Now there are a million books about unicorns. So, picking one to read for National Unicorn Day was not easy. But the great thing about National Unicorn Day is there is one every year. For this year I settled on Rampant by Diana Peterfreund.
Astrid Llewelyn has always scoffed at her eccentric mother's stories about killer unicorns. But when one attacks her boyfriend - ruining any chance of him taking her to prom - Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries.
However, all is not what it seems at the cloisters. Outside unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other unexpected threats: from bone-covered walls that vibrate with terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to her growing attraction to a handsome art student ... and attraction that could jeopardize everything.
Killer unicorns are cool. And a band of unicorn hunters is cool. So, I expected to like this book more than I did. I like the concept. I did have to put aside the moral question of training teenage girls to go out and fight killer unicorns. And there is the point that based on the theory that the book itself proposes about how unicorn hunters came about the fact they have to be female virgins makes no sense. But there is a long history of virgins and unicorns going together so I just chalked that up to tradition. I did have some slight sympathy for Astrid because she is being forced into a life she doesn't want. And you can see the struggle she has because she feels obligated since she is one of the few who can do it but she was too resigned to accept her fate, as if she had no say in it. Some of the hunters don't really have characters. They are just sort of there. Astrid's cousin seems too off-hand about the whole affair, even wanting to save the 'endangered' unicorns that go around killing people with no provocation. She wants to do whatever she wants, without worrying about the rules, but she want to be in charge of the hunters, acting like nothing dangerous is happening and this is just some sort of club. Astrid's mother turns out to be a horrible person who is really quite mad but the hunters just do what she says without question. I had trouble finding characters here that I could connect with or feel for and some I couldn't even believe as people you would find in the real world. And because of that I was never really engaged in the story. I might read the sequel to see if it answers any of the questions that this one leaves but I am not rushing out to get it.
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