Title The Well of the Unicorn Series --- Author Fletcher Pratt Cover Art --- Publisher William Slone Associates - 1948 First Printing William Slone Associates - 1948 Category Fantasy Warnings None Main Characters Airar, Meliboe, Rogai and many others Main Elements Wizards

Robbed of lands and heritage by the rapacious Vulkings, young Airar Alvarson had only his limited gift for sorcery to aid him against a world of savage intrigues. Then he met a mysterious sorcerer and was given a strange iron ring -- a ring that led him into a futile conspiracy and soon had him fleeing for his life. Driven by enchantments and destiny, he found himself leading a band of warriors against the mighty empire of the Vulkings. With him was a warrior maid who mocked him while she sought to serve by fair means or foul. Then he met the Imperial Princess who preached the peace of the Well but it soon became apparent she would bring him only turmoil and strife!

I'm going a year of reading mainly unicorn books and a search for unicorn at the library brought this one up. Just reading the blurb I was quite certain there were no actual unicorns involved (which is correct, though they show up as constellations or in dreams the unicorn mentions collected together would probably fit in a paragraph). But I decided to read it anyway, the book was written in 1948, nearly a decade before Lord of the Rings, and wanted to see a fantasy not influenced by that classic.

Ugh...the writing is not only difficult, I swear some sentences make absolutely not sense whatever. Written in an archaic form, with characters having dialects and accents, I was constantly re-reading sentences and not figuring them out (and it's not like I'm not literate, LotR and Dune are a breeze compared to this one). This had the side effect of my not really reading everything properly, just skimming through as I tried to finish the book before I had to return it, and resulted in one person saying something I missed and another person suddenly going to war, or getting married, or some other major shift in events but I completed missed how it came about.

Ok, the location which is imporant seeing as the characters spend most of their time roaming all over the map. At least the author was kind enough in the introduction to point out that his geography may not be entirely consistent. I thought I had liked the little mini maps at the top of each chapter showing where the characters were, but in the end I just got even more confused as to where everything was located.

The plot...well, you have Airar who loses his farm because he can't pay his taxes. He heads off to find a job in the big city and gets waylaid by a wizard that gives him a message to deliver to a rebel group. He then takes off with one of them, only to be captured by fishermen and brought to their island so he can cast enchantments on their boat to keep the sea demons away, and from there he takes 50 of their men to join the rebellion in yet another city...and well, by the end he becomes a great warrior though rarely does he really do anything strategic, he just gets lucky.

But I don't think the story was written with the story in mind (unlike LotR where Tolkien says that's all his tale is, a story, it doesn't mean any more or any less). The characters spend a lot of time discussing politics. Airar comes from a kind of utopic area where there are no leaders and everyone does as they will, which probably works ok for farmsteads, but people point out that that won't work in big cities...if everyone can do whatever they want, what if people want to steal other people's stuff? Or the example of a bunch of people, all equal, getting on a ship but no one is the captain. The ship foundered when there was no one to make the decisions. But then is the alternative having a despotic leader that taxes people out of their homes? Is there something else in between? I think many of the characters involved are there to represent different options. And the book really doesn't come to any conclusions. However asking what you plan to replace the overthrown goverment with is an excellent one. Might you throw away one despot only to replace him with a dictator even worse? If you don't have a plan in place that vacuum will attract those who most wish to fill the gap to satisfy their own ambitions. We've seen it in our world, a goverment in turmoil is always ripe for someone to take complete control. And so your plan cannot just be "I don't like the status quo" but you need to also have in mind "The replacement should be this".

In fact, I was starting to wonder if the main character might just die at the end, as I couldn't figure out how the story could end when there were five pages left and they were still diddling about supply trains and where to position their troops. Indeed the overthrow of the evil count takes place in a couple pages, and the wrap up just a couple more. Guess that's why the last chapter is called "No End"?

And then there's the Well...some sort of pseudo-religious thing where people go to drink to find Peace. We never go there, in fact the location of the Well is just an arrow pointing off the edge of the map. Other than the fact that it is mentioned frequently, and the last line of the book involved Airar not deciding not to go to the Well (maybe because he's developped a taste for war?) it frankly doesn't play a role. Perhaps I just didn't get it's symbolic importance, or the point the author wanted to make for it.

Even the characters are unappealing. I mean Airar has his moments like when he adopts a kitten, but his way with women is let's just say, awkward. And he's able to switch from the one and only love of his life to another with little effort, no wonder the second one predicts that he will tire of her one day, though he argues against it.

If you're really into the old classics, then I think it might be worth giving this one a try, but unless you really want to slog through difficult and archaic writing that makes understanding the point the author might be trying to make near impossible, I don't recommend this book.