Riding the Unicorn

by Paul Kearney

Book

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Paul Kearney was born in rural County Antrim, Ireland, in 1967. His father was a butcher, and his mother was a nurse. He rode horses, had lots of cousins, and cut turf and baled hay. He often smelled of cowshit.

He grew up through the worst of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland, a time when bombs and gunfire were part of every healthy young boy's adolescence. He developed an unhealthy interest in firearms and Blowing Things Up - but what growing boy hasn't?

By some fluke of fate he managed to get to Oxford University, and studied Old Norse, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English.

He began writing books because he had no other choice. His first, written at aged sixteen, was a magnificent epic, influenced heavily by James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, Robert E Howard, and Playboy. It was enormous, colourful, purple-prosed, and featured a lot of Very Large Swords.

His second was rather better, and was published by Victor Gollancz over a very boozy lunch with a very shrewd editor.

Luckily, in those days editors met authors face to face, and Kearney's Irish charm wangled him a long series of contracts with Gollancz, and other publishers. He still thinks he can't write for toffee, but others have, insanely, begged to differ.

Kearney has been writing full-time for twenty-eight years now, and can't imagine doing anything else. Though he has often tried.

Reviews

[Branwen Sedai *of the Brown Ajah* · Rating 5 out of 5]

"A man can be a reed or an oak: he can bend with the wind or break under it."

John Willoby is certain he is going mad. This is a sentiment that is also shared by his wife and daughter as well. Because John is hearing voices and seeing strange things; visions of a prince named Tallimon and a beautiful young woman with raven-black hair who both inhabit a wild and breathtakingly beautiful land that is like no where on Earth. But John isn't mad. He's being pulled by the Prince and his sorcerer into their world because they desperately need him for a task that only he can preform. If he lives that long.

Another remarkable fantasy novel by Paul Kearney! I was blown away by 'A Different Kingdom' and 'The Way to Babylon', so I was also anxious to read this one as well. I was not disappointed in the least! Rather, I was blown away by another fascinating tale of an ordinary man who gets swept up in a fantasy land. As a fantasy reader, this sort of book is like the perfect read for me. :) Tons of gorgeous descriptions, plenty of character depth, and lots and lots of action.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story for me, especially compared to his other two books that I read, was that John was not the most favorable of protagonists. He is a deeply flawed individual who at times, was very hard to like or empathize with. But this didn't take away from the story at all, rather it enhanced it greatly. Because the times where I did empathize for him were made much stronger by the fact that he was quite unlike many other typical fantasy protagonists.

This was a wonderful story and I would recommend it to any fantasy enthusiast!

[Steve · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read Fantasy, a little. I've read the Thomas Covenant series. I've seen Army of Darkness. So the troubled-outcast-becomes-hero-in-a-new-world theme is not new to me. I was interested to see this take on it, but I was skeptical. After all, those are some hard shoes to fill. This story not only fills them, it needs an extra wide.
This story breaks molds that have been held as Fantasy staples. Build characters, introduce obstacle, overcome objective, build more story and character. That's the tried and true recipe. Not in this case.
Now, I'm not going to ruin this story by spoiling anything because I think you need to read this book. What I will tell you is it's like running down hill chased by a bear. You don't quit running. You just run faster until the very end. And the end is so magnificently done.
I know this book is a reissue, and it should be. I think it deserves a new audience. It pulled me in, and it will you too.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

John Willoby is being pulled between worlds. Or he is going mad, ‘riding the unicorn’ as his prison officer colleagues would say. It’s clear to Willoby it must be the latter. Disappearing in the middle of his prison shift from among convicts, appearing in a makeshift medieval encampment for minutes before tumbling back to the real world, Willoby believes his mind is simply breaking apart.

He finds no solace at home, with a wife who has grown to dislike him and a daughter who can barely hide her disgust. He’s realised he isn’t worth anyone’s time, barely even his own, and falls into drinking and violence guaranteed to bring about his downfall. Except in this other world, in this winter land of first-settlers he is a man with a purpose, a man upon whom others must rely. Persuaded to kill a King so as to save a people, Willoby finds that in another world, with a second chance he may be the kind of man he had always wanted to be after all.

I quite enjoyed this book a lot. But then that is hardly surprising as I am a big Paul Kearney fan. Having finished this book, I have now read every book by Kearney except for a tie-in novel. Kearney’s early novels are a bit hard to find so I’m glad that Solaris decided to reprint them. These three novels, The Way to Babylon, A Different Kingdom, and Riding the Unicorn are a little different from his later stuff as they are all stand-alones and all contain some element of portal fantasy.

While the first two novels are pretty typical portal fantasy, the portal element in Riding the Unicorn is a bit more ambiguous. I’m sure the reader of this review is wondering about the odd title of the book? As suggested in the synopsis it has nothing to do with unicorns, rather it refers to a term and expression regarding schizophrenia. Indeed, for most of the book, the main character of Willoby cannot tell if the world he is being pulled to really exists or if it’s just a figment of his imagination, though it does become a little clear at the end. But the possibility of madness and of dealing with it is a very strong theme in this book.

There is another interesting thing I want to note about Kearney’s work; it’s how he has a group of people endure an extremely arduous trek over snow-covered and nearly impassable mountains. It happens in the prologue of this book, in The Way to Babylon, Ships From the West, This Forsaken Earth, and The Ten Thousand. It seems to be a writing trick he comes back to a lot.

MINOR SPOILERS for those who have read The Way to Babylon: the alternate fantasy world in this book is the same world of Minginish, albeit set very early in its history around the time of its founding.

Paul Kearney is probably better known for his Monarchies of God series, and to a lesser extent The Sea Beggers and The Macht, but Riding the Unicorn and his other two early novels are definitely worth a look. Strongly recommended.

Rating: 8/10.

http://thedecklededge.blogspot.com/20...

[Nana Spark · Rating 1 out of 5]

What happened to the plot? Gee, Nana, I don't know. You tell me.

Eh....
Ok listen: this is my first adult fantasy novel read that doesn't have George R.R. Martin's name slapped on the cover and I'm really disappointed.

In the beginning, I enjoyed the strange intimacy that Willoby and the Prince shared by Willoby seeing this fantasy land through the prince's eyes. (I'm always gamed for a possible bromance.) And I loved how salty Willoby was all the time because of the shit he's going through.

However, in the beginning-middle of the book I began to question why the Prince of this magical world was so interested in this nobody human. When I found out why it was so anticlimactic and low key dumb.



Then the plot slows down with unnecessary filler until the middle, and then back to filler again. Filler that is filled with an insta-love love triangle, a whole lot of waiting around, and everyone being worried about Willoby not being able to do his thing.



So, because I don't love to suffer, I DNF'd @ about 80% and skimmed in my usual fashion. And the plot got worse!!! How is that even possible??

Ok, so even though the plot was dumb and the characters went downhill, the writing was actually not horrible and the beginning was fun to read. I'm interested in reading this author's other books to see if they're an improvement. If they aren't, at the first sign of danger, I'm DNFing them so quick.

[Nicholas Whyte · Rating 3 out of 5]

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3734201.html

I've previously read Kearney's first two novels, The Way to Babylon and A Different Kingdom, both of which involve liminal adventures of a chap in our world who finds himself also playing a vital and heroic role in a fantasy world; but is it real? Riding the Unicorn has much the same premise, but some differences; the protagonist is an older ex-army prison guard, who is somehow chosen for a vital political assassination on the other side. It did not come together as well as the first two, I felt; it's brave to make the central character less attractive, but it also makes him less interesting, and I wasn't actually convinced by the need for the fantasy world to choose him for the mission. And there's no actual unicorn, except in an opening quotation about schizophrenia. But it's not too long. I see it's now being marketed as in sequence with the previous two, suggesting that the parallel world is the same in each case.

[Robert · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can also find my review of Riding the Unicorn on my new book blog

Willoby is a middle-aged prison guard, a husband and a father. But at heart, he still pines for his days as a soldier. His job is not his calling, there is distance between him and his wife, and his teenage daughter resents him. When he starts having visions and seizures, his first fear is that losing consciousness would be very dangerous in his job. For the first time ever, he takes time off for sickness. Then, his visions start to affect not just his job, but his family life.

In his visions, he is pulled into another world, first as an observer through the eyes of a prince, but then physical transfers between worlds start to happen. The other world is medieval, filled with a people who have just fled from their former homelands across icy mountains into a new land, keen to start new lives. But intrigue is afoot, and for complex reasons, the bastard prince Tallimon needs an outsider. He needs Willoby.

Riding the Unicorn is not your average fantasy novel, nor even your average person-from-our-world-goes-into-fantasy-world novel. For one thing, our protagonist is a flawed man. He's quite rough. In fact, he is a thug, and not just because his language is tough and he works in a prison. In fantasy novels, you don't get many working class protagonists who occasionally hit their wives.

The world he enters, meanwhile, may have some fantastical elements - some magic, some monsters - but the magic is understated, the monsters just fauna, really. Today's readers might be tempted to compare this world to Westeros, except this novel was originally published before Game of Thrones, so it definitely isn't derivative.

This is an intelligent, authentic novel. Willoby is not the type to have a mid-life crisis, but his glimpses of that other world trigger one: suddenly, his own life seems pale by comparison. He's afraid that he is losing his mind, but even more worried about the prospects of talk therapy and psychiatrists. His feelings for his family are decidedly mixed - there is fatigue and exhaustion, but also a stubborn determination to make it work. Meanwhile, in the other world, there's intrigue and powerplays and politics, and the sort of scheming we have come to expect from gritty, realist fantasy fiction (all the more impressive for having been written 20 years ago: the book must have been way ahead of its time).

Riding the Unicorn is never boring. It's very readable, consistently entertaining and intelligent. It could just as easily be marketed as "lit-fic" as fantasy - there is enough focus on characters, character development, and thoughtful treatment of all kinds of serious themes in this novel to satisfy even readers who never touch 'escapist' fantasy literature, while there's enough swashbuckling adventure and grit for fantasy fans not to get bored. This book truly has the best of both worlds - but it is a serious novel, steering clear of comedy or light relief.

The title, however, is poorly chosen. No unicorns appear in the book at all. (Apparently, 'Riding the Unicorn' is a colloquialism for 'going mad'). Putting a unicorn in the title of a fantasy novel might set up the wrong expectations in readers: this is not a frivolous novel of sparkly merriment.

Rating: 4.5/5

PS: You can read an excerpt of Riding the Unicorn online.

[Melina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Final book in the different kingdom series and once again John, a modern day prison guard with anger issues finds himself drawn into a magical world to complete a task, in this case assassinate the king. The machinations and political interplay at the magical world were interesting though not very deep. Equally interesting was the repulsive character of John who hates his life and blooms in his new reality despite the difficulties. This was the best of the three books in the series and creates a circle as it becomes apparent that the different kingdom is the same in all three books at different points in time. These stories, though they have been reprinted, remain largely unknown but they show the beginnings of an important fantasy writer.

[Simon Mcleish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on my blog here in February 2001.

Kearney's third novel is extremely like his first, The Way To Babylon. It has the same premise, with a man's visions of a fantasy world being like madness, with him and those around him doubting his sanity. In the earlier novel, it is the death of the central character's wife and his subsequent depression which triggers the visions, which are of a world about which he has written two novels. This is both a powerful motivation for mental illness and a reason for the particular visions he sees, from a psychiatric point of view' he has been unable to write the concluding part of a successful trilogy.

Here, though, the motivation is far less. Willoby is a disillusioned, ex-army prison officer, alienated from his wife and daughter. The most interesting thing about him is that, in late middle age, he is far older than most heroes of fantasy novels. His visions of another world are diagnosed as schizophrenia, an illness whose symptoms are difficult to pin down, prompting the quotation comparing it to a unicorn printed at the front of the novel which supplies its title. There is no specific episode which prompts the visions, and their content has no very clear connection with the rest of his life.

This makes Riding the Unicorn a rather less satisfying novel than The Way to Babylon, and being so similar to Kearney's début is also a disappointment. There are good ideas in it - Willoby is being summoned as a person with no connections to any of the political factions in the fantasy world to commit a crime which can then be safely disavowed; the nature of the crime turns out to have interesting psychological resonance, as does his relationship with the slave girl set to tempt him to follow the wishes of his summoners - but it is an idea about which Kearney doesn't have enough that is new to say to make this novel equal his earlier standard.

[The · Rating 4 out of 5]

Full review at http://www.atgreviews.net/2015/12/rid...
(An advanced copy was provided by the publisher).

Riding the Unicorn was first published in 1994, and is now being re-released in the hopes that it finds a new audience … something this book certainly deserves. The final of three standalones, before he would write the Monarchies of God series that would earn him his success, Paul Kearney’s Riding the Unicorn meshes the realism of our world with a traditional medieval fantasy while still managing to turn something out that resists a number of cliches that are so commonly associated with the fantasy genre.

[Sebastian H]

The premise seemed interesting at first, but the protagonist never quite clicked with me. Might give it another chance in the future, but for now I'll leave it here (finished the first three chapters or so).

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. A nice, quick book. Lots of typos and grammatical errors, and the beginning was kind of slow, but still worth the read.

[Andre · Rating 3 out of 5]

A nice take on the story of schizophrenia/other world that was well written and interesting. But I find that it was a bit too similar to the previous novel for my taste.