Books with Sirens, Unicorns, Centaurs, Other?

For my 13 in 13 Paranormal Creatures challenge I need to read a book with a siren, unicorn, centaur or other paranormal creature that isn't a vampire, angel, demon, fey, zombie, witch/warlock, mermaid, dragon, ghost or werecreature/shape-shifter. I've done all the others except the zombies and that's easy enough to find.

I read The Last Unicorn for a different 13 in 13 challenge (GD Monthly Reads!) so can't use that one.

Help?

Maybe Ariel by Steven Boyett?

Would a companion count? I.e. a talking magical white horse? In that case you could read just about any of the Valdemar books by Mercedes Lackey.

edit: And what about a god/goddess? There must be several books with those. I'd have to think about an example I really like. Ah, the Sparhawk books by David Eddings, of course!

edit2: oh, oh, what about The lost steersman by Rosemary Kirstein? There are some cool creatures in there, but the book is a part 3, and you'd really have to read book 1 and 2 first. Plus that (trying not to spoiler) the books are a mixture of fantasy and sf, and if it gets too close to sf, it's not really paranormal anymore I suppose...

edit3: the multiple edits are because I'm browsing my bookcase in search of suggestions... Found a few more: the living ships of Robin Hobb perhaps? And there are gods in The summer tree and sequels. And dwarfs, they might count? There are also dwarf gods in the Sparhawk books... And then I wonder how you would feel about the kigh in Tanya Huff's quarter books. They are a type of nature spirits.

edit4: *slaps forehead* How could I forget? Michelle Sagara's Cast in shadow and sequels. It has some nice races. For instance, the leontines, a sort of lion-person. I remember elve-types and shapeshifter-dragon types, so they don't count, but in one of the sequels there is another race. Forgot the name, but they have frills on their foreheads with which they can read people's mind if they touch them with them.

>2 suitable1: & 3 All are great ideas, however, they have to be new books to me and I've read all those!

I'm not real sure god/dess or intelligent animals/embodied ghosts would work. Think more cryptology.

If only I had read Discount Armageddon THIS year. *groans*

Hmm, I'm running out of ideas. Did you catch my last edits? (And can you explain the cryptology comment?)

>5 zjakkelien: Whoops, I meant cryptozoology. But looking it up, even that is the wrong word because that's the study of things like yeti and bigfoot.

I didn't see the edits. I don't want to read multiple books to get to the one with the creature I need. Dwarves are considered fey in my books. I'm not considering gods in this. I've read Cast in Shadow. I might consider a sequel. It's a possibility.

I'd really like to try and find a book with a siren, unicorn or centaur though.

The only centaur I can think of is in one of the Harry Potters. Wait, though. There was another book. Hmm, I forgot the name. I'm not sure if it was fantasy or SF. Let me get back to you on that one.

And here I am again. This was not the first time I forgot the title, I actually asked about this book in Name that book. See here. It's Titan by John Varley. A book about a living planet that has centaurs in it.

you've probably read all of these but The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis? umm... I'm trying to think of other books. I'll try to think of more!

Farslayer's story by Fred Saberhagen has a siren among the main players in it.

Quite forgettable fantasy overall though.

Nevermind, it's a mermaid, which are apparently out.

What about The Island of Doctor Moreau? That's got some interesting creatures in it.

They are kid books, but what about Rick Riordan and his Lightning thief?

E Pluribus Unicorn?

Unicorn Variations?

Do children's books count? Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles (set of 4 books) was cute.

What about a pegasus? Toby Bishops' Horsemistress series isn't amazing, but was interesting enough. Series starts with Airs Beneath the Moon

There are also flying/levitating-through-magical-materials horses (not identified as pegasus) in the Ill-Made Mute and the sequels by Cecilia Dart-Thornton.

You've probably already read Robin McKinley's Pegasus

I just finished My Wicked Vampire by Nina Bangs, and it has sentient magical plants and "chaos spirits" (who were distinct from demons - it had those also) ... It was pretty funny. Do either of those count?

#15: I know this is off topic but is Pegasus by Robin McKinley good?

I haven't read Pegasus by McKinley! That's a good idea. And, yes, is it any good? It's not off topic at all!

I have trouble answering that because I was GREATLY irate that I had not realized it was the first in a set, and nothing got settled at the end. It was very much a "set the scenes" book.

If I had known that going in, and had been in the mood to read a set-up novel with no known release date for the next one, then I would have been a lot happier with it. As it was, the lack of a resolved ending (and no way of resolving it other than to wait) made me so peeved that it sort of spoiled the rest of it by association.

That said, I did enjoy it while I was reading, and will re-read it once the series is finished so I can see the storyline in its entirety.

It reminds me more of The Blue Sword than of Beauty, if that helps any.

ETA - I just went looking, and it appears that the sequel had been being difficult, so she wrote something totally different instead, and now this the start to a trilogy, and it seems that neither the second nor third have been really worked on yet. There's a fairly traumatic blog post up on her site about how she realized that, so I can't feel too bad, but it really is a bad ending place for the first one.

Piers Anthony wrote something called the adept series I believe, Blue Adept I think was one of them. It had a talking unicorn in the first book. His Xanth series had all sorts of magical creatures, from goblins to centaurs to harpies and a giant roc bird. Out of the dozens of them (semi-standalone) I'm sure one of them would fit for your challenge.

Almost any book of African folklore will include at least one story featuring a tokoloshe. Good travel guides to Aughrabies Falls (South Africa) and Kariba (Zimbabwe / Zambia) will give accounts of the guardian spirits of the respective river reaches.

i might try to read Pegasus later. thanks!

Seems to me that A Spell for Chameleon by Piers Anthony would serve the need nicely -- assuming that you haven't already devoured the Xanth series. It's the first in the series if that's useful.

Are you allowed short stories? I loved Patricia McKillip's anthology Wonders of the Invisible World when I read it this year; there's a story of a water nymph and one about a selkie.

Several of Diana Wynne Jones's books have centaurs and griffons. Deep Secret might be a good one for you--more adult than children's book.

The Percy Jackson books, starting with The Lightning Thief, have all kinds of creatures from Greek mythology, like fauns and centaurs and Medusa.

This thread has books with centaurs : http://www.librarything.com/topic/22222

I've decided upon a suggestion on a different thread, The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, that has a unicorn.

Thanks for all the suggestions!

I'm assuming you still need suggestions for two more critters?

The Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin both feature prominent griffins. They are also very entertaining books.

Stormdancer contains a griffin. I enjoyed it, but beware - the extent of the author's research into Japanese culture was reading Wikipedia.

The narrator of The Amulet of Samarkand is a djinn. It's the first in a trilogy but stands well on it's own. The second book in the trilogy, The Golem's Eye contains a golem (as you can probably tell by the title).

Another book with golems is Pratchett's Feet of Clay.

The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde contains a Quarkbeast, a bizarre creature of his own invention.

I'd second Deep Secret for centaurs.

Nope, I've got what I needed for this category.

Though I could use suggestions for zombies. I'm not looking for gross, horror-type zombies but something different like World War Z which I loved or My Life as a White Trash Zombie which I liked.

Warm Bodies was recommended.

I've heard very good things about Warm Bodies also - haven't had a chance to get to it yet. Someone compared it to the movie Zombieland as having that same sort of irreverent but not-too-dark sense of humor.

I thought feed was fantastic. It's not gory or gross (not worse than WWZ anyway). A good mix of politics and thought through zombies. The breakout happend 40 years ago, and the world has come to terms with their presence. There are some superb insights how to deal with zombies when yo've had time to think and plan and use infrastructure rather than last minute desperation and survival.

The Brides of Rollrock Island (for some reason I can't get the touchstone to work) is about selkies. Zombies vs. Unicorns is a collection of short stories comparing the two creatures. and I'll add my raves about Stroud's series about the djinn, Bartimaeus.

28> I really liked Boneshaker. It's an alternative history set in Seattle around 1880... with zombies. The zombies are more like a force of nature than the actual plot. I'd also second Zombies vs. Unicorns.

I read the The Amulet of Samarkand and wasn't impressed. I found the kid far too annoying.

But as I said, I have the book for this category so don't need any more suggestions. I really appreciate all the help.

Boneshaker, Warm Bodies and Feed are all definite possibilities for my zombie read.

33> The most common complaint that I've heard about the book is that the characters aren't sympathetic, so you're far from alone in that assessment. I didn't like him either - the new main character introduced in the second book is my favorite.

Morphidae - I think the annoying kid was intentional. Can you imagine being such an old and powerful being having to take commands from such a brat? He does mature (to an extent) over the series.