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Unicorn and Dragon #1
Unicorn and Dragon
When the forces of eleventh century history are unleashed upon Hafwyner Manor, the fate of England is at the mercy of two sisters who take matters into their own hands, forging their own destiny to triumph over evil. Reprint.
496 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
3 people are currently reading
237 people want to read
About the author
Lynn Abbey
145 books191 followersLynn Abbey began publishing in 1979 with the novel Daughter of the Bright Moon and the short story "The Face of Chaos," part of a Thieves World shared world anthology. She received early encouragement from Gordon R. Dickson.
In the 1980s she married Robert Asprin and became his co-editor on the Thieves World books. She also contributed to other shared world series during the 1980s, including Heroes in Hell and Merovingen Nights.
Abbey and Asprin divorced in 1993 and Abbey moved to Oklahoma City. She continued to write novels during this period, including original works as well as tie-ins to Role Playing Games for TSR. In 2002, she returned to Thieves World with the novel Sanctuary and also began editing new anthologies, beginning with Turning Points.
In the 1980s she married Robert Asprin and became his co-editor on the Thieves World books. She also contributed to other shared world series during the 1980s, including Heroes in Hell and Merovingen Nights.
Abbey and Asprin divorced in 1993 and Abbey moved to Oklahoma City. She continued to write novels during this period, including original works as well as tie-ins to Role Playing Games for TSR. In 2002, she returned to Thieves World with the novel Sanctuary and also began editing new anthologies, beginning with Turning Points.
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Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews
December 23, 2017
I felt like this book was a good set up for a story but the various threads never really go anywhere. You never really grow to care overly much about Alison, Wildecent, Stephen, and Ambrose and it’s never really clear how all the characters’ motivations and magical meddling are actually affecting the story. Is Ambrose evil? Did any of the magic working actually do anything to affect the battle? Who are Wildecent’s real parents? Are we supposed to be onboard with any of the “romance?” Are we supposed to root for one sister versus the other or just both of them against the outside forces?
Of course, now I find out that there’s a sequel - but I feel that this story was lacking as a standalone and I’m not sure I need to know what happens enough to read the next novel. There’s not enough emotional payoff in the first book to keep me invested.
Of course, now I find out that there’s a sequel - but I feel that this story was lacking as a standalone and I’m not sure I need to know what happens enough to read the next novel. There’s not enough emotional payoff in the first book to keep me invested.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 9, 2017
This is a Headline Publishing Ltd edition
October 7, 2012
OK historical fiction with a pagan/psychic element. I have to admit I picked it up due to the lovely Robert Gould cover.
The book is also supposed to be 'illustrated' by Robert Gould, but don't buy this because of that: this edition, at least, has the very worst printing quality I've ever seen in a book, and most of the 'illustrations' are indistinguishable masses of grey dots.
The story: set in 11th-century Britain, two 'sisters.' Allison is blond, beautiful, legitimate and not only that, heir to secret pagan powers, including the ability to influence others' minds. Wildecent is dark, unassuming, and seemingly without any remarkable powers. She's also not Allison's true sister - was she kidnapped? Adopted?
Into their manor house comes a young man, rescued from both wolves and outlaws. Since they don't get to see new people too often in their sheltered life, it's not unbelievable that both women develop crushes on him. Conflict and jealousy ensues, mixed in with magic and political conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman factions.
Not bad; there's a sequel which I may pick up one of these days. It has a little bit of a Mists-of-Avalon feel to it.
The book is also supposed to be 'illustrated' by Robert Gould, but don't buy this because of that: this edition, at least, has the very worst printing quality I've ever seen in a book, and most of the 'illustrations' are indistinguishable masses of grey dots.
The story: set in 11th-century Britain, two 'sisters.' Allison is blond, beautiful, legitimate and not only that, heir to secret pagan powers, including the ability to influence others' minds. Wildecent is dark, unassuming, and seemingly without any remarkable powers. She's also not Allison's true sister - was she kidnapped? Adopted?
Into their manor house comes a young man, rescued from both wolves and outlaws. Since they don't get to see new people too often in their sheltered life, it's not unbelievable that both women develop crushes on him. Conflict and jealousy ensues, mixed in with magic and political conflict between Anglo-Saxon and Norman factions.
Not bad; there's a sequel which I may pick up one of these days. It has a little bit of a Mists-of-Avalon feel to it.
March 22, 2024
I was hoping there would be unicorns and dragons in this book. Alas, all the characters are human and there aren't even any legends of unicorns or dragons, or anything else remotely related to unicorns and dragons. I am not sure how the title was chosen, but it feels deceptive to me. There is a bit of magic, but largely this book is historical fiction. One of the things that irritated me was the head-hopping, where the author would spontaneously switch between perspectives, sometimes mid-paragraph. It made following the story jarring and sometimes actually confusing, as I had to pause to figure out whose head I was in now. The characters are ok, though the two girl leads are both rather bland and often I struggled to remember who was who. The setting was interesting for me and well described I thought. The action started quite slowly but had a significant climax. Throughout I failed to really care about any of the characters. Of them all Lady Ygurna started to become the most interesting, but there was far too little of her presence in the story. I don't think I will ever reread nor continue with the series.
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March 12, 2023I first read this book (and its sequel) when I was 14 or 15 and always remember being captivated by it, but I had no recollection of what the story involved. So I nabbed my old copies of the books the last time I was at my parents' house and decided to re-read them.
The protagonists are two 15-year-old sisters, which goes a long way towards explaining why the books spoke to me when I first read them. The story is set in Anglo-Saxon England on the eve of the Norman conquest, and while there are neither unicorns nor dragons in them, there's a fair bit of witchy stuff, and plenty of historical stuff, which I find interesting even today.
I can't really rate the book fairly because adult-me found it kind of meh, but teenaged-me loved it, so I reckon I'm not the target audience anymore. I don't regret re-reading it though - it reminded me of many of the things I loved as an adolescent.
The protagonists are two 15-year-old sisters, which goes a long way towards explaining why the books spoke to me when I first read them. The story is set in Anglo-Saxon England on the eve of the Norman conquest, and while there are neither unicorns nor dragons in them, there's a fair bit of witchy stuff, and plenty of historical stuff, which I find interesting even today.
I can't really rate the book fairly because adult-me found it kind of meh, but teenaged-me loved it, so I reckon I'm not the target audience anymore. I don't regret re-reading it though - it reminded me of many of the things I loved as an adolescent.
January 4, 2018
I would have been greatly assisted in reading this book if I had a firmer grasp of the 11th century politics of the Normans, Saxons, English and French. I was able to follow the plot, but there was definitely a whole element I was locked out of, seeing as knowing at least the rudiments of this history seems to be assumed. As it was I thought it was interesting, but never truly felt I got to know the characters and at the end was left wondering, “Eh, what was the point?” Perhaps it become clearer in future books. This one wasn’t bad, but it didn’t sizzle for me either. Maybe it just hasn’t aged well, being published so long ago (1987).
September 1, 2023
Not my favorite work by Abbey. You have the focus on the characters as usual, and I found I didn’t quite connect with them as much as I did in her Forgotten Realms or Walensor novels. Abbey has a very unique style many don’t see to enjoy but I have grown to appreciate it. This story does have the melancholy you’d expect from a novel set on the cusp of England being conquered by the Normans, though the new age witchcraft stuff kinda takes away from it. I do look forward to reading the sequel.
June 11, 2017
An interesting idea, that feels like an expansion off the Mists of Avalon. A neat mix of magic versus shamanism. Wish the book had been longer. At it's length, and with the second book, kind of unsatisfying, and so off they go.
August 27, 2019
I think I must have read this very shortly after it was published, as I noted it in my journal from early in 1987. My only notes from that time are " It's got a lot of history in it."
June 3, 2024
Didn't finish this one. It's pretty decent, but I wasn't engaged enough to finish. Felt a little too bogged down by the historical elements.
September 21, 2015
The setting is Saxon-about-to-become-Norman England. King Edward (the Confessor) is dying, the countryside is beset by murderous men who turn out to be working for one of the claimants to the throne, and two women, Alison and Wildecent, raised as sisters, are caught in the struggle when a young Norman male, Stephen, staggers to their stronghold, wounded. Stephen has been attacked while trying to take a despatch cross country for his uncle. Raiders subsequently menace the countryside around, and Alison's father, Saxon lord of the settlement, has to ask Stephen's uncle for help against the raiders, even though this puts him in a difficult position because Duke William of Normandy is a rival claimant to the throne and it is not clear whether William should be Edward's successor, or Harold Godwinson or Godwinson's brother.
Alison's companion Wildecent has been passed off as an illegitimate half sister to Alison, although it emerges that she was brought to the settlement when she was five and is no relation at all. Alison has been secretly taught ancient goddess based magic from Celtic and pre-Celtic times by the sister of her dead mother. Wildecent has shared in the herbal lore taught them both, but feels left out because she lacks the psychic abilities that Alison has been trained in. They must be wary of anyone else finding out, as the church would view their abilities as witchcraft.
Despite the opening sequence of the attack on Stephen, this book is slow to get going and I struggled to keep interested. Partly because it focuses on two young women in Saxon-about-to-become Norman England, and their lives mainly consist of spinning and weaving, and creating herbal remedies, realistically enough. However, the book is fantasy, not straight historical fiction because Alison has the ability to read people's minds, and later on, a Norman male character is introduced who is a sorcerer whose magic actually works.
Wildecent's feeling left out leaves her vulnerable to the attractions of the sorcerer, Stephen's friend Ambrose, who might teach her his different magic, based on sympathetic magic and physical objects and not dependent on the psychic abilites which Alison and her aunt use, and which they view as linked to the ancient worship of the goddess. It remains ambiguous as to how much of a villain Ambrose really is, since although he is hostile to Alison and her aunt, he seems to have Stephen's best interests at heart.
I did not find the characters well defined. There is a lot of head hopping and it is hard to find any of them sympathetic, for example, Stephen makes a half hearted attempt to seduce Wildecent. Alison is characterised by being headstrong and is sometimes rash in using her gifts, and both she and her aunt are quick to assume that Wildecent - who has vague memories of her real parents and seems to be Norman - must be a supporter of Duke William of Normandy and hence cannot be trusted. The relationships don't ring true. Wildecent is probably the most sympathetic character, level-headed and putting up with a lot of suspicion from her nearest and dearest, especially as we learn that when six years old she was locked in a dark cellar for hours just for asking about her real parents.
There is one jarring continuity error where Wildecent defends herself against an attacker with a knife she had in her sleeve, but then a couple of pages later it is back in her sleeve in circumstances where she cannot have put it there herself.
Like Abbey's Rifkind books, this is illustrated, but by a different artist, and unlike those, the reproduction here is very poor and indistinct.
The story ends, not exactly with a cliffhanger, but with a question mark over the future of the two women, though it continues in 'The Green Man' which I intend to read next.
Alison's companion Wildecent has been passed off as an illegitimate half sister to Alison, although it emerges that she was brought to the settlement when she was five and is no relation at all. Alison has been secretly taught ancient goddess based magic from Celtic and pre-Celtic times by the sister of her dead mother. Wildecent has shared in the herbal lore taught them both, but feels left out because she lacks the psychic abilities that Alison has been trained in. They must be wary of anyone else finding out, as the church would view their abilities as witchcraft.
Despite the opening sequence of the attack on Stephen, this book is slow to get going and I struggled to keep interested. Partly because it focuses on two young women in Saxon-about-to-become Norman England, and their lives mainly consist of spinning and weaving, and creating herbal remedies, realistically enough. However, the book is fantasy, not straight historical fiction because Alison has the ability to read people's minds, and later on, a Norman male character is introduced who is a sorcerer whose magic actually works.
Wildecent's feeling left out leaves her vulnerable to the attractions of the sorcerer, Stephen's friend Ambrose, who might teach her his different magic, based on sympathetic magic and physical objects and not dependent on the psychic abilites which Alison and her aunt use, and which they view as linked to the ancient worship of the goddess. It remains ambiguous as to how much of a villain Ambrose really is, since although he is hostile to Alison and her aunt, he seems to have Stephen's best interests at heart.
I did not find the characters well defined. There is a lot of head hopping and it is hard to find any of them sympathetic, for example, Stephen makes a half hearted attempt to seduce Wildecent. Alison is characterised by being headstrong and is sometimes rash in using her gifts, and both she and her aunt are quick to assume that Wildecent - who has vague memories of her real parents and seems to be Norman - must be a supporter of Duke William of Normandy and hence cannot be trusted. The relationships don't ring true. Wildecent is probably the most sympathetic character, level-headed and putting up with a lot of suspicion from her nearest and dearest, especially as we learn that when six years old she was locked in a dark cellar for hours just for asking about her real parents.
There is one jarring continuity error where Wildecent defends herself against an attacker with a knife she had in her sleeve, but then a couple of pages later it is back in her sleeve in circumstances where she cannot have put it there herself.
Like Abbey's Rifkind books, this is illustrated, but by a different artist, and unlike those, the reproduction here is very poor and indistinct.
The story ends, not exactly with a cliffhanger, but with a question mark over the future of the two women, though it continues in 'The Green Man' which I intend to read next.
September 3, 2010
I don’t know what happened. For some reason I just couldn’t continue reading. This book, with the cover and summary, was totally up my alley but I tried…I really tried. I guess I was just too confused at some points with the history and I wasn’t met with the pressing need to find out what happened next. As it turns out, Alison was the sister that was able to “lean” on people, meaning, she was able to go into their minds; so there was the sorcery aspect of it. And Wildecent was actually not her biological sister, which is revealed early on in the book, and is the more careful and mindful of the two; all the while they are looking after a mysterious stranger who was attacked by wolves and they can’t understand his language or what he was doing out there. Plus, the whole wolves thing confused me as well. The fact that wolves were out there seemed to really frighten people (more so than usual). Were the wolves supposed to be real wolves or metaphorical wolves?
Maybe I’ll have to revisit this title at another time, although the other thing that is making me hesitate is that the author, according to her website, had planned this to be like 4 or 5 books. But only two were ever published. So do I want to start something, knowing that there might never be a resolution? Or do I be brave, suck it up, and just read the two books?
Maybe I’ll have to revisit this title at another time, although the other thing that is making me hesitate is that the author, according to her website, had planned this to be like 4 or 5 books. But only two were ever published. So do I want to start something, knowing that there might never be a resolution? Or do I be brave, suck it up, and just read the two books?
January 7, 2008
This is actually my second reading of this book. I couldn't remember a single thing from the first reading (apart from it being a medieval fantasy about a pair of sisters), which says a lot right there -- good enough to read over again, but not remarkable.
This is the first part of (I think) a two-book series. It tells the story of the daughter and adopted daughter of a Saxon landowner, and how their lives change when a half-dead Norman messenger accidentally arrives at their manor in the middle of winter. There are several interesting conflicts set up between the girls, including jealousy over the young newcomer, the consequences of the use of magic, which one girl can do and the other can't, and the adopted girl's status in the household. In addition, there's political manoeuvering amongst the men over the succession and outlaws outside the manor walls. There's plenty happening in this book, but some of it seems contrived and the Celtic magic and "last priestess" thing seems hokey.
But it's still a fairly solid history-based fantasy, and I'd recommend it to people who enjoy that sort of thing but are looking for a simple story, not a world-saving epic in nine parts.
This is the first part of (I think) a two-book series. It tells the story of the daughter and adopted daughter of a Saxon landowner, and how their lives change when a half-dead Norman messenger accidentally arrives at their manor in the middle of winter. There are several interesting conflicts set up between the girls, including jealousy over the young newcomer, the consequences of the use of magic, which one girl can do and the other can't, and the adopted girl's status in the household. In addition, there's political manoeuvering amongst the men over the succession and outlaws outside the manor walls. There's plenty happening in this book, but some of it seems contrived and the Celtic magic and "last priestess" thing seems hokey.
But it's still a fairly solid history-based fantasy, and I'd recommend it to people who enjoy that sort of thing but are looking for a simple story, not a world-saving epic in nine parts.
January 8, 2016
I really wanted to like this book. I enjoyed "Sanctuary" and the cover art is absolutely gorgeous. The admire the sense of realism imparted in the opening chapters; it really does feel like the Saxon countryside just before Duke William of Normandy takes over.
That being said, I was bored. The pacing is really slow with no signs of picking up, the limited-third-person POV jumped around with no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and most of the characters are non-entities. Alison struck me as being impulsively spoiled and everyone else except Wildecent had next to no personality. I did like Wildecent, but not enough to continue slogging through, especially since this is the first in an unfinished series. (And, spoiler, there are no actual unicorns or dragons involved.)
If you like the just-barely magical historical fantasy genre with old Briton, you might like this book, but be prepared to only find the scenery and history engaging.
That being said, I was bored. The pacing is really slow with no signs of picking up, the limited-third-person POV jumped around with no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and most of the characters are non-entities. Alison struck me as being impulsively spoiled and everyone else except Wildecent had next to no personality. I did like Wildecent, but not enough to continue slogging through, especially since this is the first in an unfinished series. (And, spoiler, there are no actual unicorns or dragons involved.)
If you like the just-barely magical historical fantasy genre with old Briton, you might like this book, but be prepared to only find the scenery and history engaging.
February 22, 2011
Ok I feel bad giving this one star but it really was bad...in my opinion. This seemed like something I would be really into but it was confusing to say the least! I couldn't follow what was going on, it seemed really jumbled with the unexpected stranger and all the political ramifications, maybe I just had to know more historically speaking?? The sisters element was intriguing but I don't know...there could have been something there but I just didn't care for or about either of them. And the "last priestess" thing just seemed ridiculously contrived...maybe a second reading sometime in my lifetime huh?
June 21, 2012
Although there was much I liked about the story, it missed the sweet spot by feeling more like a prequel rather than the actual story. It ends in an unfinished state. There is a sequel, but I'm not sure I'm intrigued enough to search it out.
Authors, when I pick up a book, I expect a full story--even if the book is the first in a series. I have a feeling that this book along with its sequel would make one good book.
Authors, when I pick up a book, I expect a full story--even if the book is the first in a series. I have a feeling that this book along with its sequel would make one good book.
January 30, 2017
This was not a very engaging story. The pacing was very slow, the characters were not well developed, and there were times the story made no sense. Absolutely not what I expected or hoped for. I'm not all that interested in the history of that period, particularly its political machinations, so perhaps what was good about this story for others was lost on me.
March 19, 2010
Ok, this is a young adult medieval wicca novel. Not my usual fare. But I remembered really liking it as a kid and felt this urge to reread. Wasn't really that great the second time around... I had trouble understanding it, actually. Guess you have to be 13.
September 22, 2010
It took me a while to get into this book. Then I read it obsessively for most of two days. I ended by wanting to sue the author for ending the story part way through. This was clearly intended to be the first of a series, and the library doesn't have the follow up, if indeed it exists.
January 4, 2014
Can't really rate it although I remember reading it. The story isn't clear enough in my memory, but reading the description was enough to spark an "oh that book" moment, so I'm giving it a middle of the road rating.
August 17, 2008
Probably some of the more bearable and realistic characters in fantasy.
August 6, 2011
ummm... like 1 more chapter? this feels unfinished.
ugh.
good other than that.
ugh.
good other than that.
April 12, 2013
Good historical fantasy of events right before the battle of Hastings. Interesting characters, strong women, and multiple POV. Definitely will read book two.
Want to read
February 27, 20226
August 19, 2014
Obviously written before Daughter of the Bright Moon, judging by the clumsier prose and haphazard narrative. Feels like this should have been a novelette or short story.
October 6, 2015
I enjoyed this short book. Abbey did a really good job painting a vivid picture of life in the 11th century. The clash of cultures was well done.
April 14, 2008
Fantasy
August 7, 2010
There was a sequel?
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews