A long time ago, when I first read this (I was 9 or so) a lot went over my head. Mostly the sex stuff (there's quite a bit, all things considered, about sex in here), but also I remember how fiercely I sobbed because Thing lost all her friends.

Not to death, this book had surprisingly little death in it (I say surprisingly because most of my fantasy books of that time involved heroic sacrificial death as a means to winning), though it wasn't completely absent. No, she lost them to life. And I sobbed because it didn't seem fair to me--the me who had really no close friends at that time and had the vaguest of memories of what it was like to have a friend who I shared everything with--that Thing had to lose her friends.

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Good lord, I finally found this book! I read this so many years ago--my first pet cat I had when I first lived on my own, I named Moglet because of this book. I can't believe I forgot it--but as I saw this on my recommended pages here on Good Reads and saw the image of the girl in the mask--I thought it seemed familiar some how. Clicking on the link and reading the description, all of my memories of this book flooded back--especially the bitter sweet of its ending. This is an amazing book; while memory dimmed it occasionally, it's now 2014 and I can recall the story (after being reminded) and all the emotions it called forth when reading it. I highly, highly recommend this book--and I wish it will someday be counted as a "classic!" ( )

woman, fish, cat, toad, unicorn, crow and knight on quest to dragon

I am glad I persevered with The Unlikely Ones - the opening chapters don't give an accurate impression of what this book is like. They're like an extended prologue - and then you meet Thing, the first-person narrator of the rest of the story. However, it takes a few more chapters work out who Thing is and just where is this story going anyway...

Thing is the prisoner of a very nasty witch. Thing has a hunchback, hides her face behind a mask and suffers stomach cramps if she strays too far from her captor, and beyond that she doesn't quite know who she is. She cannot remember her name, her past, or even how long she's been enslaved. She struggles to recall human speech, finding it easier to communicate with her fellow prisoners: a crow, a toad, a kitten and a fish.
Thing and her friends manage to escape the witch's house, and set out to properly free themselves from the witch's spells. They are joined on this quest by a unicorn and a knight, both of whom have fallen afoul of the witch.

The Unlikely Ones is written like a fairytale. A fairytale for adults, even though Thing begins with a somewhat child-like naivety. (It's a bit of an unexpected juxtaposition but there you go.) There are some odd moments of humour and an element of tropes being subverted, and an understandable vagueness about the worldbuilding. Stylistically, it reminds me a little of Patricia A. McKillip or Robin McKinley - and it reminds me more of Mary Stewart's fantasy. Which makes sense - they were writing in a similar era.

It's a coming-of-age story for Thing. And it's also about what happens after a quest is over, and dealing with your companions of the road going in different directions.

It's a strange story, but once I got past that oddness, I read it all in one go. I might read more in this series (I gather it's a loosely connected series), if I can find them.

One of my favourite parts about The Unlikely Ones was the physical book itself, simply because it was a hardback edition purchased in 1987 - not very old, all things considered, but I am convinced my local library has sold off or thrown away most of the books they had on their shelves ten years ago, so it was fun to borrow a book that had a sense of history about it. ( )

I should have known it was bad; both Marion Zimmer Bradley and Anne McCaffrey are quoted as liking it. Various creatures captured and mistreated by a witch escape and seek their fortunes together. And of course the main character is secretly a beautiful young maiden convinced of her ugliness, and of course she falls in love with someone she thinks far above her station, and of course the two slowly grow to understand each other, and I assume that at the end, she turns out to be beautiful. I don't know, I never bothered to finish it.
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