Rampant

Rampant by Diana Peterfreund, 2009 Harper Teen

     Astrid Llewelyn is a pretty normal sixteen-year-old, for a girl whose single mother lost her promising career as a scholastic researcher to become a single mother obsessed with man-eating killer unicorns. Astrid has grown up thinking her mother was crazy, hearing the terrifying stories about the creatures and their powers, and hearing the lament that unicorns are extinct. Until Astrid meets one who gores her boyfriend, nearly killing him.
     When the small goat-like creature nearly kills Brandt, Astrid's world is turned upside down: not only is her crazy mother not so crazy, but she insists that Astrid travel to Rome to learn to hunt unicorns. With her life falling apart, Astrid agrees to her mother's plans and travels to Rome. While there she meets several other young women who fulfill the strict requirements to become a Unicorn Hunter: female, virgin descendants of Alexander the Great.
     Each of the young women are from one of the great Hunter families and Cory, Cornelia Bartoli of the Leandrus line, insists that each of the families possessed a talent that is inherent in the young women's DNA and therefore they are skilled just as their ancestors were. She is gung-ho about the mission the Cloister has reclaimed and ushers the new recruits through an orientation immersing them in the new unicorn-inhabited world they must acknowledge and thrive in.
     In contrast, Astrid and her cousin Philippa are determined to have some fun on their trip to Rome and sneak out of the convent several times to meet their new friends Seth and Giovanni. In between learning to be hunters and trying to discover as much about unicorns as possible they actually manae to form some sort of relationship with the two young men. Neil, the Hunters' guardian, trainer, and big-brother, is furious when he discovers Phil's field trips--afraid of losing any Hunters. But isolation from the world they grew up in makes it difficult for the girls to cohabit after several weeks. On their first sanctioned outing the young women run into a re'em, large as an ox, and discover their abilities are in no way a match for such a massive unicorn. Somehow they succeed but it signals a shift in the attitude of the Hunters.
     Soon afterward Neil and the girls discover their corporate sponsor, Gordian, has broken contact and vanished. Before the Huners know what to do about it, they lose one of their own to an over-amorous boyfriend. The rage she feels when Seth forces Phil pushes Astrid to roam the city, but before she can exact her revenge Astrid passes out on a park bench.
     That night she dreams of a conversation with Bucephalus, a conversation which is continued when Astrid nearly dies during a battle with the kirin. Bucephalus explains that the extinction of Unicorns was an agreement allowing both Unicorns and Hunters to live peacefully for hundreds of years. Their re-emergence was a breach of the contract and Bucephalus required the aid of the Hunters to bring the rebel kirin back under control. He also gives Astrid clues on how to speed up the emergence of the Hunters' abilities to make them a match for the upcoming battles. Bucephalus gives Astrid the opportunity to let the other Hunters believe she has died.
    She calls Giovanni to help her back to the Convent and arrives in just enough time to stop the Hunters from breaking apart and giving up their fight. She encourages them toward the inevitable clash between the rebel kirin and the Hunters where they discover their contact at Gordian has one final betrayal in store.
     Rampant blends unicorns into our world as if they always existed. It deals with ideas of destiny and duty as results of self-discovery and how being robbed of those choices can either destroy or strengthen the victim. Concepts of sexuality and rape are addressed in terms that can both simplify and complicate the ideas for young readers. However, it is handled in a manner many young women encounter.
     The story is a flair of "what would happen if unicorns really existed in our world?" and is done very well. Rampant is aimed at middle and high school readers, though anyone who enjoys fantasy can enjoy it.