Rampant

By Diana Peterfreund.

This is a book about killer unicorns. And it's awesome. Even beyond the "snicker, dude, I'm reading a book about killer unicorns" factor, this book has depth, power, plenty of interesting questions to think about, conspiracies, and more. AWESOME.

So: 16-year-old Astrid Llewellyn has been raised by her crazy mom Lilith. Lilith is insane on the subject of unicorns, and insists that they are killer beasts. Astrid naturally thinks this is a load of crap until one attacks her boyfriend and Lilith cures it with a mystical remedy. After that, Astrid's social life is mud, and her mother hops on the Internet and finds a cloister in Rome that's being opened up to train unicorn hunters. Because only virgin female descendants of Alexander the Great have enough immunity (plus the strength and speed and talent) to hunt vampires. And Lilith can't wait to ship Astrid off.

Astrid, who'd rather be a doctor than a killer, is decidedly unthrilled with this. Her cousin Phil(lippa), on the other hand, volunteers to go even though she's not totally on board with the killing either. When they get there, they find a young, inexperienced fellow named Neil that's ostensibly running the place, but his niece Cory is the one who's been doing the research. Cory comes off as batshitcrazy at first, but as it turns out, she's got plenty of reasons for her behavior. And then there's Bonegrinder, the baby unicorn (house zhi) they keep around to test virginity and descendant-ness of possible hunters. Zhis are deferential and affectionate to hunters and nobody else, which is all kinds of adorable and awful and weird and well, you're gonna love Bonegrinder in a twisted way. The new Order of the Lioness is also working with a company called Gordian Pharmeceuticals that wants to make the Remedy once more. Astrid would love to get in on that scientific work, but noooooo, you're supposed to be a hunter and that's it.

So, recruits come in from all over the globe, and everyone tries to figure out how the hell to train to kill unicorns, and what all the creepy unicorn stuff is down in the basement, and debate about why the heck virginity is a requirement anyway and does that mean they can't even date a little? This comes up for the Llewellyn girls because Phil is of the opinion that they shouldn't have to skip all male companionship, and she and Astrid double date with two boys, Seth and Giovanni. Astrid and Giovanni become quite fond of each other, and Astrid considers "doing the deed" with him so she can get out of the crazy hunter gig.

But Things Happen. Major, shocking, mindblowing things. Deeper questions about the unicorn world are pondered, a conspiracy appears to be going on, one character has a drastic change of life circumstance (note: this may trigger issues in some people, but I think it's relevant to cover in this book and I think it's handled about as well as it could be), and Astrid meets a shocking ally and needs to decide how she's going to handle things.  I particularly loved how Astrid's wannabe-scientist-ness starts to come in handy as she finally finds a way to put it to good use on behalf of the hunters. Neat-o.

Dear god, this is good. So much more depth than you would expect from the subject. I am really intrigued to find out what happens next.

Five stars.

Comments

[RDW]

Not to be one of "those guys", but I know that as soon as I read about unicorns, I put the book down as fast as possible. Particularly if they turned out to be killer unicorns.

[Samantha]

I'm reading it right now, I've just sttared, and I'm enjoying it. I love the writing. I'll do my next Say it Again Saturday about this one.I like the new cover, as Bookworm said, Astrid looks younger in this one and it relates more to the story, but the old one (the one I have) is really nice too.You have a present at my blog.