Mini-review: ‘Rampant’ by Emmie Mears

Gwen Maule is Edinburgh’s hero. She’s got a new job for a boss she actually likes, and by night as Shrike she singlehandedly keeps her city’s crime rate at an all time low. But now Rosamund Granger has escaped custody and is killing people across Scotland. Desperately trying to get ahead of the murders, Gwen discovers that Britannia are not as gone as she hoped — and their newest plan will soak the earth in blood.

This is a mini-review, since I only reviewed The Masked Songbird, the first book in this series, less than a week ago. If you’re looking for a new urban fantasy/superhero series, I can’t recommend this one highly enough — but you should definitely start there.

Here are additional things you can look forward to in Rampant, book two in the series:

• It’s less of an origin story and gets more into the day-to-day of superhero life. Gwen’s superpowers continue to develop in delightful ways.
• We get to see how Gwen, Taog and Magda cope with PTSD in a way that comes across as realistic without crippling any of them to the point where they hide in cupboards (hi, Katniss).
• We don’t get to see any more of Angus, which I’m sure is a relief for everyone.
• We learn much more about Britannia, the organisation of villains (aka crazy cult) that were the baddies in the first book. They are still the baddies in this one.
• And, hoo boy, are they bad. The death toll is pretty high, you guys. And poor Gwen feels every death, which means we do too.

The only thing holding me back from giving this one five stars is that I found the end a little bit … anticlimactic? A lot of stuff happens, but Gwen is a little bit sidelined in the action, which was unsatisfying because I wanted her to lay out more smackdown than she got to. (It’s hard to be more specific than that without spoilers.)

Still, I really liked this book; I don’t know if Mears is planning on writing more books in this series, but I really hope she does!