Visualizing Monsters, pt. 1

Someone sent me a link to this article about giant Belgian cows, who possess a genetic mutation called “double muscling.” I’m sure this individual only meant to point out to me one of the grotesqueries of animal husbandry, but the second I saw this photo, my jaw dropped.

This is so how I picture the re’em, which is the second largest unicorn in the RAMPANT world. (For those of you who are interested in reading up about some of the others, check out my unicorn research page.) It’s the same color and everything as the one that shows up in the book.

So, naturally, I had to wield a little photoshoppery:

Behold, a re’em! (And his yellow-suited lunch.)

The unicorns in RAMPANT are the unicorns of myth and legend, both the ones you’ve heard about, and the ones you haven’t. Most people in the west think of white deerlike creatures when they think of unicorns (or, thanks to 70s rock album covers and  80s Trapper Keepers, a white horse with a horn), but there are also Middle Eastern, Chinese, Japanese, African, and even South American myths about unicorns that often have nothing to do with the Peter Beagleesque creation that comes immediately to mind.

The Trapper Keeper Unicorn. Yeah. Not so much.

One of the discussions my editor and I had during the production of RAMPANT was whether it was best to depict a unicorn on the cover that was reflective of the ones inside the books, or resonant with a public who has this “white horse with horn” image in their heads. In the end, we decided on the latter. After all, if we’re going to say, “Hey, here’s a book about unicorns,” we’re going to have to start with what you think of when you think of a unicorn. Putting a creature like the above-pictured re’em on the cover of my book is not going to trigger “unicorn” for most people. (At least, not before they’ve read the book.) So, instead Harper did this.

It’s very common for authors to receive covers depicting people who don’t look like their main characters. In fact, it’s something of a joke in the industry. Well, the Astrid on my cover looks a lot like the Astrid I see in my head. However, there is no white horse-like unicorn in Rampant.

And the reason for that is that the white horse unicorn is not a traditional unicorn. Even the unicorns seen in heraldry and medieval and Renaissance European art, which is the closest depiction to the Trapper-Keeper Unicorn, is not a horse. It’s a creature depicted in medieval bestiaries of the time as having the body of a deer (that means cloven hooves, folks), the tail of a lion, the beard of a goat, and a single, great spiral horn.

More on that, tomorrow!