Diana Peterfreund (born January 20, 1979) is a young adult fantasy and science fiction author. Her works include the Society Girls Series, the Killer Unicorns Series, and the Stars Series.
Diana Peterfreund's works provide examples of:
- Dueling Works: Sharon Cameron's Rook, another post-apocalyptic retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel, was published a few years after Across a Star-Swept Sea.
- Gender Flip: Across a Star-Swept Sea gives us Lady Persis Blake instead of Sir Percy Blakeney, with love interest Justen Helo instead of Marguerite St. Just. The counterparts of Chauvelin, Armand St. Just, and the Prince of Wales also have their gender flipped.
- Stealth Pun: Across a Star-Swept Sea is a retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel, with the countries of Albion and Galatea standing in for Britain and France. "Albion" is an old or poetic name for Great Britain, while "Galatea" may be a reference to "Gaul" or "Gallia," old names for what is now France.
- Recycled IN SPACE!: For Darkness Shows the Stars is a retelling of Persuasion in a post-apocalyptic science fiction setting. Its sequel, Across a Star-Swept Sea, is a retelling of The Scarlet Pimpernel.
- Unicorn: In the Rampant series, unicorns are stone-cold killers with poisonous horns, and only virgin descendants of Alexander the Great can kill them.
- Unicorns Prefer Virgins: Rampant features a society of virgins who hunt bloodthirsty, evil unicorns. Over the course of that novel and its sequel, it's shown that losing one's virginity causes one to lose one's ability to hunt unicorns — whether willingly (one girl sleeps with her boyfriend specifically to avoid getting roped into unicorn-hunting) or unwillingly (one girl is raped). Losing one's virginity likewise strips a girl of magical protection from the unicorns, who, albeit reluctantly, cannot attack a virgin. Also, males never (naturally) get either protection or powers, status of virginity notwithstanding.
