(Review by Jane Beaumont, Cape Town, South Africa)

Thirty years on, I have just awarded myself yet another revisit to the book that got me started, lured me sirenically into the saga infested world of fantasy writing. No, not Lord of the Rings, (although that's in my personal mythology somewhere) but The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle, published in the mythic sixties.

Beagle understands the rules. A quest has not only sacred traditions but a shape and form that wrap around a few gnarled kernels of truth. Here is Beagle, using the character of Prince Lir as mouthpiece, on heroism:

"My lady," he said, "I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing and, like them, it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches... there are certain weak spots all dragons have. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be married to the princess when he embarks on his adventures... things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned... the happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story."

Simple, basic truths that many a fantasy writer seems to have forgotten or wilfully ignored. The Last Unicorn is - wonder of wonders - a single book, not a heptalogy (or whatever the currently proliferating multi-volume series are labelled). It is complete and completely satisfying in and of itself. It is, as fantasy should be, timeless, yet now would be a very good time to read it. I only wish that I, too, could read it for the first time once again.