“Two Hearts” was next in my list of joint Hugo and Nebula winning fiction, having taken the Hugo for Best Novelette in 2006 and the Nebula in the same category in 2007 (though that was the Nebula for 2006). Before reading it, I thought, well, I had not actually read Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn before, so maybe I should read it first and see what I thought?
The second paragraph of the third chapter of The Last Unicorn is:
The unicorn was gray and still. “There is magic on me,” she said. “Why did you not tell me?”
Reader, I hated it. I found it the worst kind of sentimental glurge. The dissonance of calling the wizard Schmendrick is one more false step on top of the teeth-grinding saccharinity of the rest of the story. I lasted not much more than fifty pages. I’m sorry, I know it’s a much-loved classic, and perhaps I am a bitter ageing man, but I could not take it.
“Two Hearts” does not have internal sections, so here is the third paragraph.
But it didn’t ever eat children, not until this year.
When the awards were first being voted on in 2006, I put “Two Hearts” at the top of my Hugo ballot.
Back in 1968, Beagle published his classic fantasy novel, The Last Unicorn. I have never read it, nor have I seen the film made some time back (apparently very successful, though Beagle did not profit much from it) and so I expected this follow-up novella (written almost four decades later!) to leave me pretty cold. In fact, it had entirely the opposite effect: I was totally captured by the lyrical and moving story of a king’s last quest, told through the eyes of a young girl, in a fantasy world where Bad Things Happen but you can hope for Good to have a partial victory at the end. Perhaps I am just getting sentimental in my old age, but I loved it.
Again, I must be getting bitter as I get older, because I really didn’t like it this time. Perhaps my teeth were still on edge from reading The Last Unicorn.
You can get The Last Unicorn here, and you can get “Two Hearts” in a sequel collection here.
Next up in this sequence is “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” by Ted Chiang, which I hope has aged better.
