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The Last Unicorn - Paperback
$20.99
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The Last Unicorn
$20.99
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Is this book for you?
- Feels
- Whimsical, Melancholy, Funny
- Kind of story
- Myths and fairy tales, Classic fantasy
- About
- Identity, Found family
- Pace
- Steady
- How dark
- 1 of 5. Light: spooky or sad at most
- Romance
- A subplot
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Featured in our reading guide: Standalone Fantasy Novels: Great Books With No Series Required
She may be the last unicorn in the world, and she leaves her forest to find out.
Shelf note: A fairy tale for grown-ups who still want one. Funnier than you expect, and sadder.
The unicorn has lived alone in her lilac wood for longer than she can remember, and she has never once wondered whether others of her kind still exist. Then two hunters pass through and say, out loud, that she is the last. So she goes looking.
What she finds on the road is a failing carnival with one real creature in it, a magician who isn't very good at magic but wants desperately to be, a woman who has given up on wonder, a castle where nothing grows, and a red bull that drives everything before it into the sea.
Beagle wrote a fairy tale that knows it is a fairy tale and grieves about it anyway. It's funny on nearly every page and devastating on about a dozen of them. The unicorn's transformation, and what it costs her, is the kind of thing readers carry around for decades. This edition includes a new introduction by Patrick Rothfuss.
Details
- Author: Peter S. Beagle
- Introduction: Patrick Rothfuss
- Format: Paperback
- ISBN: 9780451450524
Praise
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Comes alive and stays alive on bright intensity of imagination.
The New York Times Book Review
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Written in lyrical prose and rife with both whimsical humor and philosophical ruminations on what it means to be human, Beagle spins a quasi-medieval fairy tale that remains timeless.
Time
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The Last Unicorn is the best book I have ever read. You need to read it. If you've already read it, you need to read it again.
Patrick Rothfuss
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Peter S. Beagle is (in no particular order) a wonderful writer, a fine human being, and a bandit prince out to steal readers' hearts.
Tad Williams
Reader reviews on Goodreads
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