Warped: By Maurissa Guibord

WARPED

SUMMARY

Tessa doesn't believe in magic. Or Fate. But there's something weird about the dusty unicorn tapestry she discovers in a box of old books. She finds the creature woven within it compelling and frightening. After the tapestry comes into her possession, Tessa experiences dreams of the past and scenes from a brutal hunt that she herself participated in. When she accidentally pulls a thread from the tapestry, Tessa releases a terrible centuries old secret. She also meets William de Chaucy, an irresistible 16th-century nobleman. His fate is as inextricably tied to the tapestry as Tessa's own. Together, they must correct the wrongs of the past. But then the Fates step in, making a tangled mess of Tessa's life. Now everyone she loves will be destroyed unless Tessa does their bidding and defeats a cruel and crafty ancient enemy.

REVIEW

The bestselling YA Fantasy books as of late have dealt with vampires, werewolves, angels, and even zombies, but what all of these books seemed to skip over were unicorns.

Yes, that’s right unicorns.

Unicorns often have gotten a bad reputation as being the mascot mythical creature of six year old girls who like the color pink and play hopscotch. What people don’t realize is that unicorns can be down right deadly. In fact this last year Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier even made an anthology, Zombies vs. Unicorns just to better portray this often overlooked brutal side of unicorns.

In Warped Maurissa Guibord does a fantastic job creating a unique fantasy revolving around the three fates and their affinity to string and weaving. Guibord also introduces the mythical unicorn into this story after it’s trapped in a tapestry forever feeding off it’s strength and longevity. All of these things, including the unique take on the fates makes this an interesting and creative plot.

Unfortunately, this is where the enjoyment of the book ends. I found the characters, while they had some good dialog at times, were somewhat annoying and incomplete in their development. The villain, Grey Lily wasn’t present in the book long enough for the reader to truly grasp the necessary villainy for the book. The heroine Tessa seems to suddenly get magic powers that appear at random times without explaining how or what they are. And the characters themselves never seem to grow or develop.

Not only that but, personally I did not like the “we’re in love, our love has spanned centuries storyline” that Warped employs. Not only that but it felt like the author was almost fighting against this storyline at certain points in the story and suddenly fixes everything without detailing why it was fixed.

All in all while I liked the different subject matter of the book I felt the plot was predictable, the characters weak, and the magic never fully explained. Because of this I wasn’t the biggest fan of this book. It wasn’t bad, but it certainly wasn’t good.

RATING

6 out of 10

INFO

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Published: January 11, 2011

Price: $16.99