One of the hallmarks of Beagle's fiction is the strikingly beautiful imagery. "The bright field rang and shimmered under their [the young unicorns'] hooves," for instance, conveys action, a sense of place, and the music of Shei'rah. Note how Beagle combines the sound of "rang" with the visual image of "shimmered." His descriptions of Shei'rah frequently combine sound with picture, making the music of the place visual.

Characters come alive in the descriptions in The Unicorn Sonata. For example, the Karkadaans "had a strong, wild smell about them, raw as the lion cages at the zoo." The Karkadaans are the unicorns of the earth, and they smell earthy. The simile "raw as the lion cages at the zoo" indicates that they are wilder than other kinds of unicorns, that there is something untamable about them, that like lions they may find civilization constricting.

Beagle's extraordinary descriptive...