Hmm
Whalandria you describe the world but not a plot, so hard to judge.
Warbirds sounds like it would be extremely difficult to do well because a horse should never sound like a monkey or a fish. You should be able to guess the animal by its desires and etc. Typically books that do the talking animal thing the animals are all basically humans with different skin.
Empire does sound Star Wars-ish, but if what you just wrote was the blurb on the back of the book, I would probably grab it to read, so that gets my vote.
