2.5/5, rounded up because there were a couple really good stories in here, and they don't deserve to get a ton of hate for the less-than-stellar ones surrounding them.

I hate to be the one to say it, but The Unicorn Anthology simply does not do justice to the mythological awesomeness of the unicorn. I'm not saying that all the stories in it were bad--there were actually a few that were truly awesome--but as a whole, the quality was uneven, which significantly dampened the book's enjoyability.

I don't want to go analyze this story by story here, so instead, here are some quick notes:

THE GOOD:
- "Survivor" by David Smed completely blew my mind. Unlike most of the collection, which had more or less positive endings, this piece takes unicorn lore to a traumatized Vietnam vet and turns a "blessing" into something out of a horror story.
- Garth Nix's "The Highest Justice" is an elegantly simple fusion of unicorns and zombies in a more or less medieval setting, and it feels like both a complete story and a precursor to something greater--wholly satisfying on its own, but also sitting as a nice setup for future work, should he choose to revisit this world.
- In "The Transfigured Hart," Jane Yolen brings a truly childlike delight to the topic of unicorns, with characters that are kids who actually feel like kids. It is magical and heartwarming and I really wish the collection had more stories with actual kids in them...
- Of course, Peter S. Beagle's contribution to the collection is a good deal of fun...but he deliberately focuses on beastly unicorns by another name, in a non-European country, resulting in a clever inversion of the typical unicorn tropes

THE BAD
*Note: I'm not going to name specific stories here, since some of these are spoilers
- So many stories are preoccupied with virginity. I get that it's an integral part of unicorn mythos, but in a contemporary collection, there is so much room to explore what that does or doesn't mean (since, after all, virginity is a social construct)...and this collection fell flat, looking mostly at classic definitions. In fact, one story suggests that lesbian sex doesn't count as losing one's virginity, which has some unpleasant implications, I think (though the characters themselves were very concerned, saying that it mattered a lot to them and it should to a unicorn as well).
- The writing was kind of...unimpressive in several of the stories. They read like something out of an early fiction workshop, with poor development of characters and/or plots that make exactly zero sense.

THE UGLY:
- A girl falls in love with a man who literally bought her as a child so he could use her virginity to catch unicorns. He's so much older, and he freaking OWNS HER. That is beyond messed up.
- "A Thousand Flowers." The story had such potential--a unicorn rapes a princess (inversion of tropes? Okay, I'll bite...), and an innocent man is framed for it--but the rest of the story just falls apart. It switches perspectives so many times, the ending makes no sense, and it is honestly a hot mess.
- A dildo made out of a unicorn horn. Yes, that is literally a crucial part of one of the stories, and I kind of (by which I mean very much) hate it. And then, one woman uses it as a strap-on to rape another woman. What the actual fuck??

Overall, an unimpressive collection, but with a few gems hidden in the rubble. If you're a fan of dark, gritty fantasy, you might enjoy this more than I did, and if nothing else, fantasy fans should definitely check out the few stories I mentioned under "The Good." But as a whole, I feel really let down; there are so many big themes to explore with unicorns (innocence, righteousness, beauty, hidden danger...), but The Unicorn Anthology just didn't deliver.

TRIGGER/CONTENT WARNINGS: rape, sexual assault, violence toward children and animals, Stockholm Syndrome

I was provided with an eARC of this book by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This has not impacted my review in any way.