This book review was part of a podcast discussion.
Listen to the episode here.
A unicorn in her wood wonders the fate of her kind and decides to search for them.
The movie was a staple of my childhood. As I was reading, I could hear the lines spoken as they were in the movie: the huntsman, the butterfly, Mommy Fortuna, Rukh, Molly Grue. I swear I could hear America playing in the background. While only 250 pages long, it took me a while to get into the story. Mostly it was the language usage that took getting used to, and how meta and existential it was. The unicorn insists that she is the only thing that is real because she can’t die; Molly Gure and Schmendrick have questioned their reality at some point in the book and Prince Lir says, “Was none of it real at all? Am I real, then?”
Besides questioning existence, the characters quite often remark on how it is the way of the fairy tale. Prince Lir goes off to perform great feats to win the heart of the Lady Amalthea, because heroic deeds by princes make women swoon and it’s the only way he knows to make her love him. Captain Cully of the forest writes songs about himself because “Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.” He writes himself a great hero similar to Robin Hood, but Robin is fictitious. “One always hopes, of course, even now—to be collected, to be verified, annotated, to have variant versions, even to have one’s authenticity doubted…” There is a cat who speaks but never answers questions plainly, and even says to Molly, “But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer”.
I really enjoyed the references to stereotypes, like those listed above and the fact that Lir brought the Lady several dragon heads but couldn’t understand why she didn’t favor them, in stories the lady always enjoys dead monster heads from the fair knight. I recommend this book to any who enjoy quirky old fantasy novels.
Minnesota
Caty Willis works a boring day job, but in downtime fancies herself an artist and writer. She loves reading, especially fantasy, and dreams of opening a bookstore one day. Follow her on Twitter @shimmybook.
