The Last Unicorn

What's inside (8 sections)

1. The unicorn leaves her garden
2. Schmendrick the failed magician
3. Molly Grue and Captain Cully's men
4. King Haggard and the Red Bull
5. Amalthea the woman
6. The return to the sea
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came to this book through the film songs, which I knew for years before I read a page. A friend kept a battered paperback and warned me it was sadder than it looks. She was right, though not in the way I expected. This is a short fantasy novel, about 212 pages in the Ace Books edition from 1968, and it reads like a fairy tale told by someone who has stopped trusting fairy tales.

The shape is simple. A unicorn learns she may be the last of her kind and leaves her safe wood to find the others. She travels with a magician who cannot work magic right and a woman who waited too long for wonder. They walk toward a gray castle by the sea, where a joyless king keeps a monster in his cellars. Peter S. Beagle tells it in plain, musical prose, funny for long stretches, then painful at the close.

Beagle loves detours. He stops for innkeepers and talking cats and restless ghosts and towns with petty curses. Sometimes those stops charmed me. Sometimes I wanted the road to move faster. Both reactions belong in any honest account of this book.

The unicorn leaves her garden

At the start the unicorn lives in a wood of lilacs where spring never ends. No animal hunts there. Travelers pass through and feel calm without knowing why. She is very old. She has never known fear or hunger.

Two hunters ride through one day. One remarks, almost in passing, that unicorns are gone from the world and she must be the last. The unicorn cannot shake the words.

She questions the other beasts, but they know nothing. A stag tells her that unicorns are only tales now. That frightens her more than the hunter did. Her wood has kept her safe and ignorant in equal measure. If she stays, she will live on in comfort and never learn what became of her people.

So she goes.

The opening moves slowly. Beagle spends pages on light in leaves and deer at water. I liked that patience because it sets the cost. She trades an untroubled forever for roads and thirst and risk.

On the road she meets a butterfly that speaks in scraps of songs and plays. It takes long coaxing to get sense from him. Buried in the chatter is a clue. The unicorns were driven off by a creature called the Red Bull, serving a king by the sea.

It is a thin thread to follow, a rumor from a mind that cannot hold still. She follows it because there is nothing else.

Schmendrick the failed magician

The unicorn is soon caught by Mommy Fortuna, who runs a traveling show called the Midnight Carnival. Fortuna holds a manticore and a satyr and other worn beasts, most of them fake or drugged for the crowd. She has some true skill, of a mean and greedy kind, and she knows what the unicorn is.

She lays a spell so visitors see a white mare instead of the true form. That trick matters. In this book most people fail to see magic even when it stands before them.

Working for Fortuna is Schmendrick, a tall, clumsy stage magician. His tricks fail. His patter runs too long. Fortuna keeps him because his failure amuses the crowd. Under the act he knows a good deal. He was taken young by a wizard named Nikos and trained without ever coming into his strength. He does not age as other men do. He waits, stuck between apprentice and master.

One night he frees the unicorn. In the confusion he also frees Celaeno the harpy, the one true horror in the show. The harpy kills Fortuna and her helper Rukh and flies away screaming. The unicorn runs. Schmendrick runs with her.

I keep returning to Schmendrick. He announces his own failure before anyone else can. He makes large promises and keeps them by accident. Beagle could have made him a wise guide. Instead he is kind, talkative, often useless in a fight, brave only when no exit is left.

With him the tone turns chatty. He explains men to the unicorn. She corrects him about unicorns. They argue about courage and hunger and time. She has never been hungry. He often has.

One fair gripe. Schmendrick gets long comic speeches that halt the march. If you enjoy wordplay you will smile. If you want the search to press on, you will wish someone told him to walk and talk at once.

Molly Grue and Captain Cully's men

This middle stretch is episodic, and readers should know it sags in places.

Schmendrick and the unicorn fall in with Captain Cully, a poor copy of Robin Hood, and his hungry band in the greenwood. Cully talks justice and robs whoever passes. His wife Molly Grue cooks and mends and watches with flat eyes.

Molly sees the unicorn at once. No disguise fools her. She weeps with anger rather than joy. She believed as a girl, then grew into a hard life with men who play at outlaws. To have proof arrive now, when she is middle aged and worn, feels cruel.

Her greeting is bitter. Where were you when I was young and needed you. That scene is the center of the book for many, and for me as well. It states the price of late wonder in plain speech.

Molly joins them when they leave. She does not ask Cully. Cully does not stop her. That tells you what their marriage became. He loves stories. She has stopped loving stories and clings to the one true thing she has seen.

They also pass through Hagsgate, a blunt, frightened town under a curse tied to an old wrong and a lost child, with a talking cat and a restless corpse to point the way. I will not map every turn. The fun is in Beagle's telling.

Still, Hagsgate runs long for what it gives. The cat amuses. The ghost touches. But the town serves mainly to point toward King Haggard's castle and his adopted son, Prince Lir. Ten fewer pages would have done it.

What holds these chapters is Molly. She cooks, scolds Schmendrick, sleeps near the unicorn. She has no power and no storybook beauty. She keeps walking when Schmendrick wants to quit. Her blunt talk keeps the book on the ground.

King Haggard and the Red Bull

Haggard holds a gray castle on a cliff above the sea. He is old and thin and bored. He loves nothing except one feeling. When unicorns move in the surf below, he knows brief happiness.

To keep that, he has had the Red Bull drive the unicorns into the sea. They live in the waves now, running back and forth, looking from shore like white foam. Only Haggard knows what they are. He watches them as another man might watch drink set aside for hard nights.

The Bull is huge and red and silent. It does not argue or explain. It scents unicorns and drives them before it. It dens in the passages under the castle and comes out when Haggard wills.

I found the split effective. Haggard is no dark wizard with bright spells. He is a tired holder of power who found one thing that eases his emptiness and will pay any price to keep it. The Bull is the force. Haggard is the cold wish behind it.

Prince Lir complicates matters. He is young, handsome, strong, and plain in thought. The town folk expect him to break curses and bring Haggard down. Schmendrick calls him a hero from songs. Molly sees more in him. Beagle treats him kindly. He lets Lir be slow with words and quick to act, and never mocks his courage even while mocking his verses.

When the travelers reach the castle they take service. Schmendrick plays court magician. Molly works in the kitchen. The unicorn cannot enter as herself, for the Bull would scent her. So Schmendrick works the one great magic of his life and turns her into a woman.

She fights it. Her body is her self. The spell holds. Where the unicorn stood there is a young woman with pale hair who cannot walk steady or bear hunger. They call her Amalthea.

A criticism fits here. Haggard's motive never grows past the first statement. He cannot make joy, so he hoards it. That serves a fairy tale, but beside Molly and Schmendrick he can feel thin. His late talks with Molly over wine, and his puzzled talks with Amalthea, add shape. I still wanted one scene showing how he bound the Bull or why the sea prison holds. Beagle prefers mood to method in this part.

Amalthea the woman

As Amalthea, the unicorn forgets herself by inches.

At first she recalls the wood and hates clothes and cooked food and sleep. She hates being slow. She begs Schmendrick to turn her back. He cannot. The spell is past his recall, and only great need will undo it.

Lir loves her at once. He writes poor poems. He hunts and drills to impress her. She barely sees him, her mind still half in the lilac shade. Slowly that changes. Feeling seeps in. She learns to weep. She learns a tiredness that sleep will not fix. She starts to care if Lir lives or dies.

Beagle takes his time here, and mostly earns it. Amalthea fails at small tasks, sits too still, stares at the sea as if she knows the shapes in the foam. Molly watches with pity, knowing what it is to love what cannot stay. Schmendrick watches with guilt, fearing he saved her by spoiling her.

Lir grows too. Adoration that wins no praise forces him to act without a crowd. He trains, listens, asks instead of reciting. His shift is quiet and sound. When danger comes, you trust he will stand.

The castle scenes charmed me. Kitchens full of gossip. A cat who knows too much. Haggard across the table, stirred by Amalthea without naming why. Everyone smiles. No one is safe.

The pace does slacken. Songs and dreams and talks on love repeat the same ache. There is a tale of old lovers that states what we already know. Beagle loves his own voice here and explains twice what once would carry.

What saves it is the detail of the body. Amalthea blisters, bleeds, shivers, craves food and rest and touch. None of this is pretty in a storybook way. It is awkward and new to her. When she at last takes Lir's hand, it reads less like a prize moment and more like someone choosing warmth after long cold.

The return to the sea

The Bull comes for Amalthea at the last, as it must.

Haggard sets it loose, sensing she is the final free unicorn. She runs through the castle and down to the shore in a woman's shape, slow and terrified. Lir runs with her. Schmendrick and Molly follow.

At the water Schmendrick finds his strength. Shame and love break the block held since boyhood. He speaks the reversal and makes her a unicorn again. The change is fierce and glad. White and shining and angry, she turns on the Bull.

Lir stands with her, a man with a sword against a horror. He is cut down, though Beagle tells it softly, and lives just long enough to be known as a true hero. The unicorn wounds the Bull and drives it into the surf. The sea breaks open. The captive unicorns rush out in a white wave, and Haggard's tower falls as they pass.

Haggard falls with it, watching to the end, glad to see them free and grieved to lose his one happiness. Beagle grants him no pardon and no torment. He simply ends with his store gone.

Then the part that stayed with me. The freed herd runs for woods and skies. Lir is buried with honor and the town curse lifts. Schmendrick, truly a magician now, learns he will age and die like other men, and takes the news with relief. Molly gains no youth back, only the sight she waited half a life to see.

And the unicorn is changed. As Amalthea she learned love and grief and regret. Unicorns do not know those things. She does now. She can never go back to the untroubled spring she left. She thanks Schmendrick in her own proud way, and leaves.

That is why the book lasts. Most quests end with the prize restored. Here the prize is restored and the finder is marked by the finding. She saved her people by becoming what they are not, and she cannot unlearn it.

Should you read it. Yes, if you like fantasy that cares more for persons than for systems. No schools of power here, no maps to memorize. A failed wizard learning limits, a worn woman refusing to look away, a young hero growing past songs, a bright creature learning to grieve.

It is short. Two evenings will do it. Some pages will feel light. Some will weigh. That mix is the point. Seek the Ace Books text if you can. Later printings add kind introductions, but the 1968 shape at about 212 pages is tight. Forgive the slow town. Stay for Molly by the fire. Stay for Amalthea learning tears. The sea repays it all.

FAQ

Do I need to read other books before The Last Unicorn?

No. The book stands alone. Beagle published it in 1968 with Ace Books, and it runs about 212 pages. Later books and a film followed, but you need nothing else to follow this story.

Is The Last Unicorn a children's book?

Teen readers and adults who like character driven fantasy will get the most from it. Younger children may find the middle slow and some scenes with the harpy and the Bull frightening.

How close is the 1982 film to the book?

The 1982 animated film follows the main plot closely but trims songs, side encounters, and much of Beagle's narration. If you only know the film, the book will feel slower, stranger, and sadder in places.