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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Surprisingly enjoyable,
By
This review is from: Unicorn Mountain (Hardcover)
I found Unicorn Mountain to be an enjoyable book, but it wasn't quite what I thought it would be. Part fantasy, part more general fiction, it is a story of life and death and coming together. It's a story of conflicting cultures, of facing fears, and of finding out what really matters.
The cover proclaims Unicorn Mountain to be a fantasy novel, but I'm not sure that's quite it's primary genre. True, there are fantasy elements, namely the unicorns, but they actually play a very small role in the novel. The other elements that could be considered fantasy are actually spiritual elements from the Ute traditions, and I personally would not dream of demeaning their religion by calling it fantasy. My other problem with calling this a fantasy novel is that I'm not sure which sub-genre I would put it in. It takes place in (relatively) modern times, but it's not an urban fantasy. I don't think that rural fantasy is a sub-genre. Personally, I think that this would best be classified as simply fiction. Instead of filling the book with unicorns as I had expected, Bishop uses the mystical creatures to bring his main characters together and to highlight their stories. The unicorns gave them all something to fight for and a reason to stay around each other and learn to accept each other's differences. Unicorn Mountain was written and set in the mid 1980's, at the beginning of the widespread AIDS epidemic in the United States, and it dealt with that in a surprisingly dignified manner, given the time period in which it was written. I thought that Bishop did an admirable job conveying Bo and the people he interacted with, covering the entire spectrum of reactions. Though it was rather obvious to me that Bo was created for that reason, I still liked the character, because he was far more than just a gay guy with AIDS, which is part of what the book was about. I did find the bits about people being overly upset by condoms and condom advertising to be amusing, because that was before my time, but it fits in with the timeframe and adds a little extra to the book, even if it does date it a little. In this case, though, I think that dating is good, because it will help people place the attitudes about AIDS and gays in context as well. The other characters were equally engaging. I particularly liked Paisley/Alma, though I wish that Bishop had spent more time with her, and that I had been able to learn more about the Ute culture and rituals through her. That I think was the one thing that I felt was really lacking element-wise from the book. I didn't feel that Sam and Paisley were developed as well as they could have been, because a lot of the Ute culture was glossed over so that I didn't really learn anything. Unicorn Mountain surprised me. I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought that I would, particularly after I found out how different it was from what I had been anticipating. It was, however, surprisingly enjoyable, and I'm glad that I read it.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Magical Realism,
By A Customer
This review is from: UNICORN MOUNTAIN (Mass Market Paperback)
I don't usually just unconditionally rave about a book, but this one deserves 5 stars and heaps of praise. The human relationships are drawn so well, the strains of Native American culture still surviving in modern society are sensitively and convincingly depicted, and we get a well-rounded portrait of an AIDS victim drawn when the disease was still somewhat new . . . all these things are wonderful, and that's not even counting the main character and the magical unicorns. Also, the device of the TV broadcasting channels from an alternate dimension -- sounds like a silly convention, but it works, as does just about everything in this marvelous, affirming book. I must find more by this author!
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Transforming,
By A Customer
This review is from: UNICORN MOUNTAIN (Mass Market Paperback)
I read this book somewhere around the time I was 10-12. Although I think that it might be better recieved among older readers, I understood it then and it was a fantastic book. It is almost ten years later and the story still haunts me(I can't get my hands on the book now, the library has lost their copy). A powerful story that finds it's strength with themes of AIDS/homosexuality& unicorns, the book weaves them together flawlessly and the experince is unforgetable. That this book has gone out of print is an unjustice.
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