Friday, February 18, 2011

Rampant, by Diana Peterfreund

Here is a list of why I loved this book:
1. It's about killer unicorns. how often do you get to say "hey, i'm reading a book about killer unicorns!". Not often.
2. Diana Peterfreund wrote a killer unicorn in Zombies vs. Unicorns which was unlike any other. In a good way.
3. Killer unicorns. Need I say anymore?

Numbers 4-10 are all the same. Killer unicorns. Sounds corny, but let me tell you--it isn't. The main character, Astrid (love that name-Diana Peterfreund has awesome taste in names), is a descendent of Alexander the Great and is a virgin and so she is a unicorn hunter. She is dragged away from her somewhat normal life and totally crazy mother to learn to be a unicorn hunter. Somehow, she managed to not be annoying and I actually liked her. And there were killer unicorns.

It's kind of hard to say anymore except this: READ IT!! Did you not see what I just said about killer unicorns!?!

5 stars. How could I not, there were killer unicorns.

Yes, I have a thing for killer unicorns.



Monday, February 7, 2011

Zombies vs. Unicorns, Short Stories edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbeliester

The title really says it all. This book is a collection of short stories about either zombies or unicorns, and prefacing each story is an introduction from Holly Black, in charge of Team Unicorn, and Justine Larbeliester, leader of Team Zombie.

What drew me to the book, (besides its title), were the number of amazing authors who contributed. Having read and enjoyed books by more than half of them, I felt obligated to read and enjoy this as well. And I did.

My personal favorites were Princess Prettypants, by Meg Cabot, (although to be fair, this wasn't so much fantasy, more chic lit-ish), and the story by Diana Peterfreund, who I had never heard of until I read this book. Princess Prettypants was classic Meg Cabot-I would have been able to recognize it as hers withough knowing. Diana Peterfreund's came with an entirely new approach to the whole unicorn thing.

As a lover of rainbows and princesses, I was not very excited for any of the zombie stories. All in all, any story with a zombie-live person relationship got a 10 on the ick factor, no matter how good it was. Many of the stories got a little too gory, and even though my stomach could handle it, it didn't really want to.
However, in my opinion, the real issue is that two nonexistent totally different creatures cannot be compared to each other. One is dead people coming back to life to eat us and the other is a horse with a horn on its head. In order to argue that one is better than the other, they need to have some inherent similarities. Since they don't, every argument is null and void and I will shut up now.

5 stars. Look up the authors and you'll see why.