Books like Barsk by Lawrence M. Schoen

In a distant future, humanity’s smartest descendants have become sentient, walking, talking animals. Among them are the Fant, anthropomorphic elephants ostracized by other races and exiled to the rainy world of Barsk. On Barsk the Fant develop powerful medicines, the most prized of which is koph— a drug that allows a few users to communicate with the recently deceased. A shadow group from elsewhere seeks to wrest control of koph from the Fant, forcing the experts to surrender their knowledge. Jorl, a Fant Speaker with the dead, is compelled to interrogate his late best friend, a man who committed suicide decades earlier, and in doing so unearths a secret that the powers that be would prefer to keep buried. Meanwhile, his deceased friend’s son, a physically challenged Fant named Pizlo, is driven by visions to take his first steps toward an uncertain future.

First publish date: 2015