The Last Unicorn

I first discovered Peter S Beagle in Iraq, when I borrowed Giant Bones, a set of short stories with a really funny, distinctive voice. Alas, this book doesn’t hold up to that one. It starts out really well, with a unicorn going off to find some other unicorns. There’s actually a rather eerie conversation with a butterfly (which would be a challenge to write!) and then a fascinating segment in a freak show. But then it goes downhill, getting more and more derivative. It’s funny that fantasy which seems such an original genre actually has no qualms about borrowing left right and centre. There’s Robin Hood, and the Waste Land, and the cursed kingdom, and then – which is his biggest mistake – he turns the unicorn into a girl and makes the prince fall in love with her. You can’t believe in that relationship, you can’t want that relationship, and you just wait for it to finish. Oh, and the end? Very reminiscent of “The Little White Horse”.

It made a big hit when it was published in 1968, but what was original then, in language and in plot, is commonplace now, and now people do it better. The magician guy is always making jokes not only at his own expense but at the genre’s expense – that’s what every television character does today. There’s some lyrical moments, but it descends into sentimentality. It’s a fairy-story, but he doesn’t keep the simplicity of a fairy-tale’s structure and so it collapses. Pretty, but insubstantial, which is a pity.