Return
by Peter S. Beagle
Reviewed by Christopher DeFilippis

In his new novella Return, author Peter S. Beagle returns to the extraordinary Fantasy realm he first introduced in his 1993 novel The Innkeeper’s Song, and proves once again that his prose style is unmatched for wit and grace.

But despite its familiar setting and distinguishing style, Return is a somewhat atypical offering from Beagle—perhaps most remarkable for the fact that the story in and of itself will probably have very little bearing on whether or not you choose to buy the book.

Picking up one of the major plot threads left dangling at the end of The Innkeeper’s Song, Return chronicles the attempt by Innkeeper’s protagonist Soukyan to confront the assassins dogging him, journeying back to the mysterious monastery from which he fled thirty years earlier and risking certain death to come to terms with his past.

It’s a past that readers of Innkeeper’s were left mainly to guess at, and this story provides some welcome information for fans, while shedding light on yet another corner of Beagle’s fantastic literary landscape...

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