is a werewolf from birth though he doesn't know it to begin with. About half of the Xanth books by Peirs Anthony have mains that aren't human as do some of the Dragonlance novels espically the ones dealing with the histories of the world. These range from the normal elves, dwarves etc all the way up to Minotaurs and Dragons. Of course the main books have one of each of the main races (elf, kender, dawrf, human) as a main characters as well all of who get books just about them as backstory.

A series of books by Barbara and JC Hendee begining with Dhampir have a half-vampire and an elf as main characters and of course Vampire Hunter D has a half-vampire main. The Vampire World books(part of the Necroscope series) by Brian Lumley have a vampire from bith as a main character.

[nightbird]

Right now I'm looking at The Dragon and the George by Gordon R. Dickson, which has some significant nonhuman (and pointedly nonhuman) characters -- dragons, wolves, the like -- and Mouse Guard, which is a comic like a less kid-friendly Redwall. There are also the books of Richard Adams -- Traveller, Watership Down, The Plague Dogs, though I'm not sure whether you'd count those as fantasy, even though Watership Down has all that gorgeous mythology and dream-walking. I guess gods and Endless would count as "hyper-human" in a way.

Props for the dwarves -- I'm totally with you on that.

[lea_hazel]

I've been hearing good things about Mouse Guard for a while, I should really check it out. On the other hand with Redwall even the fans seem ambivalent.

[cesy]

The first few Redwall books you read are great. I'd suggest reading in publishing order. After you've read about five or maybe ten of them, later plots and characters all seem the same. The only exception is Outcast of Redwall, in which it is made very clear that evil is inherent in certain species, and upbringing makes no difference. If you can ignore those flaws and avoid that book, they're great adventure stories.

[nightbird]

Agreed! I grew up love love loving the series (and wrote many a spinoff myself), and was reading them long after I realized that it's the same book over and over again. I'd personally recommend starting with Mossflower, since Redwall itself is still sort of finding its footing in the universe and Mossflower is more consistent, but that's purely a personal preference thing. (Mattimeo and The Bellmaker are, I think, both still my favorites. I really need to get my hands on them again.)

[undomielregina]

See, I like Redwall the best of the series, although it's obvious that he seriously rethought his mythology after it, so that there are a lot of mentions in there that don't make sense with later books. It has a sense of menace that most of the later novels lack -- after Mattimeo (maybe Mariel), at least, the villains get a lot less effective and scary, and I still think Redwall has the best climax of the lot.

I'd say that with the exception of The Bellmaker, it's not worth reading past Salamandastron at the very most, which is where they really start feeling formulaic, iirc. The first 3 published are really different from each other and are probably the best he wrote, but while I'll admit that Mariel isn't as good, I have a soft spot in my heart for it.

[holyschist]

Oh, man, I haven't read Outcast--gave up before then--but that inherent-evil thing drove me BONKERS as a kid. Why, Brian Jacques, whyyyy? (Has anyone ever asked him what's up with that?)

I consoled myself that in real life, the badgers would eat all those tasty little mice instead of tucking them into bed.

[reka]

All that comes to mind at the moment is The Dragon DelaSangre by Alan F. Troop. The main character was obviously non-human, which was nice, but Troop failed to make his character at all sympathetic. The hero came off as a total bastard and I cheered for the antagonist, which is really quite rare for me.

[krait]

Late commenter is very late, but:

I AM SO GLAD YOU SAID THIS!

I had the exact same issue with that book -- kept waiting for the idiotic bastard to be brought down in the end, and it just didn't happen. I nearly threw the book across the wall when I realised I was supposed to be empathising with him/he really was the protagonist! Argh. And apparently there's a sequel? So we can have EVEN MORE of the main character being a nasty bastard without a single redeeming feature? Whyyyyy?

Then I went on Amazon to review it (it was that bad!) and found that 3/4ths of the reviewers just looooved it and thought it was great. (I lost a lot of my faith in humanity that day.)

[undomielregina]

I've started to see more Urban Fantasy where werewolves are a separate race, rather than created by biting humans.

One book (with sequels, it's an untitled series) that comes to mind is Rob Thurman's Nightlife. The protagonist is half human, half monster and very aware of the fact. In the main supporting cast, there's a Puck and a vampire (again, born not made) and eventually the born-werewolves, so it's pretty heavy in inhuman races.

[holyschist]

Mercy Thompson in Patricia Briggs' series was born a coyote shapeshifter. She's pretty spiffy, although still human in many respects.

[foxfirefey]

Damn, I'm reading one that has some non-human protagonists, but it is science fiction!

[ivoryandhorn]

The only book that's coming to mind right now is A Companion to Wolves by Sarah Monette & Elizabeth Bear. The wolves aren't human in the least, but they're very much characters in their own right.

[ilthit]

The Death Gate Cycle by Weis and Hickman had at least one book with elf and dwarf protagonists in an ensemble cast with humans. Tad Williams' Tailchaser's Song had a cat protagonist. A lot of the Dragonlance spinoff novels had non-human protagonists, but they weren't very good. If you go into comics, of course, there's Elfquest, Poison Elves, Hellboy etc. not to mention a lot of superhero comics...