Katherine Arden (The Warm Hands of Ghosts; The Bear and the Nightingale) offers readers an alternate history shaped by the fortitude of an iconic heroine in the epic, ethereal standalone fantasy The Unicorn Hunters.
Anne, duchess of Brittany, promised her late father that she would not let France annex their tiny nation. Anne has no wish to leave Brittany, as "her whole heart lay in its earth and gray sea, belonged to its people in their wool and lace," but her best hope to save it is through the right marriage. Her upcoming forced wedding to the French king would guarantee the loss of Brittany's independence, so she hatches a desperate scheme: she arranges her own betrothal to the Austrian monarch, who has no interest in annexing Brittany. She must hide her plan from the magical sight of France's royal diviners, so Anne coordinates a hasty wedding by proxy at an abbey in Brocéliande, a forest shielded from divining. She also starts a rumor of a unicorn sighting in the forest, stalling the French emissary with the promise of a unicorn hunt and giving herself an excuse to go to Brocéliande as the maiden bait. Anne's party encounters eldritch sightings at the abbey, including apparitions of people who stand in daylight even though it is night. The unicorn hunt goes awry when an actual unicorn appears, followed by a man who claims to have been lost in the world of the korriganed, Brittany's fair folk, for centuries. Anne must continue to hold off the French while she waits for her true bridegroom, but strange outpourings of magic and a shadowy nemesis threaten her plans and all she holds dear.
Arden again demonstrates her skill at creating feisty, full-hearted female characters through indomitable Anne, her headstrong younger sister, Isabeau, and Elesbed, a brave, sensible orphan girl. A female antagonist, the French king's sister Marguerite, is portrayed as intelligent and not without compassion even as she tries to outmaneuver Anne. This rewriting of the history of Anne of Brittany, who, in real life, married two kings of France, is a yearning and inspiring tale of an underdog ruler who decides to shape her own fate for the love of her nation. Arden's other gifts, including graceful turns of phrase and wry dialogue, also lend depth to this verdant, magic-laced world. Readers seeking a unicorn need look no further than this gorgeous fantasy. --Jaclyn Fulwood, blogger at Infinite Reads
Shelf Talker: Katherine Arden reinvents the life of Anne, Duchess of Brittany, in this epic, ethereal standalone historical fantasy.