The story is nice, quite pretty indeed, but the book is unnecessarily long and boring. I read it in the 90s when I read basically everything and still I thought this was quite boring. Now I know exactly why. At least it is not totally on Ben's pov, but mostly it is.
This is the second book in the Landover series, and if someone reads this first they’ll be able to understand everything, sure, but at the same time they won’t ever need to read the first at all, because the entire story is repeated here… really, everything!!
The story is quite simple, even in details:
Ben dreams that his friend Miles is in trouble, desperate, and wants to go check on him. Questor dreams where the magic books are, while Willow dreams that she must find the golden bridle to tame an evil black unicorn and give them to Ben.
The three of them go on their quests: Questor finds the book, only one has white, burned pages, while the others only shows pictures of unicorns; Miles was totally fine so Ben hurries back ignoring Willow’s stone warning him of some danger and unknowingly brings Meeks back with him (he sort of attached himself to Ben, magically). Meeks attacks him at night and casts a glamour on them both: now Meeks looks like Ben while he looks like an unknown peasant, and Ben now has a medallion with Meeks face on it, to control it, Meeks said, and if he takes it off he’ll die… so Ben doesn’t dare try.
Willow got various other dreams, and now she wants to know the truth, if the unicorn is evil or a victim that needs help, so she goes alone looking for it.
Ben asks the River Master for help, and is told that the glamour can’t be removed because he put did it himself. Ben meets a prismatic cat, sent by the fairy people, who tells him the same.
The River Master goes crazy wanting the unicorn for himself, causing fairies to die and demons to arrive, but they go back seeing Ben’s medallion.
Meeks orders a hunt for the unicorn, but Questor helps it escape and is sent away from the castle with Abernathy.
The Earth Mother helps him telling him Willow went to the witch Nightshade for the bridle, so Ben goes to Fillip and Sot for their help. Nightshade sees them and captures them all, but wants to trade Ben’s life for the bridle, stolen by Strabo. The dragon doesn’t have them, though, he gave them to Willow because she sang for him.
Dragon and witch fight, and Ben reunited with his friends goes looking for Willow, realising now that he loves her (sigh… so what, if there was no romantic love there, he wouldn’t??)
Everyone meets now, but Meeks fights with the cat and Willow escapes with the unicorn. She hugs the creature and learns the truth. Ben finally fights the glamour magic and sends the Paladin to help Willow. Meeks summons demons against him, but Willow finally learns the truth and yells to destroy the books. Only Abernathy hears her; he’s injured and can only bite Meeks ankle hard, so the books fly away and the unicorn destroys them with his horn.
Without magic, Meeks is defeated (is he dead??) by the unicorn itself.
It’s over, so time for the explanation: the fairies sent unicorns to many worlds where people started to forget about magic, but they got all captured by various wizards of Landover who imprisoned them to use their magic, until the Paladin defeated them only allowing one wizard to work for the crown. Still, the secret had been passed down among wizards for centuries.
At the end, a unicorn (they are all white, the black one was the spirit of all of them breaking free burning the pages) flies over Chicago, seen by a bunch of people.
This is everything that happens, but the books has 278 pages, filled with:
everything that happened in the first book;
Ben’s doubts and thoughts repeated over and over and over;
Ben being an idiot - I explain: he was a rich successful American lawyer who bought a kingdom to be king, which means he feels so entitled and smart that he acts like an annoying idiot, and here’s why:
he’s told again and again that he did it to himself, it was his magic, but instead of asking How? or some other useful question like he should, every time someone says something he doesn’t understand he gets mad, thinks they speak in riddles or are mistaken or are trying to trick him (he gets mad a lot);
whenever he knows someone is right, he silently boils with rage and says nothing;
this fairy cat recognised him when nobody could and offered to go with him, and yet Ben never treats him kindly, he showers him with the same questions over and over and gets mad because the cat doesn’t simply solve all his problems for him;
whenever things don’t go his way and he can, like with the gnomes, he yells and threatens to get what he wants;
the number of pages it takes him to understand the unicorns are in the books is embarrassing, and he keeps using the excuse that he’s from another world, and yet he’s been the king of this one for a year now.
In this book, the witch said that Ben was just lucky, which is partly true. He goes on because he’s very lucky, and very stubborn, and everyone is there for him.
The cat is kinda playing the reader’s part, when he asks Ben if there’s a reason for his repeating the same things over and over, and also tells him to shut up and listen, and think!
ITA L’unicorno nero
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento