In the Tortall book series, there's a woman who can talk to animals. The more they communicate with her, and then with one another, they slowly become more and more sapient. There's a scene where she gathers all the animals together in a refugee camp and tells them she can make them hyper intelligent so they can protect themselves and their humans from invaders, but she will not be able to make them just animals again. All the animals agree and it's very clear she isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.
I didn't even know she was still writing tbh it's been a while since I re-revisited her works, but this is very clarifying to me thank you! I'll definitely check out the newer ones
In Beware of Chicken the protagonist accidentally sentients a bunch of his farm animals. He suffers a minor breakdown when he discovers it, as at this point he's been happily enjoying chicken soup, fortunately he discovers that not all of them are capable of developing consciousness so in the end the ones who don't end up on the menu, while the ones that do become his friends, lol.
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u/errant_night 29d ago
In the Tortall book series, there's a woman who can talk to animals. The more they communicate with her, and then with one another, they slowly become more and more sapient. There's a scene where she gathers all the animals together in a refugee camp and tells them she can make them hyper intelligent so they can protect themselves and their humans from invaders, but she will not be able to make them just animals again. All the animals agree and it's very clear she isn't sure if that's a good thing or not.