Rampant by Diana Peterfreund
My rating: 3/5 cats
why only three stars cats??
i really don’t know. this book should have been an out-of the-park home run. killer unicorns and the teenage virgins who hunt them. i mean – criminy.
because i love unicorns – i am a girl and it is in our contract. and i love the inverting of the traditional, which is not a girl-thing, but a me-thing. and the author earned my respect when she called joel a hipster, but not in an author-goes-rabid-over-a-goodreads-review (you know who you are), but in a cheeky, funny way that made me want to throw popcorn at her.
so i was totally predisposed to loving this book.
but i only liked it.
and i keep trying to pinpoint the reasons why it didn’t blow my dress up.
premise = fantastic
characters = human, likable, intriguing, realistic responses to unusual situations, sufficient badassery with weapons
storyline = several things i didn’t see coming, one of which was a dastardly rubbing-hands-together evil mastermindy plot.
pacing = medium. enough space for character development, but plenty of action scenes with unicorn attacks and some sexy times (for virgins, these girls do get around)
so what’s my flipping problem?? i don’t know. and it is infuriating me trying to think about what it was lacking to throw this into the five- or even four-star cat realm. maybe the secondary characters were not developed enough?? because there are a lot of these little unicorn-hunters, but only about three of them get any significant backstory. the rest are kind of glossed. and it’s true – i love a big split-narrative epic tale. but that is such a minor quibble, isn’t it? am i just getting cranky in my old age?
while i keep thinking – please enjoy this tableau i just made:
okay, if i am spending my sunday morning making and photographing unicorn-crime scenes instead of doing my homework, i am being a very bad student…
i am definitely going to read the second part of this, and as many more as she writes. we will see if this tepid reaction is just temporary insanity, or a sign that i have aged out of unicorn fantasy novels.
