Pretty whispers on the wind carry promises of bloodlust, a voice in the darkest reaches of the shadows fantasizing different sick dreams of grandeur murder~ "... A ballroom of throats for fangs to render and tear, open those veins and let us make a tower of champagne glasses out the unsuspecting guests blood... Innocents, certainly, but their excitement and fear.. how it makes their blood flow! Monsters can only do as monsters do, after all."
The Lord settled against his chair in a leisurable pose, crossing one pant leg over the other. His claw-like digits folded over one another reminiscent of a closed bear-trap. Dark promises and sinister whispers always seemed to play along his ear like a pair of lustful lips. Sclera was blotted out by the damp shadows of his chambers. His lips twisted in the shadows, bearing a sinister visage.
“That sounds like a delightful fantasy, truly. But that is exactly what it is. A fantasy world where the innocents are believed to be mere cattle. But I do not deny your words, as excitement and fear, why do they make their blood flow, do you know what else does? Anger and lust as well. The approach, while enticing, I find it a tad droll and repetitive. “He snickered, finding his playfulness spilling from the expanse of his jaw. A heated steam followed, billowing like the plumes in the cold’s embrace. “Filling my chalice with the blood of the unknowing. It just doesn’t leave nearly as much satisfaction as it once did. I already know they fear me. The pitter patter of their heart as he thrums desperately, like a rodent that wishes to be freed of a steel prison. Reading fear is second nature to an unnatural things such as myself. “
An uneasy silence trickles like the flow of a leak. There were wounds on the wall’s surface, but it was controlled. Snickering whisking into a devilish scoff. “Monsters can only do as monsters do, huh? Don’t pretend that you know whom you speak to. That title has followed me long before you even had a concept of my existence. “His legs slowly fell below the desk itself, patting the floor with a pair of leathers. His gaze remained hollowed out, as peering into them was abysmal. His posture now symmetrically looking to the facing into the darkness in the appearance of a grim haunt. “... But if this is your way of inviting one to have a drink, then by all means, present your case and point. A curiosity is never quite sated until the mysteries are unraveled, wouldn’t you agree? “
'The shadow of the past is longer than any of us can imagine,' said Alma Leonetti softly. 'You cannot unweave the tapestry of time, Moonheart. Take any event, great or small, and you can trace the threads of cause back across century after century, threads that are woven from the smallest of happenings. In the same way, things that we do today, any one of them, may have implications and consequences a thousand years from now that we cannot yet begin to imagine.'
Unicorn Chronicles, Book 3: “Dark Whispers,” by Bruce Coville
Whenever people grumble about how long it's been since their favorite fanfic updated, I can't help but smile a little in sympathy. As someone who's read a lot of CLAMP manga, I've grown used to the stutter-stop of hiatuses and discontinued stories that will never be finished. To quote the Princess Bride, "Get used to disappointment". It's just an occupational hazard.
I know people who only read completed stories, but I would have missed out on a lot of great material and works that really matter to me if I followed their example. It also meant that I got really good at imagining what happens next.
So it was a delight to discover that Bruce Coville had actually finished the Unicorn Chronicles when I was busy with other stuff (i.e., life) and there were two more volumes. Coville specifically thanks readers for nagging him about finishing, which is simultaneously #hilarious and #relatable.
Song of the Wanderer came out in 1999, right on the cusp of the Harry Potter boom that shook up the juvenile fantasy genre. (Both series are published by Scholastic.) Dark Whispers came out in 2008, and you can see how much the genre has shifted in the cover art alone:
This is gorgeous art by Petar Mesedlzija, but it only tangentially fits the descriptions in the books: Cara doesn't really wear anything like this outfit, and the story emphasizes she keeps braiding her hair to keep it from tangling. She has a sword, but she doesn’t really ever use it?
Furthermore, the layout, design, and chapter headings of Dark Whispers are clearly meant to capitalize on Harry Potter: Grimmwold has a looping signature reminiscent of Dumbeldore's in the opening prologue, for instance. It's a very different feel from the way the first two volumes were presented, and tbh, I miss the old way that has gone the way of the dinosaurs now.
Inevitably, with such a long gap between volumes, Dark Whispers ended up with a very different style and tone than its predecessors. The most obvious difference is that it's REALLY LONG--464 pages in hardcover. Some of this increase in length is attributable to Harry Potter proving that giant fantasy tomes can sell like hotcakes, and some of it is the fact that the storyline is now really big, with a lot of different players moving in different directions.
Inevitably, this means that instead of following Cara's POV for the entire book, as we did in the first two volumes, we are constantly shifting narrators. It's completely understandable, but as a reader, I find it really annoying--like I am suddenly reading an entirely different series with overlapping plot and characters. It's not that this new series is bad, per se, it's just... not what I imagined when I was making up the ending in my head in the early 2000s. I do not know if this disjunct would be so obvious or unsettling to someone who was reading all four volumes together for the first time.
Anyway, so since it's been literally a decade, Coville makes the sensible decision to open with a recap from Grimmwold, in his role as the keeper of the Unicorn Chronicles: unicorns and human hunters are at war; the latter are lead by an immortal woman named Beloved with a personal grudge against the unicorns, and she just got an amulet so she can invade Luster.
In Cara's plotline, she is still coming to terms with the fact that her grandmother, Ivy Morris, was a unicorn in disguise, and is now Queen Amalia Flickerfoot. Her grandfather Jaques is super depressed (because literary references, yo) and also because this is super-weird for him, too. As they prepare for Beloved's assault on Luster, Grimmwold reveals that pages from the Unicorn Chronicles are missing, and that others reveal an unsettling prophecy about unicorns confronting their own darkness and a mysterious figure called the Whisperer.
Another human, Alma Leonetti, comes forth and suggests that the centaurs might know more details. The Queen sends Cara and her friends to investigate, while Jaques and Thomas the Tinker go on separate missions. Thomas does give her a watch that marks the days and also explodes, so you know right away she's gonna need both on her trip. M'Gama the geomancer is trying to determine where and when the Hunters will invade: the date is the forthcoming Blood Moon, but she's still working out the details on the place.
Grimmwold tells the group a story about Alma Leonetti, and how she tracked down the wizard Bellenmore, who opened the gate to Luster for the unicorns. Bellenmore has a snarky talking lizard and great tastes in decorating:
On the mantel above the fireplace stood a row of earthenware mugs with hideous faces. One of them winked at me; another leered and rolled its eyes; a third stuck out its tongue and made a rude noise. Then they began to sing a bawdy song until Bellenmore waved a hand to silence them.
Alma bluffs her way to Luster and eventually persuades the unicorns to keep one of their kind on Earth so humans don't forget true beauty and goodness and the spark is kept alive. The hunters keep trying to kill the Guardian, but they always replace the fallen with a new one and the cycle repeats.
We also learn that Ivy summoned Moonheart to heal Cara as a child, which is what alerted Beloved to her presence, forcing her to kidnap Cara and flee because Beloved wanted the child, too. Ian Hunter was a first grade teacher who had no idea about any of this until Cara disappeared and he was radicalized by Beloved and went through an intensive training camp she's built up for her army.
Meanwhile, Ian is in India, tracking down the Rainbow Prison where Beloved has imprisoned his wife. He makes a deal with a mysterious entity, the Blind Man, trading occasional use of his sight for the knowledge he needs. Beloved's men attack Ian, but he is saved by a street urchin named Rajiv who is eager for adventure, and the mysterious Fallon, who is trying to find a doorway to Luster. The three of them team up and head for the Himalayas to find the doorway to the Rainbow Prison while Beloved's forces pursue them. We learn that Fallon is super-hot and also seeking his best bro Elihu, in a relationship that I'm pretty sure was sexual although it's never stated directly.
There's also a plotline involving the delvers - the evil dwarves we mostly forgot about in Book 2. The King keeps talking to the Whisperer, and sending his subjects to do Evil Things as the alliance with Beloved continues. (The delvers do not love humans, but they hate unicorns and so the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" at least temporarily).
The plotlines converge when the delvers attack M'Gama the earthmancer's house and steal a macguffin and kill Flensa, M'Gama's servant. Cara's party splits up, with Finder and Belle hunting the macguffin while Cara and Lightfoot continue on. Finder is killed (sob) and Belle regrets being a jerk to him. Cara's group is attacked by delvers and she is captured and taken underground. (The delvers either don't know Beloved has an amulet already/don't care/want one for their own purposes.) Cara tosses the amulet into an abyss when it fails to transport her to earth, and she is imprisoned in the dungeons with a delver dissident who has had his name ritually stripped from him for defiance.
Cara renames the delver "Rocky" and the Squijum shows up with the amulet and steals the key. They meet up with Grimmwold, and escape. They also encounter the gryphon Medafil, who is lost below ground, only to wake a monster known as the schwartz, a Terminator-like blind dragon that never gives up pursuit. Cara defeats it using the expanding light sphere from Medafil's nest, and they emerge in the centaur's valley, where Belle is waiting for them with the news of Finder's death.
The centaurs are standoffish, but eventually Cara persuades their leader Chiron to spill the beans: after the war with Beloved began, the unicorns decided to expunge all the darkness from their souls with the aid of a magician named Elihu (hi!), which gained sentience and has been egging Beloved on ever since. It's also corrupted the delvers,which is why they hate unicorns so much. In exchange for the info, Cara agrees to mercy-kill Chiron, which none of the centaurs can do for personal reasons. Cara reports this story to the unicorns, who are all :shrug emoji: about it.
Meanwhile Ian and company are stuck in the Rainbow Prison, the Dimblethum is being tormented by the Whisperer, and ends up taking the macguffin the delvers stole and placing it at the Axis Mundi, the world-tree of Luster, so that Beloved and her forces can enter there. Lightfoot tries to stop the Dimblethum but isn't in time. And the book ends on the seriously metal note of Beloved opening the portal beneath the blood moon and invading Luster with her army. *cue 'Bad Moon Rising'*
[Which, I may note, is pretty much where the LAST BOOK also ended.]
SO. That was a lot.
Once again, the core group of characters from Book One gets broken up. Thomas the Tinker gets sidetracked pretty quickly and isn't seen again; the Dimblethum gets a few brief sequences, but doesn't do much until the end. Lightfoot and Cara are separated fairly early on and don't have much time together, though their musings about their sudden familial connections at the beginning are nice, even though Cara also keeps shipping Belle with Lightfoot. Lightfoot himself doesn't get to do much, Finder dies, and Belle is likewise sidelined by the narrative for a decent chunk of the story. Coville also keeps emphasizing that Lightfoot is a Prince, which just grates on me, too.
I would also like to see more of Cara? She has plenty of scenes, but after two books of focusing solely on her, it's so strange to suddenly be jerked in different directions and it makes me grumpy.
It's great to see Medafil again, but I found the whole delvers/underground plot to drag on too long for my tastes. I'm glad Coville brings back that one delver from the first book who let Cara go because he thinks (rightly) his king is batshit crazy.
I like Alma Leonetti's story, but it feels unrelated to the plot, so I'm not entirely sure why it's there. I think it was originally a stand-alone short story, and I think it's better suited as one, because I can't figure out what its narrative purpose is. Or is it just that Grimmwold is contractually obligated to tell at least one story per book?? Or maybe this is something that will pay off in Book 4.
Ian Hunter's story basically bores me, and I found that whole subplot extremely tedious. He's been more or less retconned to be sympathetic and a victim, and I just don't know how I feel about that.
I HAVE SUCH MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THE BIG REVEAL. On the one hand, it's a great twist to see the psychological shadow as the literal villain; on the other hand, it takes away some of the delvers' and Beloved's agency as villains in their own right because they're now Pawns of a Bigger Bad. It also just seems like such a weird thing for the unicorns to do--and maybe that's a way of making them more alien, but I don't know.
Coville explicitly uses the word 'hubris,' so it also feels weirdly victim-blaming to me because the unicorns are doing it to themselves (and this isn't just a war, but genocide we're talking about here!). For better or worse, this twist muddies the black and white/good vs. evil paradigm into shades of gray: the unicorns are beautiful and good but also arrogant assholes; Beloved is homicidal but also in terrible pain; the delvers are misunderstood and need to be embraced rather than ignored.
Alma Leonetti consistently delivers the best lines - I guess she's taken over the role Ivy Morris used to play, since Ivy is now a unicorn:
"Perhaps the unicorns need to try to recover some of what they have lost?... You face a dedicated enemy who has shown no mercy, one who will stop at nothing to destroy you. And what have you done? Gathered together, which is good. Prepared to defend yourselves, which is good, too. But is it enough? How fiercely are you willing to fight to save your lives? How strong can unicorns be? ... Maybe you need to take in some of that darkness you once released."
I remember feeling oddly disappointed on my first reading, which unfortunately persists on re-read. This story has now moved in a very different direction from the one I expected, and while that's not necessarily bad, it is unsettling and strange. As I mentioned earlier, some of that might just be that the final result doesn't match the story I made up in my head; or it could just be the inevitable result of such a long gap between books and the changes in the fantasy market post-Harry Potter. I don't know.
(I wish I had written down my thoughts about an ending--aka fanfic--because while I could write one now, it’d be reacting to canon, rather than creating it.)
Either way, major kudos to Coville for writing this book, because I had assumed the series was dead and would never be completed, and he fucking did it. That’s such an inspiration, honestly.
Are you looking for a bad ass fantasy series with a strong female lead who’s story is not driven by romance? Look no further than The Unicorn Chronicles by Bruce Coville.
Follow Cara as she ventures through Luster a land full of fantastic creatures like Unicorns (obviously), Dragons, Centaurs, A sensitive and loquacious gryphon named Medafil, The Dimblethum a bear like humanoid, and the Squijum a small moneky-squirrel-like creature that no one knows the species of.
With the help of Lightfoot, a unicorn, Cara sets off to unravel the mysteries of her life back on Earth (like who that man was that was following her is) and to bring a message to the Queen of the unicorns from her Grandmother.
This file is designed to make you feel mindless and helpless, heavy trigger use of "mindless bliss" and "empty your mind", works perfectly well as a stand alone file.
If you ever fantasize of becoming brainwashed and feeling helpless to resist, this file is for you. It uses multiple layers of audio, as well as visuals to aid you into that deep trance.
Content Warning: contains suggestions pertaining to addiction, arousal and submission. If you're uncomfortable with the idea of being addicted to hypnosis or a hypnotist, this might not be the file
