The Last Unicorn
#1514.16 in the official ranking · full ranking
Books 1 book Status Complete 1968 Reading commitment Low Peter S. Beagle Last reviewed 2026-08-07
Overview
Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn (1968) follows the world's last unicorn as she leaves her enchanted forest to search for others of her kind, learning along the way that a red bull sent by the wicked King Haggard has driven every other unicorn into the sea. She is joined by the bumbling magician Schmendrick, whose real power he cannot fully control, and the outlaw Molly Grue, on a journey that eventually forces the unicorn to take on a human form she finds humiliating in order to approach Haggard's castle. Beagle wrote the novel while still in his twenties, and it has been read since as both a wistful fairy tale and a meditation on mortality, regret, and the cost of taking human shape. It was adapted into an animated film in 1982 with Beagle's own screenplay, and remains a landmark of modern literary fantasy and one of the most acclaimed fairy-tale novels of the twentieth century.
Fairy-tale retelling · For All ages
Core Canon: Reading Order (1 work) counts toward ranking
The Last Unicorn (1968) core · 4.16 (127,692 ratings); The single continuous 1968 novel -- this project's 7th single-work universe (after The Once and Future King, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Uprooted, Spinning Silver, Piranesi, and Babel).
Library / Expanded (2 works)
Two Hearts (2005) ; A novelette-length coda reuniting King Lir, Schmendrick, Molly Grue, and the unicorn Amalthea, first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction (Oct/Nov 2005); later reprinted in The Way Home (2023). Kept Expanded rather than Core -- a short-fiction coda decades after the novel, not part of its original continuous text, the same non-Core treatment given to interstitial/coda short fiction elsewhere in this database (e.g. ACOTAR's A Court of Frost and Starlight).
The Way Home: Two Novellas from the World of The Last Unicorn (2023) ; Collects Two Hearts (2005, reprinted) alongside 'Sooz', a newly written second novella continuing Sooz's story years later -- the 'lesser-known sequel' checked carefully at this admission. New content (Sooz) registered under this 2023 collection's own publication year; Two Hearts itself is separately registered under its original 2005 publication per this project's textual-integrity convention.
Quick answers
- How many books are in The Last Unicorn? The Last Unicorn's Core Canon is 1 book, plus 2 more in the wider Library/Expanded material.
- Is The Last Unicorn finished? Complete (1968).
- How much reading does The Last Unicorn take? Low reading commitment (estimated from 1 Core Canon book · ~294 pages).
- How is The Last Unicorn ranked? #151 in this site's official ranking, based on 127,692 reader ratings across 1 Core Canon book. See the full ranking for how this is calculated.
Why is it ranked #151?
Ranked #151 in the official ranking.
- Average reader rating of 4.16 across 1 core book.
- Backed by 128k reader ratings.
- 0.01 behind #150, The Raven Rings.
- Below the top-10 average of 4.45.
- A single standalone novel: ranked on that one book alone.
Why explore this universe?
Highly rated · 1 book · Complete · 128k ratings · Ranks #151 overall
Good choice if you want a quick, low-commitment fairy-tale retelling fantasy universe that's already finished, so there's no wait for the next book.
Reading order
A single Core Canon work: no sequencing question to resolve.
Awards (verified)
- Hugo Award (Best Novelette), 2006: won: Two Hearts; Confirmed via thehugoawards.org's own history page.
- Nebula Award (Best Novelette), 2006: won: Two Hearts; Confirmed via SFWA's own Nebula database.
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Suggestions computed from what The Last Unicorn and each of these worlds have in common on record (subgenre, audience, shape, reading commitment and score), not a documented narrative connection.
- Spinning Silver Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Low commitment · 4.17
- The Girl Who Drank the Moon Fairy-tale retelling · Complete · Low commitment · 4.11
- The Perilous Gard Fairy-tale retelling / Historical fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 4.10
- Stardust Fairy-tale retelling / Portal fantasy · Complete · Low commitment · 4.09
Official resources
Research details
Ranking metrics: weighted average 4.16 across 127,692 ratings on 1 Core Canon book. See Why is it ranked here? above for the full breakdown, or the full ranking.
How do we know this?
Admission: The Last Unicorn admitted as a single-work universe; sequel coda material Expanded accepted 2026-08-07
Sources: (see source tier definitions)
- Wikipedia - The Last Unicorn Tier 2
Last reviewed: 2026-08-07
Rule: single-work universe: Core = the single 1968 novel. The 2005 Hugo/Nebula-winning novelette “Two Hearts” and its 2023 collection The Way Home (adding the new novella “Sooz”) are Expanded: coda pieces written decades later, not part of the novel's own continuous text.