Book 12. Rampant

Title: Rampant
Author: Diana Peterfreund
Pages: 305
Date Started: Feb 5th, 2011
Date Finished: Feb 7th, 2011
Did you like it? After reading the first few pages, I knew that I loved Diana Peterfreund's writing. She was all kinds of humorous and witty. And it all showed through the way Astrid acted. Though, to be honest, Astrid's decisions did get on my nerves a few times. The story line was very different from a lot of things about unicorns. . .and it had me wondering "What if it's not the unicorns that are dangerous, what if it's the people?" For me, I didn't get into the story immediately. IT took me maybe 200 pages before I started caring what was happening to the characters, which was a little unusual for me. Overall, I would give this book a 4.5/6.

What's it about? 

Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns... 

Real unicorns are venomous, man-eating monsters with huge fangs and razor-sharp horns. Fortunately, they've been extinct for a hundred and fifty years. 

Or not. 

Astrid had always scoffed at her eccentric mother's stories about killer unicorns. But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend—thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to the prom—Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter at the ancient cloisters the hunters have used for centuries. 

However, at the cloisters all is not what it seems. Outside, the unicorns wait to attack. And within, Astrid faces other, unexpected threats: from the crumbling, bone-covered walls that vibrate with a terrible power to the hidden agendas of her fellow hunters to—perhaps most dangerously of all—her growing attraction to a handsome art student ... an attraction that could jeopardize everything. 

Astrid goes through a lot of the same things "normal" teenage girls go through. When is the right time to let her boyfriend go all the way? How does she balance out her mothers crazy with her daily life? Why is she the one that has to fight unicorns? Okay, maybe not everyone has to deal with that last one. Astrid doesn't believe in unicorns, she just thinks her mothers crazy ramblings about unicorns are just that, crazy ramblings. Until she sees her first unicorn and that unicorn goes and stabs him with it's horn- leaving him close to death. After this incident, Astrid's mother sends her to Rome to train to be a unicorn hunter. It's something that Astrid very much does not want, and because of this she has a really difficult time relating to the other hunters. She also has a hard time relating to the other hunters because her family line are considered the best hunters. . . but Astrid doesn't believe this. She kind of refuses her powers most of the way through the book. That is, until it comes down to the wire about saving people. Rampant also has the romance element, but it was more of a sex element than a romance thing. It was much more preferable to me this way. And even the romance parts that were in the novel, they were more about being close to the boy rather than being all encompassingly i love with him. (I've noticed that I'm doing less and less overall plot review and more just blabbering because I'm afraid someone is going to read this and it'll ruin the book for them....) She gets to Rome, she trains, her cousin Phil shows up, they meet boys, they continue training, Astrid tries everything to get out of killing the unicorns, Phil thinks it's inhumane. Kirin begin attacking the hunters as well as ravaging the countrysides. Phil gets raped, and can no longer be a hunter because Unicorns are drawn to virgins, and they kill/attack nonvirgins. The funder of the training facility disappears, and the head of the unicorn trainers goes after him, Astrid's mother comes over to run the facility, the unicorns pull an ambush on the hunters and Astrid gets gravely injured. She then meets the "head" of the unicorns and he explains what's going on and why the unicorns are attacking. Astrid then rallies and everything turns out alright. Yay for happy endings!