Drizzt is not a good example; the Drow are still explicitly evil in those books and Drizzt hates them and acknowledges that they’re evil. Fantasy is unfortunately terrible for this, but there is a book that’s not only fantastic, but it’s based in a setting that reverberates the sentiment of monsters not being inherently evil: ‘Queen of stone’ set in the Eberron setting by Keith Baker, the setting’s creator.

Annoyingly it’s now available in kindle form; when I searched for it about…ten years ago? There was no digital version of the book at that time.

The main character is a bodyguard sent with a diplomat to a major diplomatic event in the lands of Droaam (a land of monsters; medusas, minotaurs, gnolls, ogres, hags, etc.) and the races there are portrayed very normally; I recall reading an essay by (Keith Baker?) where he explained how in his setting the only inherently evil races are demonic beings (who are made of the evil stuff in the abyss; they are not formed from human souls) or the creatures from the dream realm whose mentality is utterly alien to human thinking who went on to create illithids and other similar creatures. Goblins in Eberron in the ancient times had an extremely advanced empire but were defeated by the numerous barbarian human tribes and eventually their civilization collapsed and now live in poverty in human cities instead.

Unfortunately even though Eberron has much going for it…I’m not a steampunk/entire-cities-are-made-of-artifice/airships guy. I like my fantasy settings basic.