Year of the Unicorn

by Andre Norton

October 1, 1965 · Ace

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Genre: Science Fiction/Fantasy

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Squee from the Keeper Shelf is a new feature wherein we share why we love the books we love, specifically the stories which are permanent residents of our Keeper shelves. Despite flaws, despite changes in age and perspective, despite the passage of time, we love particular books beyond reason, and the only thing better than re-reading them is telling other people about them. At length.

If you’d like to submit your reasons for loving and keeping a particular book for Squee from the Keeper Shelf, please email Sarah!

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So when I saw the first one of the Squee from the Keeper Shelf reviews go by I knew I had to ask to write about this book. THIS, piled in the Science Fiction/Fantasy section of the local bookstore, is the book that totally ruined romance for me for years. Because it is perfect. I will brook no argument. It is perfect and you must all read it.

And the reason it is perfect is that though it was written in 1965, it is devoid of fail. It is one of the best, most empowering, feminist romances ever, for reasons I will enumerate.

I think I read it the first time when I was maybe eleven. I had discovered Andre Norton’s Lavender-Green Magic at my Middle School Library and quickly ran through all the books they had (there were like 5 and most of her YA books, written before YA was a thing – Dragon Magic, Octagon Magic, Star Man’s Son, etc.) So I had my parents take me to our local mall in the crap hole town in Michigan I’m from, which had an actual bookstore in it. Lo and behold, there were many, many more Andre Norton books. And I found Witch World and read all of the ones in that series, and from there, hey, more books set in Witch World, of which Year of the Unicorn is one.

But even though it is part of an enormous series, it works totally as a standalone novel. You don’t need to know anything else about Witch World or Norton to read this and enjoy it. I promise. (But after you do, you’ll want to read the other ones. I will totally rec them in romance-friendly order, too.)

I feel bad about spoiling some of this story, but most of the tropes that were groundbreaking when I was eleven are pretty well-worn in magical romance now, so even though you’ve seen it before, you haven’t really seen it like this. And it’s not even like “John Carter of Mars did it first” stuff. Because I’ve read some fantasy/romance and nobody does what Norton was doing in this story. It has an arranged marriage, a mysterious hero with a secret, a disapproving family, outside threats to the relationship, and physical threats to the heroine that she overcomes on her own because there’s no selling out of the heroine, here. Norton is kind of upending almost everything done in stories of this type while hewing very closely to the structure of romance, but she starts from a place of women as empowered individuals. (The series is called Witch World, after all.)

In many High Fantasy circles, and even in most historical romance, any power women have is from their family and connections, not stemming from anything special about them. You get born a queen or a noble and your power comes from that. Not so here. While magical power is hereditary, having magical power buys you status regardless of your family or origin. And how you use your power means as much as having it in the first place. Good people aren’t bullies who use their power to dominate. Good people use their power to help others.

When we begin our story, the country of High Hallack (really a loosely-affiliated group of petty kingdoms) has been at war with The Hounds of Alizon, invaders from over the sea, who are using both big time magic and high tech to try to pick off the countries in their world one by one. In order to stop the invasion, the Lords of High Hallack made a Faustian bargain with The Were Riders of the Waste, a group of exiled wizards who turn into various animals to fight and scare the living shit out of everyone. All the Were Riders asked for as payment to be their badass mercenaries were supplies to use in the fight and 13 brides of noble birth once the war was won.

And the war got won. And now the brides have been gathered up and delivered to Norstead Abbey where they will be hauled out to the Wastes and handed over to the Wizards for… whatever. Because at this point nobody is sure, but they are hopeful it’s not slaughter because the Were Riders specifically asked for brides of noble birth.

The brides are not happy. They are, in fact, mostly shitting themselves with fear. Because the Were Riders are bad dudes, and High Hallack is not a hotbed of magic. Most people are really conventional and there are a lot of bad old magical artifacts lying around from the Old Ones that will mess you up if you touch them and so people mostly just avoid magic entirely, thanks. And that means they avoid people who use magic, too. Those people are scary.

Except for our heroine, Gillan.

She is foreign. She was found in a shipwreck on the coast and brought to the Abbey as a little girl because no one knew what to do with her. Where people in High Hallack are mostly blonde, red or light brown-haired, with rosy complexions and nice tans, she has black hair and very pale skin that doesn’t tan. She looks weird and is treated like she’s weird, and she can do magic, so she’s not frightened of it. And secretly nuns at the Abbey where she was raised also can do magic through the goddess they worship, but mostly keep it on the QT. The nuns are respected as healers and are of high status because what you can do buys you status. So, she’s basically in a good place where she can stay and be useful for the rest of her life with other women who totally understand her and are kind to her. But she doesn’t want to. She wants to travel and have adventures.

When the brides show up, one, who had really good prospects but is forced to be there because of honor, is just out of her mind with fear. So Gillan makes up her mind, packs her magical bags, drugs the bride (who can easily find another husband), and takes the girl’s place on the bride train o’ certain doom, heavily veiled. They ride north.

So empowered heroine is empowered from the beginning of this thing. She chose to go into the unknown. Nobody is forcing her. Even the other brides are there because of a political agreement and as noble women, they realize they would have been sold or bartered off to someone anyway, so they are grinning and bearing it.

When the brides get to the place where they are supposed to meet the Were Riders, Gillan is discovered, but it’s too late and they’re on deadline, so she gets away with it. Who knows who she was back where she came from; she could be of noble birth? And then – and here’s where we totally start in with the bad ass feminism – the brides get to choose their husbands. It’s like magical Sadie Hawkins Day.

Basically the Were Riders have enchanted part of the Waste to look like a pretty springtime garden, and they have laid their sparkling bejeweled cloaks on the green springtime grass. The girls get to choose among the (incredibly bespelled) cloaks. Whichever one they’re drawn to. (Let’s not lie to ourselves that the men have not laid down a ton of spells to draw women to their cloaks, but it’s still up to the women to choose which one they want. The one that looks best to THEM.) And most of the girls run scampering into the field and pick up cloaks with ease and run off into the bushes to find the man the cloak belongs to. Also, as soon as they touch the cloaks, they stop being afraid. And you can look at that two ways, I guess. One of which is magical roofies, or another is that the Riders know the brides are scared and are doing everything they can to not be scary and to make them feel welcome. And what the Riders know how to do is cast spells.

Gillan is having a problem with this. She can see through the illusion and it’s giving her a headache. And she isn’t really drawn to any of the cloaks because her eyes are swimming between illusion and reality where it’s a nasty winter day with brown fur cloaks lying in the dirt. So she sees one that’s been mostly tossed into the bushes, and that’s the one she picks up. She can also see that the pattern on it is a bit different than most of the others, so it’s intriguing to her. She likes it. She likes the REAL cloak, not any of the fake illusion sparkle cloaks.

She starts after the other girls into the bushes where she’s met by Herrel, one of the best romantic heroes ever. Herrel is freaked out that someone picked his cloak. Herrel is both the son of the leader of the Were Riders and the least powerful magician among them, because he’s only half were. His mom was another race – so mixed race hero, though the other race isn’t ever really explained. He’s just not entirely Were Rider.

He knows something is up immediately and questions Gillan. She tells him what he actually looks like, instead of the fake human illusion he was projecting. She really sees him and not fake human-looking dude and isn’t afraid. He is immediately in her corner. She needs to pretend she sees everything everyone else is seeing and she should TRY to see the illusion right away or she will be in big trouble. Because there was a reason the Riders asked for High Hallack brides. Those girls aren’t magical. They wanted docile, nice girls who wouldn’t cause any trouble. And then you start to realize that the Were Riders have probably earned their bad reputation and Gillan is probably in trouble.

But, she chose Herrel. And from the moment she did, they are on one another’s side. They both chose what they were doing and when they made their choices, they stuck to the other person that was depending on them. And this is a THEME of this book. It is a partnership of equals. From the beginning. They are a team.

And the rest of the novel is all about outside forces trying to break up Team Herrel and Gillan. Because Herrel wasn’t supposed to get a woman when a bunch of the other Were Riders were going home empty, as it were. And that’s what they’re doing. Going home.

The Were Riders got on the bad side of politics in another world locked away from High Hallack by magic, and after thousands of years of exile, they can now go home, taking their human brides with them. So they have a hard journey ahead of them to make the gate before it closes. And while they ride, disgruntled Were Riders who are more magical than Herrel try to steal Gillan. But Gillan doesn’t want to be stolen, and she’s also not so sure about being married, either. Because of her own power. She doesn’t want to give it up. And when you marry in Witch World, you often lose your power. Not always, but often. So she won’t bone Herrel, which puts her in danger of being found out as the witch she’s not supposed to be. He’s not liking this for a few reasons, but a major one is that she’s in danger. But he respects her decision and isn’t going to try to make her do what she doesn’t want to do.

He respects her decision. Let’s all just savor that one for a minute. There’s no pleading. There’s no trying to get around her or telling her she doesn’t know what she wants. He outlines the danger, but just respects her.

Then there are repeated attacks, some from the were pack – which isn’t boring wolves, OH NO, but all sorts of animals. Herrel is a mountain cat. His dad is a stallion. His main rival is a bear. There’s an eagle, wolves, a boar, and others. And also from deserters from the war. All the while Gillan and Herrel negotiate their relationship and grow closer, while presenting a united front to everyone else.

When the Were Riders do the big magic to let them back into their country, Gillan betrays herself as a witch. And we end up seeing that the Were Riders are actually bad guys after all, and there was probably a reason they were exiled and everyone is terrified of them. Also they don’t seem to have learned much in their exile about not being terrible. The pack gets together and zombifies Herrel and performs a magical lobotomy on Gillan, splitting her soul from her body. They only need her body, after all, to make babies. They hand her body over to Halse, the bullying bear and Herrel’s rival, to go through the gate, and leave her soul on the other side, cut off.

Gillan now must return to her body, and there are a ton of adventures she has to go through to do it. (We are fortunately with REAL Gillan instead of other Gillan through this. If she is raped, it is never spelled out, only implied. As she was to be a “wife” to one of the riders, the assumption is that her body was used in that way while she was not in it. The POV is consistently with Gillan in her “other” body. That’s the real Gillan. Her captivity is not detailed except once when she psychically reconnects to her body to try to contact Herrell. She is not being hurt, but is traveling at that time.)

But all the while, even while separated, she has a continued and growing connection with Herrel.

I want you to read this instead of spoiling the whole damned thing, but there’s some hurt/comfort, there’s imprisonment, there’s duels, there’s psychological badassery, there’s magical badassery and the two of them have to go through it together and come out together at the end. Which they do.

But nowhere does Herrel undermine Gillan’s autonomy. Nowhere does she undermine him. They are able to see each other for what they are, and they like and choose one another again and again. This is a relationship that is built to last, based on initial attraction that seems pretty sketchy and then growing into a true connection over time and hardships faced together. It has always been catnip to me because I am unconvinced by romance that begins and ends with someone thinking someone else is hot and it suddenly being true love. I am too cynical and skeptical for that. But here, they actually work out their relationship based on mutual respect and basically being decent people and shared experience. It’s enough to restore your faith in humanity and whatever the hell Herrel actually is.

I will make a note here at the end, though, that some people have disliked the really mild faux medieval style of the narrative. If you can handle Tolkien, this is a piece of cake for sure. Norton’s style is more accessible. But it’s old-fashioned, I guess. It’s not modern contemporary novel style, so fair warning. But I think it adds to the world-building for this medieval-era set fantasy, myself. I will also warn you that there is zero sexytime (there is kissing), as it was actually written for the fantasy market and not romance.

But despite that, it’s the best romance novel I’ve ever read. I still have never found one I liked more. I re-read this at least once a year and it’s been a long time since I was eleven.

And now, the promised book list in romance-friendly order:

NB: Unfortunately, many of these books are out of print and aren’t available digitally, but hopefully your local library may have them!

Andre’s romance novels:
Follow the Drum
Maid at Arms

SF with Strong Romantic Elements:
Jargoon Pard (sequel to Year of the Unicorn)
The Crystal Gryphon ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) – seriously this is as good
Gryphon in Glory ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) – sequel to Crystal Gryphon
Gryphon’s Eyrie with A.C. Crispin ( A ) – another sequel
Moon of Three Rings – whacky body switching! (also beginning of a series)
Witch World ( A ) (and again with a series)

These all have strong central characters that become couples in the course of the story, but they all have that independent Andre streak. It’s what makes them so compelling, I think.

Year of the Unicorn comes from Morgan Grantwood’s Keeper Shelf! Morgan is a professional writer of advertising and magazine articles and published in the SF world under a different name. She writes as her day job and also for fun. And when she isn’t writing, she’s reading, knitting, crafting, or playing music.

She also knew Andre Norton personally after writing and sending her some Witch World short stories many years ago. One of her prized possessions is a letter from Andre stating “you’ll be a famous writer someday.”