Another of my netgalley reads, this has actually been out previously as a series of novellas, but this is the first time it's been collated into an omnibus. And it's the first time I've read it, so it's fair game.
Astrea is the unloved child of a hidden village of gingers, who are slowly starving to death due to a rather unfortunate bit of famine that's struck their fog-filled forest home. So she's very impressed with herself one day when she discovers a unicorn, with plenty of meat on its bones, and brings it back to the village for food. It might offset her lowly status, brought about by her annoyingly blonde hair.
Now if only the food would stop talking to her. The unicorn, in a particularly sassy way, keeps putting the idea of a curse into her head that'll strike anyone who happens to eat it (which includes the entire village). So, with a little prompting from her family, Astrea runs off into the night with the unicorn and not much else.
And goes through a journey of personal discovery, helped along the way by Windmane (the unicorn) and Gander, a sexy bad boy elf with a pixie dust problem. She's got to get to Illumia, in order to claim her birthright and save the world. (There's a lot more in there, but spoilers.)
Given that setup, you might be expecting a lot of fluffy romance, but actually it's mostly snark and regretting bad decisions. The unicorn and elf hate each other with the passion of a burning sun, and the punchy dialogue keeps it clipping along at a fun pace.
Certain element of repetition in the plot, which I think might be the end result of combining four distinct arcs, but thankfully it's fun enough that you won't necessarily notice. There's a decent adventure plot, with some rollicking fights and a nice amount of world-building, with hints of a future political struggle ahead.
Ends ludicrously abruptly though, especially as an additional element gets added in just as it stops. Still, be interesting to see where it goes next.
Tagged: Book Fantasy Nature strikes back Novel Print Netgalley