She’d imagine how it would be, wakeful in bed, and sometimes in quiet moments, walking through Rennes or in long, tedious councils. How warm it was, to be so near someone else, how it burned to touch. His knowing eyes and knowing hands, the calluses of rein and swordhilt. How he’d taken the sacrifice upon himself, a gift she had never wanted because she’d never been able to imagine it.
page 228-229
Table of Contents
Why The Unicorn Hunters?
I first heard about The Unicorn Hunters at the end of June 2026 when the booktuber Elliot Brooks did a positive video review of the book. I had previously read Katherine Arden’s work before, specifically the first book in her Winternight trilogy back in 2022. So I was intrigued by this new historical fantasy of hers.
The 15th century France backdrop for this historical fantasy was what drew me in. This book is reasonably popular so even though I placed a library hold for it back in the end of June it took until the beginning of October 2026 for me to get my hands on the book.
I read a hardcover edition (ISBN/UID – 9780593128282) published by Del Rey in June 2026. The copy I read was borrowed from the Toronto Public Library. Author blurbs on this edition of the book are from Sarah Beth Durst and Naomi Novik.
Let’s get into it.
The Book
The Unicorn Hunters is a historical fantasy novel that tells the story of Anne of Brittany, the duchess of Brittany as she fights to keep her duchy from being annexed by the French crown. She secretly gets married to Maximilian of Austria via proxy in an effort to fend off the French and secure Brittany for herself and her heirs. Also involved are unicorns, the magical & mythical Brocéliande forest, a time-traveling mad sorcerer and a chivalrous prince.
Breton Culture & Mythology
Now the amount of Wikipedia links in the previous paragraph may have clued you into the fact that a lot of the characters in the book were in xfact real historical figures. Anne of Brittany was a real person and so was Maximilian and so was Charles VIII of France who sought to marry Anne in an effort to annex Brittany. The title of the book itself refers to The Unicorn Tapestries, a set of tapestries depicting a unicorn hunt that has unproven speculation surrounding it – that it relates to Anne’s marriage to King Louis.
The Unicorn Hunters leans heavily on Breton mythology – the magical elements of this book, namely the korrigan which are Breton fae, the mythical Brocéliande forest, and the mythical city of Ys off the coast of Brittany which the book stylizes in the Breton fashion as Kêr-Is. In this aspect, this book reminded me of a book I read in late 2024 called The Wild Huntress which relied heavily on Welsh mythology to build its world, though that was more pure fantasy compared to the historical fantasy here.
It is also notable that the Breton language which is in the Celtic language group is distantly related to Welsh. Breton is also the only Celtic language still in use on the European mainland. The Unicorn Hunters makes numerous references to the Breton languages, many of its main characters, include Anne of Brittany speak the language. Anne who is bilingual in Breton and French speaks Breton with her close compatriots and the ordinary citizens of Brittany who mostly speak Breton and not French.
Yes, Yes, I’m Getting to The Book
Outside of the interesting Breton cultural and mythological references, I found The Unicorn Hunters to be otherwise a below average reading experience. This is partially due to how the book is paced. The first half of this book’s 354 page length is spent doing character, world, and plot setup. As such, the first half of the book felt like a slog and I considered at DNFing the book multiple times during this period.
The other aspect of this book that mildly annoyed me is how characters spoke. Most of the main characters who happen to be French/Breton nobility spoke in what I imagine 15th/16th century French nobility spoke like. While I appreciate the dedication to historical accuracy and worldbuilding, this style of speaking is annoying to read. If your characters start using words like “perfidy” and “contretemps” I am going to roll my eyes a little bit even if it is era appropriate.
That said, I did like the main character of this book a fair bit – Anne of Brittany who really puts the noble in nobility. She is noble to a fault and very much dedicated to the cause of protecting Brittany and its people from French rule at great cost to herself, She sees herself as secondary to that great cause. Katherine Arden’s afterword at the end of the book mentions that she wanted to answer the what if of Anne of Brittany having more agency and power than the actual Anne did and I think the book did a good job of answering that question.
As for the magical elements of The Unicorn Hunters – they are left quite vague. The magic system of the Lost Lands, the korrigan and the sorcerer character are never definitively explained. That is about what I expected from this book so I was fine with it. The magic is more of a storytelling and worldbuilding tool here and it does a good enough job at that. If you are someone who needs a well defined magic system in your fantasy, this isn’t the book for you.
Concluding Thoughts
The Unicorn Hunters was…fine. The Breton historical and mythological elements really carried this book. If not for those elements, the pacing issues in the first half of the book and the way the characters talk would have led to a DNF fairly early on. I stuck around because I have a fondness for historical fantasy that incorporates histories and mythologies not often seen in Western fantasy and also because I really liked Anne of Brittany’s character and wanted to see where the story would take her.
This book also served as a reasonably good palate cleanser after the psychological horror of Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng so kudos to it for that. I am open to reading more of Katherine Arden’s work in the future, especially if she is going to be writing historical fantasies like this one.
That’s all from me. See y’all in the next one.
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