The Karkadann Triangle

October 8, 2018
Playing on fans’ nostalgia for his widely beloved 1968 novel The Last Unicorn, in which a unicorn tries to find out whether she is the only one of her kind, Beagle dredges up the original version of the story, incomplete but still iconic. Having never left her forest, the unicorn is surprised when a saddened dragon comes and tells her tales of black roads, fast coaches, and no unicorn sightings anywhere. After deciding to strike out on her own, she comes across a demon named Azazel with a second head named Webster. Kicked out of Hell, which has been redesigned without fires to attract more humans, the heads constantly bicker with each other yet become close with the unicorn. With her unlikely companion(s), the unicorn travels through the 1960s, shocked to find what humans have become. Although this book is not the complete story of the travels of the unicorn and her friends, fans of the original will love encountering additional characters they never had the pleasure of meeting when they first experienced the unicorn’s journey.

Starred review from November 1, 2018
Fifty years ago, the first edition of The Last Unicorn was published; the legend of a unicorn searching for her kind has filled readers' hearts for decades. This commemorative hardcover edition is the first draft of what would eventually become Beagle's best-known work, written as the author was desperately trying not to write a fantasy novel. His afterword recounts the history behind this beloved tale, preceded by personal reminiscences from best-selling fantasy authors Carrie Vaughn (Bannerless, 2017) and Patrick Rothfuss (The Name of the Wind, 2007). The story itself begins when the unicorn encounters a dragon in her forest, and because the hatred between their kinds is absolute, they must always fight to the death. Except this dragon is crying, dismayed by the modern world and injured by having a coach run over his tail. The unicorn learns from the dragon that she may be the last of her kind and sets off on her quest to find others. Soon, she meets her questing companion, a demon with a split personality who has been evicted from hell. Fans will want to witness the evolution into the original.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)