The Wacky French Cover of Zombies vs Unicorns

Though Astrid would tell you otherwise, apparently, in France, unicorns are glowing women with white, feathery hair. Who knew?

Also: “licornes”! Love!

True story: Back when I was deciding about the different species of unicorn I was going to use in Rampant, there were a few names floating around that I never did get to use. One of these was licorne (the other was monoceros). In the end, I decided there wasn’t too much difference between the European legends from Germany (einhorn) and the ones from France (licorne). And licorne and unicorn sounded similar enough that I went with einhorn to describe my graceful, white, deerlike European species of unicorn. I’m sure if my books were translated into German, we’d have to come up with an alternate name for the “einhorn” species.

“The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn” in Zombies vs. Unicorns does not differentiate between the species by name, so we’re cool in any and all translations. In fact, I have taken care not to digress into a species-specific discussion in any of my unicorn short stories, since you’re dealing with a limited wordcount, and I always go into the story assuming the reader has never read my books.

FWIW, Venom and Flayer are zhis (as is pointed out in Ascendant), while the unicorn that attacked Wen’s cousins was a kirin. In “Errant,” Enyo is a zhi, and the unicorns in the forest are einhorns. In my upcoming story, “The Hammer of Artemis” — well, that’s a surprise.