Fb2 Well of the Unicorn ePub

I purchased this book on a recommendation for its portrayal of feuding groups and cultures. What I read delivered both that and a very welcome story with a host of likable characters with very distinct traits and a world that slowly immerses you.
At less than five-hundred pages the sad fact is that it's over once one can get really attached to many of the people.
The one major criticism I would level is that the book does not slow down to explain the many varied groups and names of the world. It will be hard for the first hundred or so pages to get a distinct idea of what the Iron Ring, or a Dalecarl is when the characters delve into discussions that assume the reader already understands in some cases subtle nuances.
This should not all discourage a prospective reader, as the mass of information about the world is gradually distilled as the plot progresses.
An extremely enjoyable book with fascinating detail and characters.

I was reading Tom Shippey's list of essays on Tolkien and he mentioned this book as a good example of not being one of the many countless authors that imitate Tolkien and was excited to read it. After reading it, I was pleased to find out that Shippey was right but Pratt's style gave me a headache from the endless list of complicated names that don't quite roll off the tongue so well. The names of characters and places feel like they are cut and pasted in random order that doesn't give structure to the plot or direction of the story. The prose isn't smooth or elegant at all, it feels like a history book. There is a way to include a wealthy amount of characters, place names, previous wars and kings and so on which gives a story depth but Pratt doesn't succeed in doing this.

"The Well of the Unicorn" was first published by William Sloane Associates in 1948, as by the previously unknown author, George U. Fletcher. It featured a lovely dust jacket, a frontispiece map, and inset maps as chapter headings, the beautiful work of Rafael Palacios, whose maps had graced many other books, including some highly-regarded military histories by Fletcher Pratt. Considerable trouble had obviously been taken to produce the book, and many of its readers eventually would agree that it was worth it -- when they had a chance to see it.

A story of revolution and love in a world both like and unlike medieval Europe, it might have reached a wide audience, at least by the pre-Tolkien standards for fantasy. Although highly original in many ways, it acknowledged a debt to Lord Dunsany's play, "King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior," the events of which were supposed to lie in the book's distant past; and it fairly clearly reacted to the vague political and military thinking in E.R. Eddison's "The Worm Ouroboros." (As was later pointed out in a fine critical essay by Dave Hulan, "Of Worms and Unicorns" -- reprinted in "The Conan Grimoire" [Mirage] and "The Spell of Conan" [Ace], if you can find copies.)

However, in a masterpiece of poor judgment, someone at Sloane had decided that, since the ACTUAL author, Fletcher Pratt, already HAD a major reputation as a military HISTORIAN, his new FANTASY novel should be published under a pen name; something about not confusing readers.

This decision also ignored Pratt's *other* reputation as a science fiction and fantasy novelist -- the latter usually in collaboration with L. Sprague de Camp (who later desribed the origin of the pseudonym in several articles and books). Sloane Associates also insisted on a clunking "Publisher's Foreword" in addition to the "Author's Note" -- apparently, someone was having second thoughts about a novel of war, politics, love, sex, and magic in a place for which maps had to be invented!. (They might have better asked for revisions in a couple of paragraphs, in which, as de Camp put it, an "excess of subtlety" can leave readers confused about elapsed time.)

As a result, the new book by "George U. Fletcher" was largely ignored at the time by not one but two groups of readers. Fans of military history, who might have enjoyed Pratt's variations on the lessons pointed out in his non-fiction, had no reason to look at it. Mr. Fletcher was also a complete unknown to those who mourned the loss of "Unknown Worlds," the magazine that had published most of Pratt's fantasy in the early 1940s. Pratt (1897-1956) didn't keep his authorship a secret, but this was no great help to people who learned of it after the book was out of print. Pratt's obituary in "The New York Times," which did mention his science fiction, described "The Well of the Unicorn" as "straight fiction," which (at best) suggests a guess at its contents. (It now may be necessary to warn against confusion with the group "The Fletcher Pratt" -- search engines, at least, have trouble with the distinction.)

"The Well of the Unicorn" finally appeared under the author's own name in a Lancer Books paperback in 1968, with a new, intelligent, Introduction by Baird Searles, new cover art (uncredited, but very attractive), and the frontispiece map (not too badly reproduced in the smaller format). Lancer, which was then issuing the Robert E. Howard Conan stories as edited by L. Sprague de Camp, foundered for complex reasons a few years later, and "The Well of the Unicorn" was again unavailable. In the meantime, it had missed being included in the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy series, which did include another of Pratt's major fantasy novels, "The Blue Star."

In 1975, Garland included it in a library-oriented series of high-quality reprintings of classic science fiction and fantasy. They had the good taste to go back to the Sloane edition, reproducing it in full (except for the dust jacket). Unhappily, this edition reverted to the "George U. Fletcher" pseudonym on the title page and cover, so it was again likely to be missed by anyone looking for books by Pratt. It was also rather expensive (by *1975* standards for science fiction and fantasy), although not unreasonably so; the paper and binding were of far more durable quality than the usual acidic stock.

Fortunately, Del Rey Books (the then-recent science fiction and fantasy imprint of Ballantine Books, which had been acquired by Random House) picked up the title in paperback in 1976 -- not a big surprise, because Lester del Rey had been involved in the Garland "Library of Science Fiction" project. It was back under the author's real name, and included the chapter heading maps (although not the excellent Searles Introduction from the Lancer edition), and dropped the clearly unnecessary Sloane Foreword and its "explanation."

As originally published, the Del Rey edition had a cover by the Brothers Hildebrandt. This depicts an actual scene from the book quite accurately, but personally I have always thought it discouragingly ugly as a composition. (The Sea Demon is appropriately unpleasant-looking, but that is a different matter.) The frontispiece map was printed on the inside front and back covers, which made for very clear reproduction.

An elegant Darrell Sweet cover, showing the major characters in a wilderness landscape, graced the book from the second Del Rey printing (1979) on; in this and later printings, the frontispiece map was again on a regular page. The Sweet cover is the version shown in the current (October 2004) Amazon listing for the Del Rey edition, which is not necessarily what you will get if you order a used copy without checking its date carefully. And, unfortunately, at least for now, it seems that a used copy is what you will have to order, in any American edition. "The Well of the Unicorn" was most recently reprinted in a British edition in 2001, as part of the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series (not seen); this edition can be found on the Amazon.co.uk site, but does not seem to be available (officially) in the U.S.

Outstanding work permeated with renaissance language and outlooks, much of the work actually reads like fantasy but furthers one's own knowledge of history.

The plot is a revolutionary uprising on the fringe of an empire. The value of such activities and of empire itself are all investigated in both action and the debates of the characters. Many of the arguments reflect timeless benefits and perils of revolution.

Yes, there is magic, and it is often not pretty, in fact a bit sinister. This is not your Gandalf's magic. ;)

Far better to check out the wiki article on it than read one by me:
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If you enjoy the historicity of Tolkein fantasy, but want more of the history, then this novel from that same era should prove an engrossing read!