I'm in the middle of the third of Anne Bishop's "The Others" fantasy series.
Anne Bishop: Novels of Dark Fantasy
https://www.goodreads.com/series/99557-the-others
http://www.amazon.com/Written-Red-Others-Anne-Bishop-ebook/dp/B008RD34VO
In this fascinating series the world was created with two species, humans and the
terra indigene, shape shifters, and they are the dominant species. In the beginning the humans were separate but as they explored the world they discovered most of it was owned by the others. These others are wolves, crows, bears, etc. who can assume human forms when necessary. The species live in an uneasy truce, but humans live or die if the others are displeased. Oh, they eat humans they don't like.
Our protagonist Meg is a
Cassandra sangue or "blood prophet," a special kind of human who can see the future, but only if she is cut deep enough to scar. She was raised as property of a home for such women, ostensibly to protect the women, but in reality they are treated as cattle and their predictions sold to customers (and often prostituted too).
The catch is that if somebody cuts her and allows her to speak the future, she goes into an euphoric almost sexual trance and remembers nothing. But if she can't speak she feels great pain but remembers her prophesies.
The story begins as she escapes The Controller (owner of the asylum) and at the end of her endurance she lands on the doorstep of one of the Others' "courtyards" (islands of Others in the cities they control) where she is taken by Simon Wolfgard, what we wold call a werewolf, and head Other at the courtyard.
As the story develops Simon Wolfgard (who is equally intelligent as humans) realizes she has been imprisoned and takes pity on her and gives her a job as more or less their shipment receiving department, where the members of the courtyard get goods purchased from humans.
The Others own all the land and all the resources, and lease some of it to humans who live only if the Others let them. The Others often refer to humans as "clever meat." Oh, and the Others are telepathic.
I'll leave you off here to say that Meg becomes a focal point of the struggles between the humans and Others. The Controller wants her back. The Others are angry with the uppity humans, and Simon takes pity that the only life Meg has ever known is as the property known as cs759, her designation to The Controller who doesn't even bother to name his properties.
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I'm really enjoying my transition into the "new science fiction," replacing my love of SciFi which has mostly become just plain old reality. Ho hum, space ships to the moon, been there done that. SciFi has drawn its well dry IMO, where fantasy has to make sense (so that you can maintain your suspension of disbelief) but as long as it's self consistent it suffices as the new SciFi, except it is not limited by the laws of science, only by the rules of logic. Build a good world and fantasy lovers will flock to it!
(I'm now on the third of three novels published, another scheduled for March 2016 and a fifth at a yet to be announced date.)
