The Last Unicorn

"The Last Unicorn is one case where the movie does follow the storytelling very, very well. So if you’ve seen the movie, you’ve pretty much experienced the book. I think that is because the screenplay was by Peter S. Beagle, so he kept it very close to what he had written as a story. There is simply a lot of wonder built into it. The opening scenes of it are just … it takes you over the threshold from this world into that world. The characters are very well rounded. Oh, it’s just a magical book all the way through. I will say that there’s a lot more detail in the book than they can put in a screenplay – so that’s definitely worth the reader’s time. It’s a very bittersweet book; it doesn’t have necessarily a happy ending. It has a real ending, what would most likely happen, and not all the characters end up in the good and wonderful place that they dreamed of. People find out they have work to do in the world, and things they must do. So I admire how he wrote that book. Again, Peter S Beagle is an amazing author, and if you haven’t read A Fine and Private Place , then you’ve missed out on something. That one, I will briefly say, is the story of a fellow who lives in a graveyard, is fed by crows, and consorts with ghosts. And it’s just a lovely, lovely story. I read The Last Unicorn and then immediately picked up A Fine and Private Place . So to me, those two are always sandwiched together in my mind. Oh, that’s a tough one! Yes, I’m trying not to do a spoiler. Ok… The unicorns are vanishing from the world, and there is one last unicorn; and in many ways, she will at some point choose between saving all of her kind, or finding a road she never expected to explore. How’s that? Definitely. They are so rich with power and symbolism, unicorns and dragons and sea monsters and giants; the Fae, the elves and the dwarves, which are a people in many stories; all of those wonderful things to touch on… I don’t really think they should be confined to medieval stories at all. I think they should be wandering around our stories today, just as freely as they do in the once-upon-a-time stories. I suppose we’ve got our own peculiarities – I mean, we have a lot of zombies now, and they themselves are being interpreted in dozens of different ways. I just think these creatures deserve a wider time span than we’ve given them, perhaps. A lot of readers actually miss out this piece of the overall Realm of the Elderlings story, that chronologically is rather important to understanding what’s going on. In a nutshell, the serpents have migrated up the river and are transforming themselves into dragons, and this takes them from being rather confused animals to becoming a force to be reckoned with, as they move upriver with their keepers. Again I hate doing spoilers – you can talk a book to death, and then people just don’t read it. So I’m going to dodge that a little bit and just say: it’s a history of the dragons in the world, in the realm. When I start to write a book, very often I know the beginning and the ending, and I know a few places that I have to hit, a few events that have to happen along the way. It’s like planning a road trip across the US. I may plan to stop at the Grand Canyon, and I want to go to New Orleans, and maybe I’ll dip down to the Everglades and then go up to New York City. But everything that happens in between is unplanned. You may pick up a hitchhiker; you may find out the bridge is out, and you’ve got to go some way around it. And that, for me, is very much like writing a book. I will think I know where I’m going, and then there will be something that diverts the flow – and when I try to ignore it, the book just stops. So I just have to go with wherever the current of the story is carrying me. I think that keeps the writing fun for me. If I wrote everything down in a precise outline and then tried to follow it, I think I’d be very bored."