Two short stories set in the world of Peter S. beagle’s the Last Unicorn. The first one is pretty good and has Molly and Schmendrick in a portion of it. Plus it brings to close the final story of the king. A key piece of the universe and overall story of our beloved characters (even if it’s not a unicorn story).
The second story however is pretty dull and feels like it was set in the unicorn universe just ‘because’. While it features the child from story 1 as a teenager, that didn’t seem like enough to really justify why that story would be a part of this world and lore. Ultimately I suppose if you want to know what Beagle thinks the Fae are like in his world then it’s useful but it does not further any key characters story forward, or really contribute to the unicorn lore in a measurable way.
More importantly is perhaps how boring it was. It reminded me of the first time (many decades ago) when I read about Frodo and Sam in Emmy Muil. Just a lot of walking, talking, posturing, and no activity, plot or even really good characterization happening. Sadly we don’t even really have a Gollum here to break up the monotony. Thus I can’t say I enjoyed this second story anywhere near the way I did story number one.
Having met Beagle a few years ago; he’s a lovely, dear man, I feel bad saying this about this collection; but I won’t lie when a story just doesn’t measure up. If you’re desperate for some nostalgic stories from this world maybe you will get something out of this set of two stories. Otherwise, it’s an easy pass for me. At most I’d say first the first story as it is relevant to the characters we know and love. Story two is an easy pass in my opinion.

Please note: I received an eARC of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. This is an honest and unbiased review.

"Two Hearts" is fantastic, and top-drawer Beagle. Sooz is a marvelous character, and the tale is loaded with the heart and humor that makes Beagle's Unicorn work so engaging and entertaining. As to the second, longer, novella here, "Sooz", there's a lot less of that. The Sooz character is older, and much more grim and angry. It's a tale well told, but much darker and even melancholy.

While it was cool to get a follow up to the Last Unicorn, I was slightly disappointed. The profound quotes and such that one finds in the Last Unicorn were just not here in The Way Home. A lot happened that was too convenient, and the main character had very little depth to her. In the 2nd part of the book, she’s shown to have such a one-track mind yet we don’t see why she cares so much about what she’s trying to accomplish. This could have been a better story if it were longer and maybe didn’t have the beginning part, if it weren’t so closely related the the Last Unicorn, since the 2nd part was much longer and had little to do with the first half save having the same main character.

The Way Home is a collection of two novellas set in the same world as the classic fantasy novel The Last Unicorn, published in 1968. Now 84, Beagle combined his 2006 novella, Two Hearts, and a new novella, Sooz, in one book.

Two Hearts brings the reader back into contact with the original characters of The Last Unicorn - the unicorn, Molly Grue, and Schmendrick the Magician - through the point of view of a young girl named Sooz. She has gone to search out the king (formerly the prince in The Last Unicorn) to ask for help handling her town's problem with a griffin that keeps eating children. She encounters Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician and journeys with them and the king to battle the griffin.

Sooz is a follow-up novella published for the first time in this collection. Now 17, Sooz goes on an adventure to the land of The Dreamies (fae) to try and find her long-lost sister, who vanished with a group of Dreamies at 4, several years before Sooz was born. Here, she finds friendship with a woman made of stone and works to rescue her sister.

These were both enjoyable! I liked them less than the original novel, but it was nice to be immersed in the magic of this world again.

Thanks so much to Peter S. Beagle and Berkley Publishing Group for this ARC through NetGalley. The Way Home is available now!

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

Sometimes impossible things just happen, and we call them miracles. That quote may come from the iconic science fiction series Doctor Who, but it’s applicable in a truly surprising amount of situations in the real world. And for readers (like me), who’ve been fans of iconic fantasy author Peter Beagle for the better part of our lifetimes, the idea that he might one day return to the world of his beloved classic The Last Unicorn seemed like the sweetest sort of pipe dream. Except it’s true. An impossible thing has happened, and it is, in fact, a miracle.

The Way Home takes us back to the unicorn’s world by way of a pair of novellas which both deal with similar characters and themes. The first, “Two Hearts,” was originally published in 2005, and won both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards in 2007. It was released over thirty-five years after the original and serves as something of a coda to Beagle’s novel. (It was ultimately included in Beagle’s collection of short stories called The Line Between, as well as a deluxe edition of The Last Unicorn a few years later. Don’t judge me for how many copies of this I have, ok?? The second story, titled “Sooz,” has never before been published, and returns to the story of its eponymous lead character, who first appeared in “Two Hearts”.

Like much of Beagle’s work, these two stories touch on themes he’s always seemed to find fascinating as an author: The inevitability of death, the sweetly sharp sting of regret, the way that evil doesn’t always look the way we expect, that love is a gift, no what form it may come in. That nothing lasts forever, but that nothing is ever truly gone, either. That happy endings cannot come in the middle of your story.

This is a glorious month for Peter S. Beagle fans, with The Way Home offering up two novellas set in the same world as The Last Unicorn, and not one but two retrospective collections of stories: The Essential Peter S. Beagle: Volumes I and II. Even better, one of those two novellas is brand new and serves to show that Beagle remains one of our most elegant of fantasists.

The Way Home begins with “Two Hearts”, a previously published novel that offers up a bittersweet (and who would expect anything else from Beagle) coda to the beloved classic The Last Unicorn. Here we meet the young girl Sooz, whose village is being terrorized by a griffin who has recently taken up residence in the woods nearby and that as moved on from preying on animals to the villagers’ children. The king responds to the village’s request for help by by sending first a single knight, then five, then an entire squadron. None return from facing the griffin and, as Sooz says, “after that, the village didn’t send to the king anymore. We didn’t want more of his men to die, and besides they weren’t any help.” Sooz however, has a different idea — why have the king send men when King Lir, the great hero, can just come himself.

And so she runs away to seek out the king’s castle. Along the way, she (luckily) runs into two old friends for fans of The Last Unicorn: Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician. They agree to escort her to the king but warn her that “The king’s a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, king’s change.” The many years have indeed not been kind to the king, who is worn down and forgetful (I have to confess as well that realizing how long ago it had been since I first read The Last Unicorn made Lir’s years feel heavy on this reader as well). But at the mention of a new quest and a reminder of his great love the unicorn, he rouses himself one more time against the protestations of those who wish him to stay old and safe and dying in the castle until the end of his days. I won’t say what happens on this last quest save to say it is all that could happen. A perfect ending, albeit an ending. But also more, as Sooz bears witness to. A story of hope then heartbreak and hope again. It’s Beagle at the height of his powers.

The second novella, “Sooz” picks up years later on Sooz’s seventeenth birthday, and this time the quest belongs to Sooz herself as she must journey into the lands of the Fae in search of her lost sister, but also in search of herself as well, making this a coming-of-age story in addition to a quest tale. This is in many ways a darker story where tragedy and victory, grief and joy, loss and friendship are all intermingled. As are life and death, a fact made clear early on via the animals on the farm, with Sooz holding and stroking three new goat kids birthed the night before, followed later in the day by her observation that she “hates the hogs. I hate the sounds they made when they ate, and the sounds they made when they knew they were going to be slaughtered.” As in “Two Hearts,” Sooz meets strangers on the road, but while the second encounter involves a stone woman who becomes Sooz’s traveling companion, the first is a rape scene, one that is no less difficult to read despite its brevity and lack of gratuitous detail.

This is the way of these strange lands, full of a strange and dangerous beauty that is both dream and nightmare. Beagle’s language in this section is richly, often surreally lyrical, but lyrical in Beagle’s world does not mean beneficent – the poetic can describe horror and evil just as it can beauty and compassion. The Otherlands are truly “other”, and humans will never feel at home there even as they marvel at what they see there.

Many of the same themes of “Two Hearts” are present here as well: the way death haunts everything all the time; how life brings with it both joy and sorry, the warming comfort of memory and the biting bitterness of regret, as when Sooz recalling leaving her father behind tells us “I still regret not having looked back at him when I walked out of the house where I had lived my all my life. I should have looked back. It hurts me still that I didn’t turn my head.” The end of Sooz hurts as well. But also heals. Few do the “hopeful ache” (or perhaps the aching hope) like Beagle. Sooz says at one point, “You can’t forget the ones who change you always,” and while it’s meant in a different context, the line can refer as well to Beagle himself, who has certainly through his writing in some small way changed those of us lucky enough to have met his words long ago.

Beagle returns to the world of The Last Unicorn with novellas. In "Two Hearts", we encounter a brave girl named Sooz who's determined to stop the griffin eating people from her village. In "Sooz", we meet Sooz again, this time as a young woman, on an even more perilous quest.

It's important to note that Peter Beagle regained rights to his intellectual property, including The Last Unicorn, after a lengthy legal battle (you can read more about it here. Such good news! While learning the author of a beloved childhood story was being abused casts a pall on The Last Unicorn and makes it even more bittersweet, reading The Way Home knowing Beagle is the undisputed owner of his works makes it even more of a triumph.

I found "Two Hearts" more moving because we see some familiar faces from the perspective of a new character. Along her quest, Sooz meets Schmendrick the Magician, Molly, and King Lear. Encountering these characters decades after seeing the cartoon and reading the original novel brought me to tears. "Sooz" was a solid bildungsroman in many ways, but it felt more like an afterthought. This gets 5 starts for "Two Hearts" alone though.

'The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of the Last Unicorn' by Peter S. Beagle (Ace, 224 pages, April 4)

The year was 2006 when Peter S. Beagle won two international writing awards — the Hugo and the Nebula — for “Two Hearts,” the novella that continued the stories of Molly Grue and Schmendrick the Magician from the viewpoint of Sooz, a young girl who sets out to recruit a king to save her village. These honors came as no surprise. Beagle’s storytelling was on par in a worthy successor to his beloved “The Last Unicorn.” Now, Beagle captures that novella and new tale, told by Sooz, now all grown up, in “The Way Home.” As tender and touching as the 1968 novel that spurred these tales, “The Way Home” is a journey for all who have felt great loss and great love — and found them to be one and the same.

I was overjoyed to have an opportunity with these novellas! I will admit that while I have read through them and enjoyed them, I need to revisit The Last Unicorn proper and give them another go afterwards. Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an opportunity with the title.

Oh, this is tough to review. One of the novellas in the book, Two Hearts, I had read before--4.5-5 stars, it wrecks my heart and is beautiful and leaves me grateful for the damage in a way that I associate with Peter Beagle. His sentences are so exquisite. The second novella, The Way Home, is wonderful--his prose is always phenomenal--but with a "but." The Way Home is a coming of age tale, and those usually involve some degree of disillusionment or trauma; to talk about why this one was a problem for me requires dipping into spoiler territory--not a major, enormous, "how did it all turn out" spoiler, but a fairly memorable plot point all the same. I'm going to put this behind spoiler tags, but this is your opportunity to STOP READING RIGHT ABOUT HERE NO HERE REALLY BECAUSE SPOILERS FOLLOW FOR REAL:
<spoiler>Our 17-year-old protagonist, a girl, is raped by multiple men (not exactly human men, but close enough that she thinks of them as men in her reflections on that night) shortly after she Sets Out Into the World on a quest. It's not graphic or described in detail, and it's not presented in a way that's meant to be titillating to the reader--this would be a very different review if that were the case; it's described in her terms as "what they did to her" but she is described as bleeding and bruised and "down there" is used as a reference... it's very clear what was done. I *adore* Beagle's writing. His prose absolutely sings. But. I am so. tired. to death. of rape and/or pregnancy being The Plot Point that can happen to/define/motivate female characters. SFF has a particularly dodgy history with this, largely (but not limited to) male authors othering women as strange unknowable creatures defined in part or in whole by their biology or the impressions they make on men. The one issue I had with Innkeeper's Song was the dubcon that was never addressed (one character sleeps with another while disguised as someone else) but I chalked it up as being the kind of thing that got less attention when that book was published. Sexual assault in the real world is hideously common, obviously, as a traumatic experience that really does happen to girls and women. But rape as a backstory or defining plot point for female characters is lazy writing. (A jeering character of the fae world our MC is traveling in later refers to her as "branded and burned," and the idea of sexual assault as an indelible mark, whether by natural or supernatural assailants, is also not one of my favorite concepts.) For further reading, see Sarah Gailey's Tor piece <a href="https://www.tor.com/2016/08/22/do-better-sexual-violence-in-sff/">Do Better: Sexual Violence in SFF</a>.</spoiler> So there you are. I enjoyed so much about The Way Home, and absolutely loved the friendship depicted in it, except for this one thing, which was a pretty major hangup for me. CW for <spoiler>sexual assault</spoiler> Five stars for Two Hearts, three stars for The Way Home, so I'll settle in the middle for the whole.

"The Way Home" comprises two novellas, with both stories occurring many years after "The Last Unicorn".

"Two Hearts" is narrated by nine-year old Sooz, whose farming community is terrorized by a griffin who's taken up residence in the nearby wood. She decides to ask the King to save them from the creature and heads off on her own. She encounters a much older Molly Grue and Shcmendrick, and they all go to speak with the now King Lir, whose mind wanders a little, but decides to help Sooz and her community.

The story is lovely and heartbreaking; I read this years ago and it moved me all over again this time.


"Sooz" tells of a time when Sooz was seventeen years old and she discovered that she had had a sister, Jenia, who disappeared many years earlier with the Fae, or Dreamies as Jenia called them. Sooz decided to find Jenia and bring her back home. This proved to be a terrifically hard task, deeply harming Sooz psychologically, while also showing just how tough and single-minded she was (not that I wasn't already aware of that from "Two Hearts").

This story was disturbing in how Peter S. Beagle described the Fae and their world. It's shifting, hard to navigate, and the gruelling journey Sooz undertook is only somewhat ameliorated by the friendship she made with Dhakoun, a woman made of stone who was looking for Death.

Dhakoun broke my heart, and though this story is narrated by an older, more worldly Sooz, it's easy to see how profoundly her time in faerie with Dhakoun left a mark on her. Older, wiser Sooz was a character I never anticipated reuniting with after reading "Two Hearts". Both stories in this collection are set in the same world as Beagle's classic novel, and the melancholic and self aware tone of that story is definitely present here, though much more apparent in "Sooz". The prose is, of course, great, dark and eerie in parts, visceral and sharp in others. Though the unicorn did not reappear in "Sooz", this is definitely a good addition to the world.

Thank you to Netgalley and to Berkley Publishing Group for this ARC in exchange for my review.

The Last Unicorn is such a cornerstone of fantasy lore. I know so many fantasy authors who cite it as one of their favorite stories that inspired their own work.

I really enjoyed revisiting the world laid out in the Last Unicorn in these novellas. It was great to be in this world again and I am thankful for its publication! Being with these characters again made my heart so happy. Granted, it also made me cry in some parts and was incredibly moving in so many ways. Highly recommend!

What's it about (in a nutshell):
The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle is a book containing two fantasy novellas from the world of The Last Unicorn. The Last Unicorn is a poignant fantasy series that originally riveted me when I was still a kid, and The Way Home continued that reading journey.
My Reading Experience:

The first novella, Two Hearts, warmed my heart as a brave little 9-year-old Sooz, determined to stop the griffin that stole many of the village's children, never to be seen again, ventured out on her own to get the King. Surely the King could get rid of the beast since his knights had failed to do so. I loved her pluck and moxie, especially in one so young. She is a brave hero – braver than any adults in her village.

The pace is fast, and the narration is done in the first person, with Sooz telling her story. I loved this personalized angle; it added so much and increased my love for this young hero. She never doubts and never waivers. I also just adored the bond she has with the family dog Malka. That bond warmed my heart even more than Sooz's pure determination.

The second novella, Sooz, broke my heart, which the first novella had previously warmed, and it touched on emotions that left me in quite a funk. Sooz is now 17 and follows a task given to her at the end of the first novella, and this task starts her on another journey that takes her into the fae world.

The world of the fae is depicted as similar to a dream state, where events are a bit disjointed, and the unimaginable is real. I loved the depiction of this world as it instantly pulled me in and immersed me in the foggy atmosphere of the dream-like world. Again, children are being stolen, but instead of by a hungry griffin, they are being taken by the fae, and another child conjured from some natural item, like a log, is left in place of the child born.

Sooz discovers a connection to the fae that she never anticipated. That takes her on a journey to recover one such stolen child that broke my heart many times over. The poignancy of that journey, the beings she met, and the relationships forged and lost overwhelmed my senses.

Sooz again does the narration, and it sounds like her older self is telling the story looking back on her younger self. The pace was slower in this novella as the atmosphere boggled my reading with its prominence and depth. But ultimately, the theme of finding your way home reverberated and left a lasting impression on me.

Read if you like:
Immersive fantasy stories
Magical creatures and beings
Fantasy stories that touch your heart

The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle is enchantingly beautiful, almost achingly so. As you read the first few words, the incomparable voice of Peter S. Beagle is clear and layered with emotion. The stories, both of them, each novella set in the world of The Last Unicorn, are full of heart. “Two Hearts” deals with the progress of time and how we all change. It has a beautiful, valiant, and heartbreaking ending. Yet that end also has hope.  

In “Sooz” the story is full of complexity and emotional layers that tangle around your heart. It is authentic and profound, as glorious as The Last Unicorn. It is a meditation on love and loss, and finding your true self. It is suffused with Beagle’s warmth, lyricism, and wit, as well as his ability to create characters that feel real to the reader. Characters that reach out and grab you by the throat and that you fall in love with. 

If you love The Last Unicorn, you need to read these two novellas. They are full of wonder, magic of the soul and are enchantingly beautiful. Like the best poetry, the words will haunt your dreams and the characters will make you fall in love.

Have Kleenex to hand. Like an entire fresh box of Kleenex. The good soft kind. You’re going to need it.

The Way Home by Peter S. Beagle offers a rare treat for fans of fantasy. Two short novellas come together in this wonderful work to both give us a glimpse of a few familiar faces and show the start of a new story in the world we know and love from the Last Unicorn.

I love the world, the characters, and the writing. As a long time fan I can not wait for this book to land on book store shelves.

I recently read The Last Unicorn for the first time, and I can’t believe I waited so long. These two novellas are a worthy successor to the first book. Thank you for letting me check it out!

I really enjoyed revisiting this world. Sooz was a great addition but I would have liked to have seen more of Molly and Schmendrick. Though it was a nice wrapup to the events of the first book.

Peter Beagle has this uncanny ability to write fantasy worlds that can completely envelop a reader while at the same time spouting wisdom that is so, so relevant to the real world. He’s done it again in these two stories, exploring identity and mortality through new characters in the world of The Last Unicorn. Recommended for anyone ever.

The Way Home collects two novellas set in the world of The Last Unicorn. I read Two Hearts years ago when it first came out, and was pleased to see it getting a new release. It's a wonderful story that introduces us to a new character (Sooz, the young girl narrating the tale), while giving us a glimpse of what happened to the main characters of The Last Unicorn in the decades after that story ended. It is sweet, melancholy, and a lovely gentle story. The second story, Sooz, is brand new and equally wonderful in its own way.

While Two Hearts serves as a sort of Coda for The Last Unicorn, Sooz feels like the beginning of something new. I loved seeing teenage Sooz and accompanying her on her quest. I don't know if Peter Beagle intends to write more about this universe, but I would love to read more about Sooz and her future.

trigger warning : There is a scene that heavily implies sexual assault in one of the stories. There is no explicit description of the event itself, but if this is a topic that is a hard no for you then be aware before reading the second story.