The Last Unicorn - review

This is a book that I read after seeing it in the librarys of several of my friends on Library Thing (It was the only book that Kerravonsen had actually given a rating to, and she gave it 5  stars).  I was curious.

It's a fantasy novel, which reminds me of the 'Princess Bride' more than anything else.  The narrative exists on several levels.  The characters have a self-awareness that they live in a reality of fairy stories.  Prince Lir slays dragons and presents their heads to his lady love, because that's what heros do.  Cully, the outlaw, desperately hopes that his visitor is Professor Child, the (historically real) collector of ballads, as he wants all the songs that he has written about himself to be recorded for posterity.  The songs, are, of course, largely cobbled together from existing folk songs about famous outlaws and bandits - Cully has no skill as a songwriter any more than he has as an outlaw.

However, the reason the novel works is because there is a second layer of awareness underlying the first.  There is magic that is flummery (even though it is still what we would call magic) and magic that is real.  The magic that doesn't count is simple conjuring.  It may achieve things that we would regard as impossible to be done by sleight of hand, but it achieves nothing that really matters.  It can create the seeming of a manticore from a lion, but it cannot make the lion actually BE a manticore.  Sometimes, it verges on the edge of reality.  When the spider weaving the web believes that she really is Archne, then her belief adds to the illusion cast upon her.

The second kind of magic is deeper and more real and harder to define.  It isn't just tricks and appearances.  It is the unicorn.  She is more real than anything around her.  She does not consciously set out to influence the world around her; her intererst in mortals is pretty much non-existant.  She is incapable of love.  Love is transient, fleeting, mortal. She is immortal and unchanging.

In a world where unicorns can exist, there is always the possibility of real magic.  The outlaws play at being Robin Hood and try and adapt his legends to themselves, but the real Robin is the ultimate dream for them.  To see or touch the real Robin Hood is to bring reality to their dreams and hopes for themselves.  Not the cold reality that destroys dreams, but the kind of reality that says dreams have meaning and are but the shadow of an eternal verity.

The unicorn is an abstract. She is pure beauty, moonlight in darkness.  She is springtime.  To once see a unicorn is to carry something of beauty with you for the rest of your life.  She is hope.  She is pure and untouchable. She is the sure knowledge that there is something unsullied in the world.

She is the last of her kind.

When she sets forth from her eternal springtime forest to seek other unicorns, then she sets the story in motion.  (I'm not going to talk about the people she meets, as I don't believe in giving away plots in advance.)

The novel has both strengths and weaknesses.  The greatest strength is the sense of beauty and m.agic behind the veil of myth and fairy tale.

The weakness (for me at least) is when the parody is slightly over-done.  The anachronisms are probably deliberate to make the contrasts sharper, but I still find medieval outlaws eating tacos to be a little disconcerting.

The other great strength lies in Beagle's descriptive writing. He has a real gift for phrases that come to life: "following the fleeing darkness into a wind that tasted like nails".  I can feel and taste the entire rainstorm in that single phrase.

Peter S Beagle will be a guest at Aetherica

I wrote a morris dance!

I've been dancing with the Quayside Cloggies for nearly a year now (and had danced with another North-West morris side for many years in the past).

I'd often thought it would be interesting to write a dance and our Foreman agreed to let me have a go.

Took me ages.  I mean, you could slap a simple dance together in about 10 seconds flat - and I did it once for a spur of the moment morris workshop at a convention, but re-using basic figures from other dances isn't really the point of creating a new dance.

The interesting thing is to try and create new figures that still look right within the North-West tradition.  They must also avoid being so complex that the dancers get lost.  A good dance should have  sense of internal consistency - it should be possible to view the overall logic of the dance, so that a dancer having learned it in one position should have a reasonable chance of being able to dance it in the other seven positions.

The figures should also move naturally into one another. This is often the part that is least understood and overlooked. Anyone who has danced a good Playford dance will know what I'm talking about.  If a Playford (it's a historical court dance) dance has a right hand turn followed by another figure, then it's good money that the figure will start with the left hand as that is the hand that you have free and moving forward.  If it doesn't start with the left hand, then it will probably start in a way that uses the movement from the right-hand turn.  It's hard to explain unless you dance set dances a lot.

Ceilidh dances rarely go in for that degree of precision - it isn't what they're about. Ceilidh dancing isn't for display. The figures are designed to be easy to learn and MUST be easy for the caller to explain in a short period of time.

A typical North-West morris dance will include a couple of simple figures (it's all about the shape of the dance rather than complex footwork) that form clear patterns for the audience to see.  (Cotswold morris has a lot more footwork)

The more complex figures must still make a visible pattern. There would be no point in a complex figure that didn't look attractive to the audience.  (Wheras in rapper dancing, complexity is half the point of the dance)

The dance must also fit the music.  Self-evident, but not as simple as it might sound.  You've got to work out things like how many steps it takes for a dancer to get right around the set of eight people, how long it takes to do a grand chain, a star, etc.

I spent many short sessions with toy bricks marking the position of dancers and dancing around on the wide pavement outside our house.  The neighbours probably think I'm nuts anyway...  (I practise my poi out there too)

We tried it at the practice session last night and it worked very well.  I've had to clarify my notes in several places - it's amazing how ambiguous things can be when other people read them!

We've changed the music for the figures (the chorus remains unchanged - Keel Row) as the band felt the two tunes I was using were hard to shift between.  (I think the tune they picked as an alternative for the figures - Jenny Lind - is better than the one I'd picked).

Several of the figures will need more practice to get them perfect, but in the course of a couple of hours it all stated to gell together really well.

Having called it all evening, I was offered the chance to dance.  Crossed my fingers, said I could dance it in any position, was given number 3 (as someone needed to sit down for a rest) and - thank goodness - managed the entire dance with other real dancers, instead of bricks, right through first time without a hitch. Phew!

Felt great!