so i set the mood for rereading The Last Unicorn by putting together a nifty mix of woodstock era classics, heavily featuring the likes of jethro tull & canned heat & richie havens & a lot of early pink floyd. i put on my comfy clothes. i brewed some tea. i picked my sunniest room and my cat - sensing my mood - snuggled in close. however, i did not smoke any weed. perhaps this was my mistake? nonetheless, the mood was definitely set and the enjoyment swiftly commenced.

this is a nice More...

Magical. One of the best children's fantasy books that I've ever read. The prose is as enchanting as the unicorn. Everytime the unicorn appears, thinks and speaks, I am thrown out of this world. Peter Beagle (born 1939) is a scintillating American author and he's got a equally dazzling character to mark his place in this literary world - none other than what people say as a legendary yet fictional animal, the most important imaginary animal of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - the unicorn.

H More...

This is an achingly beautiful and stunningly-told fable that broke my heart.


The unicorn was gray and still. "There is magic on me," she said. "Why did you not tell me?"

"I thought you knew," the magician answered gently. "After all, didn't you wonder how it could be that they recognized you?" Then he smiled, which made him look a little older. "No, of course not. You never would wonder about that."

"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. "There ha More...

Michel Gondry has a theory that when we sleep our bodies, minds, souls, heart (whatever else there might be) are opened up and when we awake we want to be close (and also explaining why people wake up horny). Like a kind of rebirth or cleansing of the day to day crap. (He puts it better than I do because he's Michel Gondry and I'm Mariel.) I dislike to be touched. I don't wake up craving physical connections like that. I'd rather wrap myself up in a cocoon. Preferably a bubble, that way I could More...

I'll get straight to the point on this, read it, read it now. The Last Unicorn (1968) is a classic and not without reason.

The third-person narrative centers on a unicorn who, believing she is the last of her kind in the world, sets off on a journey to discover what has happened to the others. She encounters a host of diverse characters as her journey progresses, each of them bringing her closer to her goal. (Wikipedia)

I thought I'd do this review a bit different than my normal routine and just l More...

"It cannot be an ill fortune to have loved a unicorn," he said. "Surely it must be the dearest luck of all, though the hardest earned."

"As for her, she is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her."

What a weenie am I! I actually got all misty eyed near the end of this book. Really a sweet story filled with colorfully drawn characters and writing that engages all six of your senses.
I don't know why I never found this book when I was a young More...

it's a real shame that as i was giving this book five stars i could hear in my head some of the many people whose opinions i don't ask for going "oh, that tara, she's so spacey and mock-able. ha!" if they saw it, and then i think, well.. let's be sweet anyway. so last night my dad and i were watching the jimmy carter documentary and were all "oh, he is so awesome". then the dvd player started acting up. i grabbed another disc and put it in to see where the problem lay, and the dvd was The Last U More...

Melancholy peppered with loveable characters, added with prose better than Tolkien! Wheew!

Some of you might disagree, but as you read this book, you live with every word of it! You could taste and feel the coldness of Haggard's keep, and know how every characters emotion at a given situation in a given time.

The writing is really emotional, I think this was page three:

"Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"

"No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his More...

This book may fool you. It's not a once-upon-a-time tale, nor is it just for children. When I first picked up this book, all I knew about it was that a trusted friend - whose book recommendations have never led me astray - loved it. I was under the impression that it was for children, and even though I am a self-described kid at heart and stalwart defender of children's literature, I thought it would be a light read, devoid of any complexities. Well, I was wrong.

The story begins in the lilac woo More...

In prepping for Unicorns Vs. Zombies Week, which was a long time in the making, I had taken it upon myself to make a list of books to read featuring unicorns. Of course, The Last Unicorn topped the list. Seriously, I cannot think about unicorns without thinking about this book. And no, the unicorn in this book is not bloodthirsty. Although I had made up my mind earlier to be Team Unicorn, I think had I been on the fence, this book would definitely have pushed me onto Team Unicorn.
Read the rest o More...

This book has haunted me ever since I first finished it years, and years ago. I'll be driving down the freeway and the slant of sunlight off of a trucks rear window will suddenly remind me of a line in one of these chapters and a fever will grab hold of me all of a sudden and it won't be quelled until I get home and reread that passage, which turns into rereading that chapter which turns into rereading this book. I'm not safe anywhere, I was sick to death recently and the first thing I reached f More...

The Last Unicorn is quite possibly the most beautiful book ever written. The story it tells is of a quest undertaken by the last unicorn, Molly Grue, and Schmendrik the Magician to save the unicorns from the Red Bull of King Haggard. What appears at first glance to be a traditional fantasy tale winds up being far more. The Magician is the last of his own kind, however, he is also completely incompetent in his art and wishes nothing more than to find his magic so that he may be mortal and die. Mo More...

Written with gentle wit and a deceptively straightforward presentation, The Last Unicorn creates a complex and completely believable world that combines familiar fairy tale mythologies with a contemporary shrewdness that somehow manages to avoid being too clever, too garrulous, or too slyly modern for its own good – something no other fantasy novel, however well known, seems to have accomplished. As a result, The Last Unicorn is unlike any fantasy novel that I’ve read, and the supplemental story More...

I seriously wonder if Peter S. Beagle has Synesthesia. His choice of adjectives is beautiful and downright tasty. Sounds have color and texture, it's as if he was able to show people what it would be like to walk into a Van Gogh painting and live inside it.

His plot is not as it seems, at first appearing cliche (you may find yourself thinking "This is like the start of hundreds of fairy tales I've read as a kid") but you will be delightfully proven wrong. His characters are unique and experience More...

One of the most beautiful stories I have ever read in my life. I read it as a child and it has stayed with me ever since.

There's a certain melancholy sweetness about it that touches your soul, its lyrical prose just floats off the page like the softest down, it's like having a dream about a poem you once heard many years ago.

I'm such a fan of this book that I even have a signed deluxe copy (including the coda, Two Hearts) by the man himself!

Soppy, I know, but it's one of the rare few books that More...

I read this mainly because I've heard it's a fantasy classic, and felt I should. It was indeed magical, and read like a true fairytale with a unicorn and other mythical creatures, a noble prince with quests, a wizard, and an evil king. I can see why it's a classic.

I'm only giving it 3 stars, though, because the emotional connection and immediateness of more modern fantasy isn't there, and it felt like watching the story from afar. The characters definitely felt emotions. Intellectually, I know t More...

I read this under several objections, most them having to do with how ridiculous the title and the cover look, especially if you are over thirty carrying it around. But author after author I love kept talking about Peter S. Beagle and The Last Unicorn. They didn't suggest reading it, they just assumed that all the writers and readers in the room had, the same way they assume that everyone has read LOTR.

So I read it and I can't understand how Peter S. Beagle did it. How he can make us all be th More...

Read it for itself. A classic of it's type.

I found this a "mildly interesting" book. It never pulled me in yet it was interesting enough that I stayed with it. It's sort of like a weak tea, drinkable but not something I'm overly pleased with.

I picked up this book after reading the Nebula award-winning novelette "Two Hearts," which is really a sequel to The Last Unicorn. Had I not read "Two Hearts," I would have passed on this book, based on the title alone. Unicorns - along with rainbows and ponies - are for little girls. Right? If not for "Two Hearts," I would have never purchased The Last Unicorn, and I would have missed out on one of the most enchanting and beautifully written books I have ever read.

With a little over two hundre More...

Why I read this book: It's probably been on my to-read pile for decades. Our family often spends Christmastime in Florida for a week, and I plan to get a lot of reading done. I'd taken this at least once before, but hadn't gotten around to it. This time, I got around to it ;-).

An amazing book. I'd heard that this was one of the classics of fantasy, and was a little afraid of getting burned (as I was by Tea with the Black Dragon , though my friends at the SFDG helped me appreciate that more), but More...

"The Last Unicorn" was one of my favorite childhood movies. My sister and I watched it so many times that to this day, we can still quote over half the movie if not all of it.

The story is a unicorn who lives with no cares, existing in her own vain world with no fear of death and no regrets. When she happens to hear a couple of hunters speak of there being no more unicorns left in the world, she leaves the safety of her wood to find out where they've all gone.

Along the way, she meets up with a More...

A short, sweet and bittersweet fantasy about unicorns and wizards, enchantments, monsters and heroes.

Beagle has gentle fun with this fairy-tale quest, winking and teasing his readers with soft ironies intermixed with a lullaby of a story.

It doesn't take long to read this classic, and I can strongly recommend it to anyone susceptible to an innocent archetypal myth.

This Unicorn, along with Ende's _Neverending Story_ and Zindell's _Requiem for Homo Sapiens_, has made me what I am.

It has been there for me to shine and shiver with its seashell light even in the deepest night. It has been there to remind me that great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, otherwise half their greatness goes unnoticed. That you can't make real magic by offering up someone else's liver; you must tear out your own. (And not expect to get it back, aye.) It's been a song and a com More...

This is one of my favorite books from childhood. I will note that the animated movie is actually pretty goood as a surreal interpretation of this book, it does a good job of holding onto the strangeness of the story and the classic fantasy elements.

Pearl S. Beagle takes the cliches of classic fantasy and twists them to create a unique world that is still very familiar. Underlying the entire story is a powerful sense of longing and nostalgia. It is sad (in a good way) and fantastic. This book is More...

I am ashamed that I haven't read this before. I was a great devotee of the movie when I was young and it wasn't until I was a teen that I even realized there WAS a book. But even then, I remember checking it out once and trying it, but just preferring the movie. Silly girl. The book is just as good and definitely more profound. Or, maybe, I have just lived enough now to see that it IS profound.

The last unicorn doesn't know she is the last until she hears a hunter speak the words. Her journey to More...

A truly beautiful fantasy.

Some favorite quotes:

“The true secret in being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock on the witch's door when she is already away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpi More...

This is my favorite novel. I was already a fan of the animated movie before I picked up the book, and the movie was such a masterpiece I thought the book could not possibly be better. And then, to my great surprise and delight, it was far better.

One of the truly unique things about Peter S. Beagle is his ability to craft words in a way that seems at once poetic, and yet never forced or stilted. While The Last Unicorn is, at its heart, a deconstruction of fantasy archetypes, it is never cruel or More...

I did not expect this book to capture my heart so quickly.

This book has been on my to-read list for a while, mostly because I've been on a search for a book that I once read as a child about unicorns. This is not that book. But I don't regret reading this book at all.

Sadly, the fantasy genre is not my thing. Usually I regard fantasy as silly child's play. I can't take most fantasy seriously because I find it so hard to get absorbed into the world and to believe in it. Maybe I lack the imaginatio More...

I've been meaning to read this book for many years now.

I've been meaning to read many a book, for many a year, and some of them are forgotten but I was reminded of this one by hearing Patrick Rothfuss say it is a book every fan of fantasy must read. I like Patrick's writing well enough - though less than most - but I like him more, and so I tend to listen when he speaks and for this one thing above any other, I will always, always be grateful that I did.

He made me remember that I needed to read More...

The Last Unicorn is an interesting fantasy novel. It is, of course, the story of the last unicorn. One day, she leaves her forest and sets out to discover what happened to all the other unicorns. Along with the way, the unicorn meets with many people, Schmendrick the magician (who doesn't have that much magic) and Molly Grue. I'm not sure when I last read this fantasy, but it was a while ago.

This is a surreal little concoction. The whole story seems dreamlike, unreal. It flows along at a slow bu More...