Into the Land of Childhood

Into the Land of the Unicorns
Unicorn Chronicles, Bk 1
By Bruce Coville

Cara climbs the bell tower and on the strike of midnight she jumps into a land filled with unicorns and other strange mythical beasts. Her grandmother has tasked her with passing a message to the unicorn queen. She finds a band of mismatched creatures that guide her there. 

This was THE book that got me into fantasy and unicorns. I went through a crazy unicorn phase. Everything unicorn. This review is mostly nostalgia based... a little biased.

I read and reread this book until the pages were ragged. It ended suddenly. Then... no sequel. I put it aside. Forgot about it.

A few years later I discovered a second book had been published. Yes! I read it. Again, I wanted to read more, but no third book.

Then the looooooong gap between the second and third book. The first published in 1994, then 1999, 2008, and finally completed in 2010. I'm not complaining, Coville clearly had more pressing projects. However, this break in between books meant that I never finished the series.

I was well into my twenties by the time book three was published and not ready to get back into this series. My fantasy taste was refined. Then this year, I decided with all my commuting time I could be reading. Duh. Productivity. So I took the first book from the library, and began jumping back into the land of my childhood.

See what I did there?

The book is as delightful as I remember it. Gripping, heartbreaking, whimsical, and wonderous. Memories of the story came flooding back to me.

Vividly, the villain of this story haunted my dreams as a child. Why was she so terrifying? We never actually meet her in book one, only hear stories of her. Coville makes her an ultimate villain, we have sympathy for her but cannot condone her actions. For years, I have hated the word "Beloved" because that is the name of the villain.

How interesting that a story can change the way you regard even a word.

In an interview I saw of Bruce Coville, he said that he writes with the intention that his stories are read aloud. This is half the reason why I decided this would be the perfect book to listen to in the car. You can absolutely tell in his writing style.

I do recommend this. Read it aloud.

4.5/6 STARS