Return
Return: An Innkeeper's World Story.
In Return, master fantasist Peter S. Beagle revisits the world of his extraordinary 1991 novel, The Innkeeper’s Song. The result is an utterly compelling novella filled with its author’s inimitable — and characteristic — magic.
The story begins when Soukyan, narrator and hero, fends off an attack by a trio of Hunters, trained assassins who have tracked him relentlessly for many years. But something about this latest attack is different, and that difference sends Soukyan on an unexpected journey to the source of his most painful memories. In the course of that journey, he encounters some of the central figures from his troubled past and comes face-to-face with a mystery that is both astonishing and lethal.
Return offers a generous helping of the pure narrative pleasure that Peter Beagle’s readers have come to expect. Swift, effortlessly witty, and written, always, with intelligence, grace, and more than a touch of wizardry, it is the work of a consummate storyteller with a unique voice and a wholly original vision of the world.
Peter S. Beagle
Peter Soyer Beagle (born 1939) is an American fantasist and author of novels, nonfiction, and screenplays. He is also a talented guitarist and folk singer. He wrote his first novel, urban fantasy A Fine and Private Place (1960), when he was only 19 years old. Travel book I See By My Outfit (1965) is a nonfiction classic. Today he is best known as the author of The Last Unicorn (1968), a modern fantasy classic.
Beagle's work as a screenwriter interrupted his early career direction as a fiction author, but in the 1990s he returned to prose fiction. Beagle's own favourite is a literary fantasy novel The Innkeeper's Song (1993). Four years later Beagle returned to the land that was the novels setting for a collection of short stories The Magician of Karakosk and Other Stories (1997, known as Giant Bones).
In 2005 Beagle finally published a coda to The Last Unicorn, a novelette entitled ”Two Hearts,” and began work on a full-novel sequel. In 2006, ”Two Hearts” won the Hugo Award for Best Novelette and in 2007 it won the Nebula Award in the same category. The story was also nominated as a short fiction finalist for the World Fantasy Award. In 2006, Beagle won the Inkpot Award for Outstanding Achievement in Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Peter S. Beagle lives today in Oakland, California.