Captured and enslaved by the free fishers on the Gentebbi Islands, he goes through a series of adventures in which he gradually rises from a homeless fugitive to a great war leader.

The great Empire across the sea, to which all parties pay at least a nominal fealty, seems to offer at least a symbolic solution; it guards the legendary Well of the Unicorn, which brings peace to those who drink from it.

At the end of the novel, with the assistance of the Star-Captains of Carrhoene, Alvarson has succeeded in overthrowing the Vulkings and freeing Dalarna, and has won the emperor's daughter as his bride to boot.

He felt the author "quite wonderful [in] creating a world of his own and competent enough [in] telling a story of heroic action" but "no hand at characterization," with his characters "only picturesque shadows."

She found "real pleasure and power" in "the enormous romantic adventure of the story," stating the author had "pinned down [his] strange country ... with brilliant exactness," with his "accurate archaisms ... giving a rare and racy flavor to his created world.

Comparing it to the fantasies of Cabell and Eddison, he called it "a heroic yarn, crowded with both magic and lusty action; but the thoughtful reader will discover that he is never far away from the problem that gnaws at his own vitals.

"[5] Wagenknecht called the novel a "brilliantly written book" and "a straightforward, coherent narrative of exciting adventure" with "[f]or dressing ... love in all its manifestations from lust to glory."

"[2] Even thirty years after it was published, Poul Anderson singled out The Well of the Unicorn as a fantasy novel that handled politics "superbly well," contrasting it with what he viewed as a rising tide of lazily-written, "thud-and-blunder" stories.