The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle

[goodreads]

Title: The Last Unicorn
Author: Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Fantasy
Rating: 3/5
# pages: 165
Date read: June, 2009

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.

The unicorn discovers that she is the last unicorn in the world, and sets off to find the others. She meets Schmendrick the Magician--whose magic seldom works, and never as he intended--when he rescues her from Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival, where only some of the mythical beasts displayed are illusions. They are joined by Molly Grue, who believes in legends despite her experiences with a Robin Hood wannabe and his unmerry men. Ahead wait King Haggard and his Red Bull, who banished unicorns from the land.

I just about dropped the book when I came to page 15 and read, "Your name is a golden bell, hung in my heart. I would break my body to pieces to call you once by your name". A good friend from New Zealand used to quote this to me all the time, and I never knew where she had it from. For that reason alone, I was inclined to love this book. Vanessa Jans, here's to you, wherever you are!

Unfortunately, the rest of the book didn't really live up to my expectations. The writing was stilted, the sentences didn't always make sense and I hadn't come far before I realised that I actually didn't really care what happened to the unicorn! Not conductive to enjoying a book.

However, it's a short book, so I pushed through, and I was gratified to see that the ending wasn't as "happily ever after" as I'd feared along the way. The ending and the nostalgic touch of the quote brings the book up to 3 stars, where the writing, plot and characters would have left it at 2.

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Comments

[rachelreads.livejournal.com]

As far as I know, everything the butterfly says is a quote from somewhere else. (I think the unicorn mentions as much.) That quote comes originally from Romeo & Juliet.