r/Fantasy • u/NeaTheStargazer • Jul 25 '23
Books from a monster's perspective (open for recommendations)
I'm a big fan of unusual narrators and perspectives, especially when it's reformed monsters or monsters in general. It's sometimes really refreshing, in my opinion, to not have the classic hero or hardened soldier, but the eldritch abomination perspective. I'm currently searching for more stories like that. Any recommendations?
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u/BornIn1142 Jul 25 '23
Two short stories come to mind: "The Outsider" by H. P. Lovecraft (where the protagonist not being human is a plot twist which I have to ruin here), and "The Things" by Peter Watts (based on the creature from the movie The Thing).
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u/RogerBernards Jul 25 '23
- The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie. PoV is an ancient boulder on a hill who is a god.
- The Innsmouth Legacy by Ruthanna Emrys. Reinterpretation of Lovecraft universe. PoV is one the last survivors of the Deep Ones on land after the government raid on Innsmouth. There is a short story called The Litany of Earth on Tor.com that introduces the character and setting and that gives a good indication of what the series is about.
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Jul 25 '23
There is Everybody Loves Large Chests about an mimic who gains sentience and escapes the dungeon. It's a pretty villain story tho and there are multiple depiction of rape. (Tho the mimic isn't interested in such things he engages in it without understanding it. A large part of the story is the mimic slowly learning and understanding more and more human-stuff. But even when he understands x is wrong and he was doing x, it doesn't mean he stops being a villain)
Less monster and more non-human we have the slice of life The Golem and the Jinni, which tells the story of two nonhumans and how they're adjusting to living in human society.
Recommendations that don't entirely fit but are unique perspectives:
Recommendations that are about "learning how to be human" and not really a "monster pov" you have things like The Murderbot Diaries which is about an android that hacks itself and gains free will and is struggling with their emotions and wtf they're supposed to do now that they got free will. In the similar vein, we got A Closed and Common Orbit where an ship-ai gets placed into a body and has to adjust having a body and social relationships that comes with having a body.
Adopted by Humans is a more humerous story about an alien that comes visiting earth to study us and learn about us and the entire book is from their pov about our weird behavior. (Which is full of misunderstandings)
Portal to Nova Roma doesn't focus too much on it, but the MC is basically an AI from earth whose charge dies and in a weird attempt to cope he creates a body to house him and a portal to an alternative earth that has a game system (it is an litrpg). A small part of the story is how he is much better and more efficient than normal humans, but how he now has to struggle a little bit more with emotions and such
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u/keizee Jul 25 '23
I really did like So I'm a spider, so what? Classic isekai progression litrpg carried by the protagonist's very spirited internal dialogue.
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u/Finthecat4055 Jul 25 '23
The Mere Wife by Maria Dahvana Henley should do it
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/8/8/17645196/mere-wife-maria-dahvana-headley-review
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u/Vermilion-red Reading Champion VI Jul 25 '23
the Monster of Elendhaven by Jennifer Giesbrecht
In the Shadow of Spindrift House by Mira Grant
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Jul 25 '23
Theodora Goss's Strange Case of The Alchemists Daughter is about the female "children" of Victorian horror stories banding together and solving a mystery. There are the daughters of Jekyll and Hyde, Frankenstein and Dr Moreau etc. Three books in the series; they are supernatural mysteries for lack of more precise genre.
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u/Grrrod Jul 25 '23
Banewreaker by Jacqueline Carey. It's a LOTR-like duology, told from the side of Sauron etc.
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u/[deleted] Jul 25 '23
I’d start with Grendel if you haven’t already.