Forget everything you ever knew about unicorns. The fluffy, sparkly, friendly ?horses? so popular the world over don't exist. Real unicorns are killers.
Beasts the size of elephants, with cloven hooves that shake the earth, hides impervious to bullets, and horns that contain a deadly poison, unicorns can outrun a sports car and smell a human from a mile away.
And they can only be killed by virgin warriors descended from Alexander the Great.
Sixteen-year-old Astrid Llewelyn has grown up with her mom Lilith's tall tales about unicorns and their exalted family heritage, but figures her mom's crazy. But the scary stories her mom told her about the monsters in her formative years left her with a firm phobia about unicorns, even the cutesy kind popular with young girls.
But when one of the monsters attacks her boyfriend in the woods?thereby ruining any chance of him taking her to prom?Astrid finds herself headed to Rome to train as a unicorn hunter.
?As swift and sure-footed as a killer unicorn, Rampant weaves a vibrant new mythology from venerable threads.??Scott Westerfeld, bestselling author of the Uglies series
But can a girl with a lifelong unicorn phobia survive long enough to become a killer?
- A Mythology Retelling: This isn't a fairytale. These unicorns are poisonous, elephant-sized killers descended from the warhorses of Alexander the Great.
- Reluctant Heroine: Astrid has a crippling phobia of unicorns. Now, after one attacks her boyfriend and ruins her prom, she's being forced to hunt them.
- Urban Fantasy Action: From the dark woods of her hometown to the ancient streets of Rome, Astrid must join a secret order and train to embrace her deadly family legacy.
- A Virgin Heroine with a Destiny: Only virgin descendants of a legendary warrior can kill the beasts. For Astrid, saving the world might mean giving up a normal life forever.
Autorentext
Diana Peterfreund is the author of many books for adults and children, including the critically acclaimed For Darkness Shows the Stars and Across a Star-Swept Sea. She lives with her family outside Washington, DC, in a house full of bookshelves, and is always on the lookout for lost cities or stray rocket ships.