1948.
338 pages.
Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks.

When young Airar Alvarson is evicted from his family farm by a henchman of the occupant Vulkings, he does not require much prodding to join the Dalecarl resistance, who are (or would be) fighting against the Vulkings’ rule over their homelands of Dalarna. A seemingly chance meeting with the old enchanter and sophist Meliboë sends him on a journey that will take him all across Dalarna and finally into the mythology of his nation.

In other words, The Well of the Unicorn in rather typical heroic fantasy. At the beginning of the story Airar is little more than a yokel; he knows some magic, and how to hunt, but of politics, war and all things courtly he is ignorant. The novel follows him through ups and downs, and shows how he develops from an innocent boy to a great leader — a development luckily caused more by accident, fortune and coincidence than by ambition and design, as the latter would have greatly reduced Airar’s humanity in my eyes.

As heroic fantasy, though, it is actually almost interesting. Published in 1948 — about a decade after the death of Robert E Howard and a decade and a half before Leiber, Moorcock and that bunch broke onto the scene –, Fletcher’s Airar seems to have more in common with Moorcock’s Elric and Leiber’s Fahrd and the Grey Mouser than with Howard’s testosterone monster Conan — although, admittedly, almost all my experiences with Conan comes from the comics. Still, the hesitant yet dedicated, uncertain yet powerful Airar, with both magical and martial aptitudes, seems to be to be a fairly typical sword and sorcery hero. In fact, he may be one of the best of these I have read, at least from the earlier period of the genre. Like I said, I haven’t read any of Howard’s Conan stories, but I’ve read a lot of the comics, and I’ve read his short story “The Valley of the Worm”, and I suspect I wouldn’t like Conan much; he is too brash, too sure of himself, too victorious. Elric, based on the five short stories and one novella I have read about him, was too arrogant, and while arrogance can be an interesting character flaw, I never found it particularly so when it was Elric’s only flaw, and in addition the one that brought down a world. Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser I haven’t read much of, but while I found what little I have read promising, and far more many-faceted and interesting than Conan and Elric, there still was a certain je ne sais qua, that didn’t appeal to me, although I suspect that this will change once I get around to reading a bit more than 170 pages about their antics and adventures.

Airar, though, possibly because he was the centre of attention of an over 300 pages long novel, is something else. It is almost pure accident (tempered a little by Meliboë’s magic) that puts him in touch with the Dalecarl resistance, and coincidence and misunderstanding and lies, mixed with a touch of flair for leadership, that establishes him as one of the uprising’s leaders. And once at the top, Airar is human enough to doubt the righteousness of his being there, as well as to question the nature of politics, which in his world seems to send a society either into a system of democracy or one of aristocracy, neither of which appeals particularly much to young Airar, who at times seems more like an anarchist, rural farmer’s son that he is. (Although “anarchist” isn’t quite right, either.) Which is ironic, if actually the case, as Airar ends up as the lord of Dalarna, if a mildly unhappy and uncomfortable one. (What, a spoiler? This? Surely you, my literate and learned reader, knows enough of the heroic branch of fantasy to know that they practically always end up as lords of something or other?)

This ambiguity is perhaps one of the novel’s strong points. Others include the many and serious setbacks in the Dalecarls’ struggle for freedom, which lends realism to the plot; the ridiculous number of morally grey characters; Airar’s constant search for a philosophical way out of his political conundrum, which usually ends with him losing a discussion to one of his older, more philosophically advanced companions (or foils, if you will); and the poignantly bittersweet ending, just to mention a few things.

On the less strong side, we find such things as a certain degree of predictability (then again, predictability is almost a genre trait); a language that is a bit hard to get around at times, as both its vocabulary and syntax are a bit archaic (I’ve been told this is because early English and American fantasy authors tried to emulate the German ones, but my source for this is somewhat unreliable); a tendency to have otherwise realistic and rounded characters fall in love instantaneously; not to mention the fact that the power of the Well of the Unicorn itself is never properly explained. It is mentioned that the heathens from across the sea respect and don’t attack the realms of rulers who have drunk from the Well, and that it is seen as a source of both religious and political authority. There are some allusions towards it having a mystical nature, without this being further specified. This is somewhat annoying, as the Well plays a rather important role in the politics of Pratt’s world, and The Well of the Unicorn is ultimately a political novel. However, it’s probably just a metaphor for something, and I’ve never been good with metaphors, so I’m aware that this point of annoyance might have risen from my own incompetence.

The Well of the Unicorn is a well-paced and interesting novel, both as a historical showcase in the development of the fantastic genre and as a heroic fantasy novel. However, the emphasis might be on the former, so if you’re not too interested in examining how the genre developed, this might not be the thing for you. It is also kinda clichéd. It borrows heavily from the Medieval Romances, as do most epic or heroic fantasy, but although it is far from cliché free, it isn’t as bad as one might have feared. There’s also a lot of action; the novel isn’t all political discussions. It’s not very good, though, merely decent. 6.5/10. (As a minimum, that is.)