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Title | Into the Land of the Unicorns
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Author | Bruce Coville
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Inc. - 1994
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First Printing | 1994
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Title | Song of the Wanderer
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Author | Bruce Coville
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Inc. - 1999
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First Printing | 1999
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Title | Dark Whispers
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Author | Bruce Coville
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Cover Art | Petar Meseljzija
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Publisher | Scholastic Inc. - 2008
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First Printing | Scholastic Inc. - 2008
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Title | The Last Hunt
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Author | Bruce Coville
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Cover Art | ---
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Publisher | Scholastic Inc. - 2010
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First Printing | Scholastic Inc. - 2010
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Category | Children
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Warnings | None
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Main Characters | Cara, Lightfoot, Grimwold, M'Gama, Ian, Fallon, Rajiv, Beloved, the Squijum, the Dimblethum, Rocky
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Main Elements | Unicorns, Dragons, Gryhpons, Dwarves, Centaurs
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Website | The Official Bruce Coville Homepage
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 Into the Land of Unicorns
Eight!...Nine!...Ten!
As each bell chime sounds, Cara pushes herself faster up the steep bell tower steps that lead to the roof. Eleven! She must be on the roof whe the next bell tolls. As she races up the stairs, Cara can't believe everything that has happened. Wasn't it just a few minutes ago that she and Grandmother Morris were peacefully walking home from the library? When did that mysterious man start to follow them? What does he want? Where did he come from? Who is he? Twelve! The ringing bell brings Cara back to the moment. Gramma told her what she must do! With a deep breath, and only half believing that she will be safe, Cara jumps off the church roof and into the adventure of her lifetime - into the Land of Luster, the world of the unicorns.
In Luster, Cara meets the Dimblethum, the Squijum, and the most maginificent of all the inhabitants, Lightfoot, a rebellious young unicorn. Together the new friends set out on a quest - to reach the Unicorn Queen and prevent the destruction of all unicorns.
Song of the Wanderer
A dangerous mission.
Cara must return to Earth to save her grandmother, the Wanderer. But to do so, Cara must first travel through the wilderness of Luster, land of the unicorns, and to the back of the dragon Ebillan's cave. Only there will she find the gate that can bring her back home.
As Cara embarks on the journey of her life, there is one person who stands in her way: Beloved, Cara's ancient ancestor, who has spent a lifetime dedicated to ridding the earth of unicorns. Is Cara strong enough to resist Beloved's ruthless magic and trickery?
Dark Whispers
Cara Diana Hunter is on a quest - searching for the secret that may unravel the mystery of the ancient war between the unicorns and the monstrous delvers.
Meanwhile, Cara's father is on a quest, too - to free her mother from the Rainbow Prison. As Cara travels through the strange and terrifying underground world of the delvers and the court of the centaur king, her father is travelling from mysterious India to the dpeths of the Rainbow Prison itself.
Who can be trusted? Who is the enemy? Will Cara and her father find what they are looking for? Readers will be at the edge of their seats in Bruce Coville's thrilling multistranded tale of two quests in the long-awaited third book in the Unicorn Chronicles.
The Last Hunt
Readers will be on the edge of their seats with this concluding episode of the riveting best-selling series by one of America's most gifted fantasy writers.
In the center if Luster stands an enormous tree called the Axis Mundi, the Heart of the World. But now that tree is wounded, pierced through by magic. And through that wound marches an army of Hunters, led by the sinister and vengeful Beloved. And they are all determined to destroy each and every unicorn.
As the unicorns gather to defend their lives, the human girl, Cara, is sent on a mission to meet a ferocious and mysterious dragon. Faced with perilous danger, Cara must make a desperate decision that will change her life forever.
I've read reviews which said these books were wonderful. I've read reviews which said these books are terrible. I'm somewhere in-between. The basic concept is a good one. The unicorns were forced into the land of Luster by the Hunters, the descendents of a girl named Beloved whose father was killed by a unicorn. But then we are introduced to the main character Cara. Now I assume she's in her early teens, but most of the time I feel I'm being generous if I assign her an age of 5. And then is the soap operatic quality of everyone being related to everyone else, without anyone actually knowing it at first. Problem is, the reader figures out most of the connections pretty quick because the hints are less than subtle. Cara picks up objects that become useful only a couple of pages later. The path one should never stray from, gets strayed from. I don't want to be too harsh on these books, after all I'm older than the target audience...but I expected more from Coville.
Now I do want to find out how things are resolved, but I'm not sure if there is going to be a third book or not. I guess since there was 5 years between the first two, we should be patient another year before assuming there will be no more Chronicles.
July 2019
It's been 16 years since I started reading this series. Now it's funny, reading my original review from over a decade ago I'm not sure why I found Cara so annoying, maybe I've just read more books of this kind? In fact I enjoyed it the second time around. Now I can't recall if I had already read the second book, but I decided to just start over from scratch again. I waited this long because of some issue with the publisher, there were very few copies of the fourth book ever printed, so it was impossible to find (hint, if you're desperate, join OpenLibrary, they have a PDF version you can legally borrow, if I hadn't found it there I would still be waiting).
Luster is a magical land with a great mystery at its core and a lot of threads binding it together. By the time you get to the third book, I don't know if the answers we started getting just introduced even more questions! Basically don't read the third book until you are sure you can get your hands on the fourth. In fthe third and fourth books, as the characters split up and go on their own quests, the multi-POV style was taken to an extreme, with so many separate stories, really short chapters, and unfortunately with those chapters ending on cliffhangers. I found that while Coville probably intended to increase suspense, I found that by the time I returned to a POV, I cared more about the one I just left and the "revelation" from the previous cliffhanger wasn't anything special, in fact I'd almost forgot that a big reveal was on the verge of happening. But let's just say you don't get a chance to get bored as the action never stops. It's also a quick read, I got through the 600+ page final book in just a few days.
Now it is a middle-grade book, so the younger characters tend to do the most to save the world even though there are several adults involved. And for the most part (aside from the Hunters that have about as much personality as the classic red-shirts in the original Star Trek, and are just as likely to get killed off without being named) the story was for the most part about finding the good in everyone, whether it was a dragon that hates having someone enter their territory, or an enemy that realizes they they should really be allies. It's actually surprisingly complicated though and as the number of characters balloon, you realized that Coville put a lot of thought into his world of Luster and how it ties into Earth, from it's creation to it's impending destruction.
In conclusion, while I was apparently not impressed with the series to start with, I found myself really getting into the world building, and even the Squijum didn't annoy me half as much as he did at the start...and I always get annoyed at cutesey speaking characters. I'm glad I got around to finishing it after all.
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