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Novels
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Tails of Transformation
Bob Stein
An anthology of eighteen brilliant transformational tales, covering all manner of creatures, but horses, asses, and even unicorns are all in there.
Available on Amazon Kindle.
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Hoofbeat
Bob Stein
Charlie Sutter is a police officer working in a city where ordinary humans live alongside elves and other races. An unfortunate encounter with an elven woman he once had a relationship with turns ugly, and her new boyfriend not only has a spiteful streak but is a powerful mage untroubled by such trifling concerns as ethics. A blast of magic, and Charlie is transformed into an Oolca - the derogatory Elvish slang for a stallion.
Available on Amazon Kindle.
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The Trouble with Being a Horse
Emily Edwards
An enjoyable variant on the popular theme of adolescent pony books. Like most of those books, the story is about a young girl whose only delight is to spend all day every day at the local stables, but her disadvantaged family don't understand her passion. Her father forbids her to visit the stables. Distraught, she confesses to favourite pony that she wishes she were a horse too, as life would be so much easier. She is a little startled when, the following morning, she wakes up in the body of a chestnut mare...
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Goodnight Horsey
Frank Asch
A book for very young children. A little girl has a dad who reads her a story every night before she goes to sleep. Tonight though, she asks him for a horsey ride, and as soon as she gets on his back, he turns into a real horse, while she turns into a Indian princess. She rides him all day until sunset when he turns back into her dad. At this point he is so tired that he falls asleep, so the little girl tucks him up.
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A Wind in Cairo
Judith Tarr
A spoilt, arrogant prince makes the mistake of taking advantage of a magician's daughter. Her father decrees that since he clearly has the soul of a beast, he shall have the body of one too, and transforms him into a stallion. Captured and sold to the wilful and beautiful daughter of his father's worst enemy, the transformed prince must somehow absolve himself of his crime or remain a horse forever.
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The Grey Horse
R A MacAvoy
The wild grey horse that virtually forces himself upon an Irish horse trainer is more than he seems: Ruari MacEibhir is a Phouka; a faerie able to take both horse and human form at will, and he has entered our world to seek the hand of the woman he loves.
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Stallion of a Dream
Robert Vavra
A gypsy youth captures and befriends a beautiful Andalusian stallion. Their friendship is deep and beautiful, but the boy comes to realise he has destroyed something precious in taking the stallion's freedom. He releases the horse to run free again, but the bond between them is such that he is transformed into a black stallion to run always beside his friend.
The story is told with Robert Vavra's beautiful photography, featuring the stallion Majestad.
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Dun Lady's Jess
Doranna Durgin
Dun Lady's Jess is the talented young steed of a wizard's courier in a parallel world, but when they are ambushed and her rider uses an untried spell to escape, both horse and rider are catapulted into our world. The spell has a completely unexpected side-effect however: Jess is transformed into a human woman. Terrified and incapable of speech, seperated from her rider, she must find him while coming to terms with her newly acquired human intelligence. But what will happen when she returns to her home and regains her equine shape?
Jess's story is continued in Changespell and Changespell Legacy.
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The Last Unicorn
Peter S Beagle
This is one of the most beautiful fantasy books ever written. It tells the story of a unicorn who discovers she is apparently the last of her kind. In the course of investigating the fate of her race, she is transformed into a human girl to save her from the Red Bull, only to slowly lose her sense of identity as she becomes more and more the Lady Amalthea. She must regain her true shape, but Prince Lir falling in love with her doesn't help.
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The Golden Ass
Apuleius
Lucius Apuleius has a fascination for magic that gets him into trouble: annointing himself with a salve he believes will turn him into a bird, he instead transforms himself into a donkey - and before anything can be done about this state of affairs, he is stolen by thieves and embarks on a long series of adventures - often quite raunchy.
Milo Manara turned the story into a beautifully illustrated graphic novel.
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Winni Allfours
Babette Cole
A wonderful children's book about Winni Allfours, the pony-mad daughter of two staunch vegetarians. Denied a pony by her parents, Winni has a brainwave when a school dinner-lady informs her that she'll turn into a pony if she eats many more carrots. This book has delightful illustrations and a truly happy ending!
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Devil's Donkey
Bill Brittain
Young Dan'l Pitt doesn't believe in magic, and doesn't heed the warnings of the older residents of Coven Tree village. He doesn't believe Old Magda is a witch and he doesn't believe the old oak for which the village is named is a witches' tree. But when he lops some dead wood from it and Old Magda transforms him into a donkey for his pains, he begins to believe...
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The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped
Sheri Tepper
This is an omnibus edition of the three novels The Song, The Flight, and The Search of Mavin Manyshaped, and comprises the first third of stories involving the Lands of the True Game, where a priveledged few humans, known as gamesmen, are gifted with incredible abilities: armigers can fly; tragamors have telekinesis; necromancers can raise the dead or calm ghosts. All this takes place upon an incredible alien world with mysteries of its own. Mavin is the greatest of the Shifters: those with the ability to change shape at will.
From the standpoint of equne shape-shifting, although Mavin's first full shift is into a horse, this does not play a major narrative role. In the final part however, Mavin and her lover take on the form of unicorns, neither knowing who the other is, in a very profound and beautiful transformation.
The entire series is well worth reading just as a stunning story of incredible scope and imagination. Shape-shifting is a strong theme throughout, as Mavin and her son Peter are central protagonists. After The Chronicles of Mavin Manyshaped, the story continues in King's Blood Four, Necromancer Nine, and Wizard's Eleven (compiled as the omnibus The True Game), and concludes in Jinian Footseer, Dervish Daughter, and Jinian Star-Eye (compiled as The Jinian Trilogy).
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The River of Dancing Gods
Jack L Chalker
Joe is a truck driver. Marge is just drifting, and hitches a ride with him. Both are somewhat surprised when other-worldly wizard, Throckmorton Ruddygore, intercepts them and informs them that they are minutes away from a fatal road accident... or they can come with him to an alternate Earth where magic is the ruling power, and become mighty warriors or spell-casters. Thus Joe becomes a mighty-thewed barbarian warrior, and Marge becomes an apprentice sorcerer.
This is the first part of the Dancing Gods series. While it doesn't focus on transformation, it does contain several changes. In this particular book, Joe happens on a farm where all the animals are transformed humans. When all have escaped, thanks to Joe, the two horses, Posti and Dacaro, take service as steeds in a magical quest. Joe himself becomes a horse briefly in the sequel, Demons of the Dancing Gods, in order to infiltrate a castle.
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Midnight at the Well of Souls
Jack L Chalker
Science-fantasy on a grand scale. On a ghost-world of the long-vanished and god-like Markovians, the crew and passengers of the starship Stehekin find the members of a research team murdered in their quarters, shortly before they are snatched by some sort of transportation-gate and hurled to the centre of the universe: the Well World. This artificial world is devided into small, hexagonal "countries", each inhabited by a different alien life form. This is where the Markovians, in an effort to avoid stagnation as a race, created new life-forms and cultures that they would then become on customised worlds across the universe. Those who accidentally find their way here are randomly assigned a new home: their bodies transformed into the indigenous life-form there.
In this first book, Wu Julee finds herself transformed into a centaur. In the sequel, Exiles at the Well of Souls, Mavra Chang is half-altered into a donkey-like creature, and becomes a full horse in Quest for the Well of Souls. There are numerous transformations throughout the series, including other equines.
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Archival: Most Secret
Rob Rice
A compilation of novellas set amongst such backdrops as the American Civil War, and World War II. The richness and thoroughly researched background detail makes these stories beautifully plausible. Extremely ingenious writing gives a whole new take on transformation fiction. Available from Lulu: Behind the scenes of history… Lurked desperate men with strange knowledge, doctors with dangerous cures, and scientists terrified by their own discoveries. Join the heir to a faerie legacy and his bloody companion on a journey that ends before the very ramparts of New Orleans and in the smoke of a terrifying battle. What was the secret Winston Churchill’s valet sought to share with his employer from beyond the grave? Meet Flight Lieutenant Neville ‘Bunny’ Edwards, who in the course of the Second World War loses his humanity, but never his courage or his determination to stay in the fighting. Illustrated by Donna Barr.
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Darkness in the Mirror
Rob Rice
Available from Lulu:
There is something in the shadows…
There, in the corner of the glass… Perhaps it’s just an imperfection, the mirror is old and neglected… But you know that it’s not an imperfection. There is something, there, moving with purpose. Something that wants something… And what might that something be?
There is something in the Bayeaux around New Orleans… Something tragic. Something evil. There is a reason why a man hardened in the school of the alley and the life-preserver cannot think of the heads in Blenheim Castle without shuddering, and a horrible reason for what some would call a dire revenge. There is an exhibit in a museum that, to a trained mind, radiates fear… betrayal… bewilderment. There is something moving in the darkness in the mirror.
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The Horse and His Boy
C S Lewis
Almost forgot this classic! The transformation component is small (but perfectly formed!) and not until the last few pages of the novel. However, the tale of how Bree the horse and Hwin the mare (and a couple of human children) escaped cruel Calormen for the magical land of Narnia is a tale to warm any wouldbe-equine's heart.
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Animorphs
K A Applegate
A teenage scifi series, spanning fifty four books plus spinoffs. The Earth is being quietly invaded by a body-possessing lifeform known as the Yeerk. Five teenagers accidentally become involved when they witness the crash of a spacecraft belonging to one of the few races still fighting the Yeerks: the Andalites. Before he is caught and murdered by the Yeerk, the injured Andalite pilot manages to pass on an amazing technology to the five kids: the ability to temporarily take on the shape and ability of any animal they can "acquire". Using this skill, the five must wage a guerilla (sometimes gorilla) war against the invaders.
Horse transformations aren't frequent, but Cassie becomes one in the first book, The Invasion, and all the Animorphs take on equine form in book #14, The Unknown, where they join a band of mustangs in order to approach an "Area 51"-type base.
Animorphs was also developed into a successful television series.
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Lady Moonlight
Kate Freiman
Another tale of faery Ireland. In 1899 Aisling Aherne is promised in marriage to a rival family, very much against her will. Desperate to escape this fate and determined to marry for love, not convenience, Aisling makes a deal with a leprechaun. She has a hundred years to find her true love, whilst sheltering in the faery realms, where time has no hold. She can visit the mortal world, but unless she does so under a full moon, she appears in this world as a white horse.
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The Stray Lamb
Thorne Smith
Mr Lamb is a respectable American commuter of the 1940s. he has always behaved impeccably, admiring a pretty woman on the train but doing nothing about it, and patiently ignoring the unseemly closeness between his wife and amateur dramatic Mr Gray. Then, following a strange encounter with an odd russett man in the woods, he wakes up in the body of a great black stallion. This liberating experience is simply the first of many transformations that lead him into an altogether different lifestyle. |
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Quest's End
Alfred Brisco
Joe Gregory is a man who has never questioned his treatment of animals, and considers his rough handling of his ill-broken horse, Prince, to be completely justified. Then he and Prince have an accident in icy weather - and Joe awakens to discover his human body dead and his soul mysteriously transfered to Prince's equine body. Thus begins his Black Beauty-like adventures from owner to owner. |
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The Arkadians
Lloyd Alexander
From the author of the Prydain chronicles (The Black Cauldron, etc) comes a fantasy tale from ancient Greece. Lucian flees corrupt palace officials to embark on a roaming quest to find his true role in life. Of priniciple interest to us however is the tale of his companion, Fronto, a second-rate poet who has been transformed into a donkey. |
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The Fairy Godmother
Mercedes Lackey
In the Land of the Five Hundred Kingdoms, the "Tradition" chooses your path for you out of any number of stereotyped roles. Elena is destined to be a Cinderella, but doesn't want to be. The trouble is, breaking with Tradition causes a build-up of chaotic, excess magic. To avert this, she is offered a job as a fairy godmother: a role in which the magical build-up can be safely diverted and put to good use, helping other people to ease into the roles the Tradition assigns them. Or in the case of Alexander, an arrogant, over-bearing Prince possessed of no humility whatsoever, to transform him into an ass and put him to good use as a working animal. |
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Krabat
(aka The Satanic Mill, and Curse of the Darkling Mill)
Otfried Preußler
This German novel tells the tale of a young vagrant named Krabat, who finds his way (or is he summoned?) to a mysterious mill where eleven jourmeymen slave away for the mysterious one-eyed Miller. As Krabat is inducted into their ranks, it is soon revealed that this is a school of the Dark Arts, and that for the Miller to remain in power, one of the men must die each year.
Transformations occur quite frequently within this tale of magic, though they don't play a massive part in the plot. There are a couple of equine transformations however. It's a good book though: enjoyable and intriguing, maintaining the sinister atmosphere of the dark mill throughout. It has a surprisingly abrupt conclusion though! |
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