The Unicorn Sonata
by Peter S. Beagle

Peter S. Beagle is best known to me as the author of the book, The Last Unicorn, which was made into a wonderful animated feature-length film that caught my attention. So, it should come as no surprise when, while browsing through the shelves of a local library, my eyes rested on the book, The Unicorn Sonata, by the same author. So, like any other book-loving reader in the world, I grabbed it.

The story is told around Josephine "Joey" Rivera who, while in a music shop, encounters a strange man named Indigo who plays an intriguing tune on a long horn. Later, while trying to follow the same music through her town, she stumbles across the Border into the land of Shei'rah, a magical land populated by water nymphs, satyrs and Eldest who turn out to be unicorns.

But she arrives at a time of crisis in the Land, for the Eldest are going blind and not even the wisest of them know a cure. In her wanderings and explorations around the land, occasionally running into Indigo, she discovers what may be the cause of the disease but it would require a sacrifice no unicorn has done before to get a cure.

This is a 'light' fantasy book (no nobel lords or ladies holding off dark lords by sheer will-power) but it is written in a very lyrical way, especially Beagle's description of how the music of the Eldest sound and how the Eldest look ("One was as grand and old as the trees themselves, and so black that night paled around him"). The story itself isn't heavy going, with various threads winding together quite nicely at the end.

The illustrations by Robert Rodriguez are quite good and match my own visualisation of the land of Shei'rah quite well. But as they are all bunched together into two groups instead of being placed at appropriate places in the book, you will tend to encounter them before or after the scenes depicted in them.

If you have a few hours and want to imagine yourself in a pastoral land filled with the music of unicorns, this is a book to read. It has no connection with The Last Unicorn (other than the word in the title) so, not reading it before this book is no obstacle. But you may well want to look it up after reading this one to find out how Beagle's treatment of unicorns differ in both books.

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The Unicorn Sonata by Peter S. Beagle

The Unicorn Sonata
by Peter S. Beagle