Fantastic Creatures & Animal Companions — Don't Ya Love 'Em!

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Recently I posted here on Here Be Dragons. And also on Re-Discovering Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone. Meanwhile, over on my own blog, I've been Having Fun With Epic Fantasy Tropes. Between these three distinct trains of blogging thought, I got to thinking about the importance of companion creatures in myth and folklore, an importance which has flowed through into Fantasy fiction.

Returning to dragons, for example, Kim Falconer recently mentioned Menolly, from Anne MacCaffrey's, Dragonsong, in her post on Music As Character.  In addition to Menolly's music, however, I was always entranced by her companion fire-lizards — essentially miniature dragons. How cool is that? And, of course, the adult dragons, such as Ramoth and Mnementh, with their telepathic bond to their human riders, are both fantastic creatures and the ultimate in cool companions.

More recent dragon companions include Temeraire in Naomi Novak's series of the same name and Saphira in Christopher Paolini's Inheritance series. Yet the Pern novels are not the first where I discovered miniature dragons. Yarrow, in Ursula K Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea, carried a tiny dragon on her arm...

Ged, the main character in A Wizard of Earthsea, also has an animal companion for a time. The otak is a wild creature but it comes to Ged of its own volition and remains with him until its death.

While in the Harry Potter series, animal companions are important for wizards and witches in training, the most significant of these being Hedwig, Harry's snow-white owl.

Harry & Hedwig

Some other very significant animal companions include FitzChivalry's wolf comrade, Nighteyes, in Robin Hobb's' Farseer series, and Todd's dog Manchee in The Knife of Never Letting-Go by Patrick Ness. (I know, I know, technically it's Science Fiction, but I'm mentioning it anywyaz!)

No mention of animal companions can overlook horses: from Shadowfax in The Lord of The Rings, to Aerin's Talat in The Hero and the Crown, or The Horse in Kristen Britain's The Green Rider. And Madder, in my own The Wall Of Night series may be worthy of  a mention...

As for fantastic creatures, I don't think any discussion would be complete without mentioning the daemons and the panzerbjorn in Philip Pullman's The Golden Compass. Or the giant eagles, companions to the reeves, in Kate Elliott's Crossroads series. Or, or, or —

Really, there are so many! But feel free to leave a comment and share your favorite. :-)

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Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) is Helen's most recent book and she is currently working on the fourth and final novel in The Wall Of Night series. Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we

Animals in Fiction

At the moment I have animals on the brain. My husband rescued a 10 day old kitten 10 days ago and my life has turned into a round of two hourly feeding, toileting, and loads cuddles. It’s like having a newborn in the house. But I love it. She is the cutest little creature. We have named her Miss Kittiana but she also gets Miss Kitty and Miss K as well.

I have always had a soft spot for animals. I grew up in a semi-rural environment where we always had dogs, chickens, pigs and other farm animals. Being on a farm meant some of those animals were for eating, but I loved talking to them and playing with them.


This is Miss Kittiana having one of her 2 hourly feeds. Isn't she cute.

When I wrote my first book, I had several animal characters. Some were eventually dropped from the final draft but a malamute named Cerberus, did make the novel. He remains one of my favourite characters.  In DEATH’S SWEET EMBRACE my characters are shapeshifters and I get to flex my animal loving muscle. But I also have a character who is a Humegetarian, which means he will only feed on the donated blood of human vegans and vegetarians (a true vampire vegetarian unlike the animal murdering Edward and his family from Twilight). He is also a member of the Parahumans Against Animal Abuse and is inspired by a friend of mine.

I love stories with animals in it. I think one of the reasons I read ANIMAL FARM when I was a teenager was because it had animals in it. Okay – it was a little different than I thought, but I still enjoyed the dystopian drama, even if I was expecting something more like CHARLOTTE’S WEB.

But one of the things I love about paranormal is that we can do strange and wonderful things including what we can make our animals do. They can talk, they can change in and out of human form, they can give in to their animal instincts. They can be used to show off characteristics of our hero or heroine or they can be characters in their own right,

Tell me some of your favorite animal characters from books, movies or TV and why you connected with them.