The Philippine Online Chronicles

Unicorns: everyone knows about them. This mythical creature is often described as a horse with a single horn protruding from its forehead, often pure white in color. A unicorn is often portrayed as a beautiful, majestic creature that is gentle, yet fierce, and not born out of human fears (Marianna Mayer, The Unicorn and the Lake, quoted from Wikipedia). Their horns are known to neutralize poison, and in Harry Potter, anyone who drinks unicorn blood will gain eternal – albeit cursed – life. Even contemporary, non-speculative, literature uses unicorns as a symbol of goodness: in Francine Pascal’s Sweet Valley Twins series, the most popular girls in middle school were all a part of The Unicorn Club.

Unicorns: sweet, cuddly, and totally harmless mythological creatures, right?

Not in Astrid Llewelyn’s world. Diana Peterfreund tells us to forget everything we know about unicorns in the first book of her Killer Unicorns series, Rampant. Sixteen-year-old Astrid grew up believing that unicorns were venomous, man-eating beasts that only virgin descendants of Alexander the Great could hunt and kill, all thanks to her eccentric mother. Astrid tolerates all the unicorn talk just to entertain her mom’s whims, until her boyfriend is attacked by a rogue unicorn and is saved by her mom with a leftover unicorn antidote called The Remedy. Astrid’s life turns upside-down as Lilith, her mother, immediately sends her to Rome, to claim her birthright as a unicorn hunter. Resistance is futile for Astrid, and she arrives at the re-opened Cloisters of Ctesias with almost zero hunting knowledge and a desire to come back home. But as the training goes on, Astrid finds out that she not only has to learn how to kill a unicorn, but also to figure out the agenda of the other hunters and find out why the cloisters’ financial sponsor, Gordian, is acting suspicious, all while dealing with her growing attraction to an art student… and this last might be the most dangerous issue of all.

Because, you know, to hunt a unicorn, one must be a virgin.

I’m going to be flat-out honest: I knew Rampant would be a great read the moment I read the words “Killer Unicorns.” We’ve had vampires, werewolves, angels, fairies and zombies, but killer unicorns? Man-eating, venomous unicorns? This is a first, and I can’t believe I almost passed this one up.

But Rampant is not your normal YA urban fantasy with a girl protagonist. Aside from the unique concept, what separates Rampant from other novels in the genre is the level of detail that Diana Peterfreund put in the story. I echo the praises that other reviewers have given Petrfreund for the building of Astrid’s world --  the history and science behind the unicorn myth, the Cloisters, the hunters and down to the inclusion of Alexander the Great-- were so well-researched and integrated seamlessly into the story that the world seemed real. Of course, this much world-building can take its toll on the reader, and I found myself flipping back a few pages a few times to make sense of what I read, and to connect what happened in the later chapters with something that happened in the first few. Normally, books with so much exposition and description bore me, but for Rampant, I found myself very forgiving. For a story like this to work, the stage had to be set, and important details can’t be missed. There wasn’t a bit of unnecessary detail in the story –everything just clicked.

Rampant isn’t just about unicorn hunting, and despite the medieval feel of the setting, it was also surprisingly modern. Case in point: the maintenance of the cloisters doesn’t rely on magic, but on a big pharmaceutical company, Gordian. It would have been easier to let magic do the job but adding the sponsor reminds the readers that the story occurs in more modern times, and its presence adds depth to the plot. Furthermore, the story also deals with other equally important and contemporary issues, such as animal rights, animal testing (unicorns are still animals to them, as far as the hunters were concerned), and, probably the most controversial, virginity.

Spoiler warning begins here.

In a time where everyone seems to be “doing it,” it’s hard to find a reason to stay a virgin. In Rampant, Peterfreund was brave enough to tackle this issue without sounding completely moralistic. I really liked the scene where the hunters gathered around to discuss the reasons why they were still virgins. They all had their own reasons, most of them nothing to do with morality or religion, and these were validated by their eligibility as hunters. The author also showed the consequence of a hunter losing her virginity, whether by choice or by force. It wasn’t my favorite part (it was very harsh), but I was glad that the author included that, to give the readers a fuller understanding of what it means to be and stay a hunter. It’s not that there weren’t any romantic scenes in the novel -- after all, one of Astrid’s struggles is her attraction to Giovanni, the art student -- but they aren’t just for the sake of putting romance in the story. To quote the book, Astrid sees her relationship with Giovanni as a battle: losing her virginity is the ticket out of a life as a hunter, but does she really want that? In a way, Rampant teaches the benefits of abstinence, and some reviewers even recommend this book to abstinence programs. The unicorn hunting may not be real, but Peterfreund shows female readers that it can be an honorable choice to be a virgin.

Unicorns aside, Rampant is ultimately a coming-of-age story for Astrid. In the 416 pages of the book, Astrid grows from a girl who knows nothing of her destiny to someone who leads a group of girls in fulfilling theirs. The Book Smugglers said it well: it would have been easy for Astrid to be an aggressive, loud, sword-wielding character from the start (like Alanna, perhaps), but her quiet-ness and hesitation make way for a more developed character in the end, one that is deserving of her destiny as a hunter. I don’t think anyone, especially someone in the middle of adolescence, would be able to embrace such a destiny without any struggle. Astrid’s struggles make her more human and more relatable. True to her name, Astrid is a strong and beautiful character, one that readers will learn to love as the story goes on.

I wish I could say the same about the other characters, though. While a few of the supporting characters shine because of their back stories and diverse passions, many other characters kind of fade into the background, leaving me kind of apathetic to them, just like this reviewer. The hunters come from different parts of the world, and it would have been nice if these cultures and their histories were explored, too. I can’t even remember most of the other hunters’ names now. As for the characters that did make an impact, some only did so because they came off as annoying and a bit too crazy for my taste: Philippa, Astrid’s cousin; Cory with her sad story; and Lilith, who, for a mother, was less mother than fanatic (and other readers agree, too). Then again, without these characters, there wouldn’t be much contrast.

Regardless of the issues with the side characters, Rampant is still one of the most original stories I’ve read this year. There is great promise in this series, and I'm glad that there is more to come--the sequel, Ascendant, is coming out in September this year. If you’re tired of vampires, werewolves and the like, I recommend you get a copy of Rampant before the killer unicorns come after you.

There’s no sign of Rampant yet in local bookstores, but it is available for USD11.99 from the Amazon Kindle Store.

[Image source: Indiebound.org. Copyright holder/s maintain appropriate rights.]