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The Unicorn Chronicles #1-2
The Unicorn Chronicles
This exclusive Barnes & Noble Books 1st edition compilation contains the following books in The Unicorn Chronicles series:
Into the Land of the Unicorns (Book One)
Song of the Wanderer (Book Two)
Take the leap!
As each bell chime sounds, Cara climbs faster up the steep bell tower. Eleven! She must be on the roof when the next bell tolls. Twelve! With a deep breath, and only half believing she will be safe, Cara jumps off the church roof and into Luster, land of the unicorns.
There she meets many wonderful creatures -- including hairy Dimblethum and the monkey-like Squijum -- but the most magnificent of all is a young, rebellious unicorn named Lightfoot. Together they set out to find the missing Unicorn Queen before a mysterious stranger banishes all unicorns forever. Can Cara deliver her message to Luster's might Queen in time? Or will this be the end of the unicorns?
Trickery awaits. Destruction looms. The journey of a lifetime begins...
Into the Land of the Unicorns (Book One)
Song of the Wanderer (Book Two)
Take the leap!
As each bell chime sounds, Cara climbs faster up the steep bell tower. Eleven! She must be on the roof when the next bell tolls. Twelve! With a deep breath, and only half believing she will be safe, Cara jumps off the church roof and into Luster, land of the unicorns.
There she meets many wonderful creatures -- including hairy Dimblethum and the monkey-like Squijum -- but the most magnificent of all is a young, rebellious unicorn named Lightfoot. Together they set out to find the missing Unicorn Queen before a mysterious stranger banishes all unicorns forever. Can Cara deliver her message to Luster's might Queen in time? Or will this be the end of the unicorns?
Trickery awaits. Destruction looms. The journey of a lifetime begins...
492 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2005
9 people are currently reading
222 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
January 8, 2018
I read the first book in this series in elementary school and waited and waited and waited for the second book to come out. It was very exciting to come across this volume so many years later and finally be able to read the second book. It did not disappoint, either. Bruce Coville is a truly fantastic children's fantasy author.
December 28, 2019
I listened to all four books on CD and thoroughly enjoyed the Full Cast Audio performance of Bruce Coville's Unicorn Chronicles. It's a splendid tale, complex, with compelling characters, and the drama is so well done! Even the credits at the end are presented in an interesting way. <3
There are three additional short stories, “After the Third Kiss,” "The Guardian of Memory,” and "The Boy With Silver Eyes,” which helped ease the pain of separation at the end of the saga. I loved the world of Luster.
There are three additional short stories, “After the Third Kiss,” "The Guardian of Memory,” and "The Boy With Silver Eyes,” which helped ease the pain of separation at the end of the saga. I loved the world of Luster.
April 6, 2020
This book was amazing. I can't even put into words how much I love this series, and I will continue to read it again and again, despite the fact that it is a young adult novel. It is so beautifully written. It is a novel that had me at the edge of my seat. I wish they would bring this series back into print, because everyone should have access to these books! Nothing but love for this story.
March 25, 2024
The only thing this book is missing is a map, personal preference but I do love a good map 😄
Thank you to the wonderful person who left this book in my Lilliput Library opening the door to Luster. This book has everything you could wish for, I can't wait to get stuck into the next book!
Thank you to the wonderful person who left this book in my Lilliput Library opening the door to Luster. This book has everything you could wish for, I can't wait to get stuck into the next book!
November 5, 2020
This book will always have a place in my heart because it's the book that made me love reading!
June 24, 2016
REVIEW WIP
Watching The Last Unicorn for the first time as an eight-year-old girl changed my perception of those silvery horned beasts forever. I immediately craved unicorns with a new and fiery passion like I never had before, and I scoured my grade-school's library for unicorn-related reading material. Nothing, however, seemed to fit my taste. Most of it was merely "girly" Barbie-esque tripe that hardly lived up to my standards of unicorns. Then I discovered this book, the first in The Unicorn Chronicles. It delivered everything my hungry young mind craved in a book: big adventures, strange creatures, fantasy, great characters, a great villain, and of course UNICORNS. Not the sissy My Little Pony-type unicorns that I saw in toystores, but tough, badass unicorns who were intelligent beings, not cute pets. While I was never able to find the second book back then (and it's only now I'm in my twenties that I own the complete series), I kept the memory of that first book in a special shrine in the back of my mind. It was that memory and the news of Bruce Coville's long-coming completion of the series that inspired me to finally procure all four books. Now here I am, fourteen years later.
So does this book hold up after all these years? Not as well as I expected, but very well nonetheless. Tropes and characters that blew my my mind as a child don't have quite the same impact now; especially now that I've seen those tropes used many times in fiction since then. Still, the tropes and characters are presented well within their context. It's a solid, concise, and highly enjoyable book, and worth reading for "The Tale of Blood and Sorrow" alone (by far one of the best character back-stories I've ever read).
Like in most fantasy fiction for young readers, there's also the obligatory cute-critter comic relief character who speaks in cutesy pidgin-talk. He detracts a bit from the quality of the story as a whole, but not enough to make one want to, say, throw the book against the wall or anything of that nature. I'm happy to say the book remains enjoyable in spite of this character.
I'm also quite happy that I'm reading this now, completely and all the way through without any wait-periods in between books. The massive gaps of time between publication years for these books is INSANE (the publication dates for all four books are 1994, 1999, 2008, and 2010 respectively). The first book has a definite hook for book two, but doesn't leave so many loose plot threads as to be maddening. The second book, however, has one DOOZY of a cliffhanger. If I had to wait nine years for that third book to come out, I'd go completely insane!
Watching The Last Unicorn for the first time as an eight-year-old girl changed my perception of those silvery horned beasts forever. I immediately craved unicorns with a new and fiery passion like I never had before, and I scoured my grade-school's library for unicorn-related reading material. Nothing, however, seemed to fit my taste. Most of it was merely "girly" Barbie-esque tripe that hardly lived up to my standards of unicorns. Then I discovered this book, the first in The Unicorn Chronicles. It delivered everything my hungry young mind craved in a book: big adventures, strange creatures, fantasy, great characters, a great villain, and of course UNICORNS. Not the sissy My Little Pony-type unicorns that I saw in toystores, but tough, badass unicorns who were intelligent beings, not cute pets. While I was never able to find the second book back then (and it's only now I'm in my twenties that I own the complete series), I kept the memory of that first book in a special shrine in the back of my mind. It was that memory and the news of Bruce Coville's long-coming completion of the series that inspired me to finally procure all four books. Now here I am, fourteen years later.
So does this book hold up after all these years? Not as well as I expected, but very well nonetheless. Tropes and characters that blew my my mind as a child don't have quite the same impact now; especially now that I've seen those tropes used many times in fiction since then. Still, the tropes and characters are presented well within their context. It's a solid, concise, and highly enjoyable book, and worth reading for "The Tale of Blood and Sorrow" alone (by far one of the best character back-stories I've ever read).
Like in most fantasy fiction for young readers, there's also the obligatory cute-critter comic relief character who speaks in cutesy pidgin-talk. He detracts a bit from the quality of the story as a whole, but not enough to make one want to, say, throw the book against the wall or anything of that nature. I'm happy to say the book remains enjoyable in spite of this character.
I'm also quite happy that I'm reading this now, completely and all the way through without any wait-periods in between books. The massive gaps of time between publication years for these books is INSANE (the publication dates for all four books are 1994, 1999, 2008, and 2010 respectively). The first book has a definite hook for book two, but doesn't leave so many loose plot threads as to be maddening. The second book, however, has one DOOZY of a cliffhanger. If I had to wait nine years for that third book to come out, I'd go completely insane!
February 1, 2015
This was a bindup of the first two books in "The Unicorn Chronicles". I read the first book when I was about fifteen and wasn't so sure (nearly two decades later) if I'd still find the story as intriguing. Well, I absolutely did and am grateful the third and fourth books in the series have finally been published.
This story follows Cara, a young girl, who is mysteriously chased by a frightening stranger and then astonishingly launched into the magical land of unicorns...all in the first chapter. As she journeys through Luster, she meets many magical creatures (some friendly, and some not-so-friendly) and learns some amazing and heartbreaking truths about those she thought she knew.
This story is rife with inspiring loyalty and heart-wrenching betrayal. Bruce Coville does a good job of including comic relief characters throughout the story to help add some levity to some of the more serious moments that might read a bit heavy for younger readers. The ending of the second book felt a bit rushed for me, and I felt a bit more time could have been devoted to that section. After all, the entire second book was dedicated to bringing a character known as "the Wanderer" home, but then when the moment comes that the quest might be fulfilled, we're suddenly launched forward in the timeline to days after the fateful cutoff happened when Cara either had to succeed in bringing the Wanderer home or would have failed. I felt a little cheated at how things felt glossed over. [If this sounds a little abstract, it's because I'm trying to avoid spoilers.]
From reviews I've read of the 3rd and 4th(and final) book in this quartet, I understand that the story does "grow up" a bit, and I'm hopeful that the pacing will have improved with the next two books. Time to go find out.
This story follows Cara, a young girl, who is mysteriously chased by a frightening stranger and then astonishingly launched into the magical land of unicorns...all in the first chapter. As she journeys through Luster, she meets many magical creatures (some friendly, and some not-so-friendly) and learns some amazing and heartbreaking truths about those she thought she knew.
This story is rife with inspiring loyalty and heart-wrenching betrayal. Bruce Coville does a good job of including comic relief characters throughout the story to help add some levity to some of the more serious moments that might read a bit heavy for younger readers. The ending of the second book felt a bit rushed for me, and I felt a bit more time could have been devoted to that section. After all, the entire second book was dedicated to bringing a character known as "the Wanderer" home, but then when the moment comes that the quest might be fulfilled, we're suddenly launched forward in the timeline to days after the fateful cutoff happened when Cara either had to succeed in bringing the Wanderer home or would have failed. I felt a little cheated at how things felt glossed over. [If this sounds a little abstract, it's because I'm trying to avoid spoilers.]
From reviews I've read of the 3rd and 4th(and final) book in this quartet, I understand that the story does "grow up" a bit, and I'm hopeful that the pacing will have improved with the next two books. Time to go find out.
December 8, 2022
A lovely sequel to Into the Land of the Unicorns.
The poem at its heart, 'The Song of the Wanderer' is beautiful and poignant and perfect for anyone who would define themselves as a wanderer.
The story picks up exactly where the first book left off and while it does a lot to push the overarching narrative forward, Song of the Wanderer is definitely more invested in building up gaps in the lore left over from Into the Land of the Unicorns, and it does so beautifully. The only problem is that it does this job so well, it made me wish that Grandmother Morris (Ivy) was the main character of the series rather than Clara, who in this installment comes across yet again as very much an Alice in Wonderland archetype, to the detriment of my personal enjoyment. Though she does have her moments of heroism, these instances of what should have been character development are often undermined by how little they actually change her and seem to exist to build her up as a hero only when the plot calls for it.
The other problem I had with this installment was the sheer number of characters. Immersive fantasy is no stranger to ensemble casts, but the bulk of characters here did nothing but water them all down to the point that I would often forget who a given unicorn was and how they fit into the story.
That all being said, Song of the Wanderer really shined when focusing on its titular character and her mythos as well as the mythos of Beloved and the Hunters and I sincerely hope that future 'chronicles' will put the focus here as well and/or actually allow Clara to develop into someone more interesting than she proved herself to be here.
The poem at its heart, 'The Song of the Wanderer' is beautiful and poignant and perfect for anyone who would define themselves as a wanderer.
The story picks up exactly where the first book left off and while it does a lot to push the overarching narrative forward, Song of the Wanderer is definitely more invested in building up gaps in the lore left over from Into the Land of the Unicorns, and it does so beautifully. The only problem is that it does this job so well, it made me wish that Grandmother Morris (Ivy) was the main character of the series rather than Clara, who in this installment comes across yet again as very much an Alice in Wonderland archetype, to the detriment of my personal enjoyment. Though she does have her moments of heroism, these instances of what should have been character development are often undermined by how little they actually change her and seem to exist to build her up as a hero only when the plot calls for it.
The other problem I had with this installment was the sheer number of characters. Immersive fantasy is no stranger to ensemble casts, but the bulk of characters here did nothing but water them all down to the point that I would often forget who a given unicorn was and how they fit into the story.
That all being said, Song of the Wanderer really shined when focusing on its titular character and her mythos as well as the mythos of Beloved and the Hunters and I sincerely hope that future 'chronicles' will put the focus here as well and/or actually allow Clara to develop into someone more interesting than she proved herself to be here.
July 3, 2017
The first book, "Into the Land of Unicorns", was one of my lucky finds in a Scholastic book order that I had as a younger child. With luck my mother allowed me to get the book and I just fell in love with it while when the second one came out I snatched it up.
The reading and usage of words is simple - both in understanding and in reading so the books make for a fast read for the insatiable book-reader. And with lots of emotions, action and fantasy the book brings a whole new world to life.
The characters are memorable and full of personality while they just seem to grow with each turn of the page. The scenery is given in breathtaking detail whether the Rainbow Prison, Luster or the stories that abound.
And I just love how the author finishes the books. Now that I know there is a third and a fourth I need to hunt them down.
The reading and usage of words is simple - both in understanding and in reading so the books make for a fast read for the insatiable book-reader. And with lots of emotions, action and fantasy the book brings a whole new world to life.
The characters are memorable and full of personality while they just seem to grow with each turn of the page. The scenery is given in breathtaking detail whether the Rainbow Prison, Luster or the stories that abound.
And I just love how the author finishes the books. Now that I know there is a third and a fourth I need to hunt them down.
May 23, 2020
I enjoyed the second story throughout my youth, so I'm a little startled that I didn't love the first story just as much. I wish I could pinpoint the source for my less enthusiastic response to the first book. It could be that I read the second story through-out my childhood while I had just discovered the first story some short years ago when this edition came out. But again, I liked them, but the second book just caught my attention a little more.
August 4, 2009
I read the first book in this series in elementary school and waited and waited and waited for the second book to come out. It was very exciting to come across this volume so many years later and finally be able to read the second book. It did not disappoint, either. Bruce Coville is a great children's fantasy author.
March 25, 2009
i read this version of Into the Land of the Unicorns because its the first book and the second book but together. (made it easier on me that way). i bought the 3rd book, but havent read it yet... but i hope to this summer when i find the time too!
December 16, 2007
the thing i love most about the book is that you dont have to wait for the second book because its a 2 in 1, other than that its super exiting
April 3, 2008
It was okay.
October 14, 2008
it was very fantasy-y
June 21, 2012
wow it's been a few years but I remember reading this when i was real young and it founded my love of fantasy and unicorns. My daughter has it on her shelf but has not read it yet as far as I know.
March 31, 2014
These chronicles are amazing! I was always ready for the next one. Felt kind of sad when it finished.
April 19, 2014
I love anything unicorn related so I loved this book. Glad I bought it for my older daughter. She and I both enjoyed it.
September 23, 2008
i wish i could get the tthird one
November 14, 2008
Good Book!
January 15, 2016
I liked this book. It has mystery and magic. But the best part was the TALKING UNICORNS!!!!!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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December 10, 2017Amazing
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews