The Last Unicorn
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The Last Unicorn is a fantasy novel written by Peter S. Beagle. It was made into an animated movie by Rankin-Bass.
The story is about a unicorn who realizes that she is the last of her kind and then sets off on a quest to find the clues to where the other unicorns went. Along the way, she picks up two traveling companions: the incompetent magician Schmedrick and the washwoman Molly Grue. The unicorn finds hints that something known as the Red Bull has herded her people away and only the one who controls the Red Bull, a man named King Haggard, can unlock her kind's disappearance. Along the way though, she is changed into a mortal woman, the Lady Amalthea, who must contend with losing her immortal self before finding the secret King Haggard harbors.
The main theme of the book is mortality. The immortal unicorn protagonist cannot regret, cannot feel hunger, and cannot fear death, but this soon changes with her entrapment in human flesh. In the novel, Schmedrick the Magician reveals that was so inept that he was made immortal until he finds the beginnings of his power. Molly Grue was once the young woman that unicorns were supposed to come to, though that time is past now. The fear of dying, the loss of oneself in love, and the beauty of mortality are all addressed. As Schmedrick observes in the middle of the novel that he knows something that a unicorn does not know: that which can die is beautiful, more beautiful than a unicorn though it is the most glorious creature to behold.
The film's music was composed and arranged by Jimmy Webb and performed by the group America. The title song has been covered many times, including by Kenny Loggins on his Return to Pooh Corner album, and by the German group In-Mood.
The author recorded an unabridged audiobook of the novel in 2005 for Conlan Press. That company is making the audiobook available as a downloadable MP3, an MP3 CD and in an eight CD collector's set (seven CDs for the audiobook, and the eighth holding an exclusive interview with the author).
A new adaptation of the original book is currently in production.
External links
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