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Title | Nico the Unicorn
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Series | ---
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Author | Frank Sacks
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Illustrator | ---
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Publisher | Tor - 1996
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First Printing | Tor - 1996
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Category | Children
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters
| Billy Hastings, Nico
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Main Elements | Unicorns
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Nothing would ever be the same. Not for eleven-year-old Billy Hastings. The day drunk driver ran a stoplight and crashed into their car, his father was killed instantly, and Billy was forced to wear a brace on his crippled leg. he had hoped that when he and his mother moved to a new town he might leave the nightmare behind. But it didn't work. The memory followed him like a bad dream.
Until he met Nico.
From the day he first saw Nio, Billy knew he was no ordinary horse. Nico was a unicorn. A magic unicorn. And he would change Billy's life forever.

This was a very bizarre story. Now don't get me wrong, it's a kids book and they aren't quite a picky about details nor pacing nor language. But I've been reading a lot of unicorn books lately, even ones for young kids like this, and this one felt...frantic or kind of rushed somehow, even though the unicorn bits only start towards the middle of the story.
One thing that annoyed me, which an editor should have caught was the bit about the mountain lion. First, yes, it's a dangerous creature but it isn't evil and yet it was portrayed that way (which to me just propagates in children's minds that they are bad and should be killed). In fact the way it was written it felt very amateurish, the way it described what the mountain lion was thinking, I always claim NEVER get inside the head of your villain, just makes them seem one-dimensional. But there were two HUGE holes in the mountain lion as villain story line. The first, is that all animals seem to worship Nico since they know what he is, even the coyote bows to him. But the mountain lion seems particularly dumb and just smells something tasty to eat, doesn't realize he's in the presence of what amounts to an animal god. That seemed contrived just to give the story tension with the hunting lion when it should really be in awe of Nico. The second, is a scene where the lion tries to attack Nico and its thoughts were about how surprised it was at how Nico was fighting back, but prey never fight back!! But...a handful of pages back Nico's mother kicked the crap out of the mountain lion...I guess the blow to the head gave the lion amnesia? Though it must be wondering where its headache is coming from...
It's also a fairly cliche'd plot. Crippled boy get picked on at school, takes pity on a poor animal, finds himself with a unicorn on his hands, runs off with it to keep it away from the hunters and reporters, and...well guess I shouldn't ruin the ending but I think you can figure out what happens to the "crippled" part, we're talking unicorns here after all, they are known for a certain specific type of magic!
And talking of hunters and reporters...seems no one has any problem believing a kid (the school bully) that unicorns are real, and suddenly everyone is chasing the idea of Nico, even if they didn't set eyes on him yet to have proof that unicorns exist. And of course the first thing the drunk hunters want to do is shoot it, even if it's the only one of its kind.
In fact the whole story reminds me a lot of Unicorn Mountain (minus the dying of AIDS bit of course), there are a lot of similarities in plot and location.
There is a movie with the same name
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