Drago-tyrannosaurus: A relative of dragons, but lacking their intelligence. Drago-tyrannosauruses have tiny wings and can’t fly. They are fierce predators and will eat anything that moves and often whatever doesn’t. They live in the warm, damp Omois forests, making those parts of the planet especially unsuitable for tourism.
Gambole: An animal often used in sorcery. A small rodent with blue teeth, the gambole burrows so deep into the OtherWorld soil that its flesh and blood become impregnated with magic. When dried and ground, gambole powder makes the most difficult magical operations possible. It also produces hallucinations, and some spellbinders use it for personal consumption. This practice is strictly forbidden on OtherWorld, and gambole addicts are severely punished.
Gandari: A rhubarb-like plant with a slight taste of honey.
Glurp: A green and brown saurian with a small head that lives in lakes and swamps. It is extremely voracious. It can spend hours underwater without breathing, waiting to catch an unsuspecting animal that has come to take a drink. It builds nests in hiding places along the shore, and stores its captures in underwater holes.
Kalorna: A beautiful forest flower with pink and white petals whose slightly sweet flavor is enjoyed by OtherWorld herbivores and omnivores. To avoid being eaten into extinction, kalornas have evolved three petals that work like eyes. These can detect the approach of a predator and allow the flowers to quickly hide underground. Unfortunately, kalornas are also very curious. They often stick up their petals too soon and are promptly eaten. OtherWorlders say, “As curious as a kalorna.”
Kax: A plant used to make an herb tea so relaxing that it’s best only to drink it when you’re in bed. On OtherWorld, it’s also called relax-kax, because of its action on muscles. The sentence “You’re a real kax” refers to someone who’s very soft.
Keltril: A luminous, silvery metal that the elves fashion into breastplates and armor. Light and very strong, keltril is practically indestructible.
Ko-ax: A two-toned frog that is the glurp’s main food. Glurps locate them easily because of their particularly annoying croaking: “Brek-ek-ek-ek-ex, ko-ax, ko-ax.”
Kraken: A gigantic octopus with black tentacles. It is found in OtherWorld’s oceans, but can also live in fresh water. Krakens are a well-known danger to sailors.
Looky-look: A giant golden turkey that constantly struts around, gobbling. It is very easy to hunt. OtherWorld residents often say, “Dumb as a looky-look” or, “Vain as a looky-look.”
Manuril: White, juicy manuril shoots are a very popular OtherWorld side dish.
Mooouuu: A two-headed stag without antlers. When one head is feeding, the other watches out for predators. Mooouuus walk sideways, like crabs.
Mrmoum: A fruit that is very difficult to harvest, because mrmoum trees are huge animated plants that can cover as much area as a small forest. As soon as a predator approaches, mrmoum trees sink into the ground with the characteristic sound that gives them their name. It can be startling to be walking around and see an entire forest of mrmoum trees suddenly disappear, leaving only a empty plain.
Mud Eater: Inhabitants of the Swamps of Desolation on Gandis, Mud Eaters are large, hairy creatures that feed on insects, water lilies, and the nutrients in mud. The primitive Mud Eater clans have little contact with the planet’s other inhabitants.
Newsrystals: OtherWorld’s newspapers, which spellbinders and nonspells read on crystal balls, tablets, or smart phones.
Nonspell: Nonspells are humans who lack spellbinder powers.
Pegasus: A winged horse that is about as smart as a dog. Pegasi don’t have hooves, but instead claws, in order to perch easily. They often build their nests at the top of steel giants.
Popping peanut: Popping peanuts get their name from the characteristic sound they make when you open them. They produce a scented oil widely used by OtherWorld’s greatest chefs.
Puffer sardine: A fish that blows itself up when attacked. Its skin then becomes so taut, it’s almost impossible to pierce. On OtherWorld, people say, “As tough as a puffer sardine.”
Red banana: Just like an Earth banana except for its color.
Sacat: A large, flying, red-and-yellow insect that produces a honey that is much sought after on OtherWorld. Sacats are poisonous and very aggressive. Only dwarves can eat sacat larvae, which they consider a delicacy. Elves and humans would wind up with a swarm of them in their stomach, because their digestive juices can’t dissolve the shell of the larvae.
Scoop: A small winged camera, the product of OtherWorld technology. Possessed of rudimentary intelligence, the scoop lives only to film and transmit images to its crystalist.
Snaptooth: An animal originally from Krankar, the land of trolls. Snapteeth look like fluffy, pink plush toys, and it’s hard to tell their front from their back. They are extremely dangerous. Their extensible mouth can triple in size, allowing them to swallow practically anything.
Soothsucker: The fortune-telling lollipops, also called prophesicles, created by the playful P’abo imps. Licking away the candy’s outer layers reveals the prediction in the center. Even if you don’t understand it, the prediction always comes true. High wizards of many nations have studied these mysterious candies to understand how they work. But the P’abo guard the secret well. All the wizards got for their pains were cavities in their teeth and extra pounds on their hips.
Spalendital: A giant scorpion from Smallcountry. When domesticated, they are ridden by the gnomes, who also work their very tough hide. Gnomes practically wiped birds out from their country, which opened an ecological niche for insects. Since these no longer have any natural enemies, they keep growing larger and more numerous. As a result, Smallcountry is overrun with giant scorpions, spiders, and millipedes.
Spellbinder: Literally “someone who knows how to bind spells.” Spellbinders have the gift of magic. They chant or recite spells to focus their thoughts and materializing their wishes. Some very rare spellbinders don’t need spells. Their power is so great that it manifests itself without chanting. Earthlings corrupted the term after the spellbinders left for OtherWorld, and refer to them as sorcerers and sorceresses.
Steel giant: Enormous trees that can grow to 600 feet high, with trunks 150 feet around. Pegasi often build nests in steel giants to keep their progeny safe from predators.
Stridule: Similar to an earthly cricket. When they travel in swarms, stridules can be very dangerous, devastating all the crops in their path. They produce very fertile saliva that is commonly used in magic.
Tatchoo: A small yellow flower whose pollen, used on OtherWorld as pepper, is extremely irritating. Sniffing a tatchoo is guaranteed to unclog any nose.
Traduc: A large, smelly animal raised by centaurs for their meat and wool. “You stink like a sick traduc” is a widespread OtherWorld insult.
T’sil: A worm found in the deserts of Salterens, a t’sil hides in the sand and waits for an animal to pass. It jumps on it and burrows into the skin or carapace. Its eggs then enter the host’s blood stream and spread throughout its body. About a hundred hours later the eggs hatch and the t’sil worms eat through their victim and emerge. Death by t’sil is one of the most horrible on OtherWorld. This explains why few tourists go trekking in the Salterian Desert. An antidote exists against the common t’sil, but none against the golden t’sil, whose infestation is inevitably fatal.
Tzinpaf: A delicious carbonated apple-orange cola beverage that is both refreshing and stimulating.
Vlir: A small golden prune much like a plum, but sweeter.
Vrrir: A six-legged, gold-and-white feline, a favorite of the Empress of Omois. She cast a spell on her vrrrirs so that they don’t realize they are imprisoned in her palace. Instead of furniture and sofas, they see trees and comfortable stones. The courtiers are invisible, and when vrrirs are stroked, they think it is the wind blowing through their fur.
Whaloon: A huge red whale, two-and-a-half times the size of an Earth whale. Its extremely rich milk is traded by liquidians,
like tritons and mermaids, to solidians, who live on dry land. Whaloon butter and cream are sought-after delicacies.
Yumm: A kind of large red cherry the size of a peach.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian is not only the most widely read fantasy writer in France, she’s also the crown princess of Armenia. Sophie was inspired to start writing the Tara Duncan series after reading Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream in 1987. Seventeen years later, in 2003, she published Tara Duncan in France and eventually in eighteen countries.
Born in southern France in 1961, Sophie was mainly raised by her grandparents, who spoiled her with candy and carefully chosen French classics: Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo along with Corneille and Molière. Possibly as a result, Sophie started writing stories at a very young age. Stuck in bed by a bout of appendicitis at age twelve, she picked up a pen and hasn’t put it down since. Before earning her living as a writer, she earned a master’s degree in diplomacy and strategy, and worked in advertising with Jacques Séguéla at the Publicis agency in Paris.
Sophie is the niece of author and director Francis Veber, who wrote the screenplay for the movies Dinner for Schmucks and Three Fugitives. She is also the granddaughter of Pierre Gilles Veber, who wrote the script of the original 1952 film Fanfan, la Tulipe, which was remade in 2003 with Penelope Cruz.
Tara Duncan has been adapted for television by Moonscoop–Taffy Entertainment (Casper, the Friendly Ghost; The Fantastic Four) in co-production with the Walt Disney corporation and can be watched on Kabillion Channel. It is already broadcasted in twenty countries.
The Tara Duncan Show will begin on September 1, 2013, in the Gymnase Theater, and Sophie is scared to death because she will play a part in it! When not writing, Sophie divides her time between her husband, her two daughters, and the medical organization Pain Without Borders.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
William Rodarmor is a journalist, editor, and French literary translator. In addition to the Tara Duncan books, his young adult translations include The Book of Time trilogy by Guillaume Prévost (Scholastic, 2007–09), The Old Man Mad About Drawing by François Place (Godine, 2003), Catherine Certitude by Patrick Modiano and Jean-Jacques Sempé (Godine, 2001), Ultimate Game by Christian Lehmann (Godine, 2000), and The Last Giants by François Place (Godine, 1993). His translation of Tamata and the Alliance, by famed sailor Bernard Moitessier, won the 1996 Lewis Galantière Award from the American Translators Association.
William has traveled all over the world but has a special fondness for France, about which he edited and translated two anthologies in Whereabouts Press’s Traveler’s Literary Companion series: French Feast (2011) and France (2008). He is especially proud of two things: sailing solo from Tahiti to Hawaii in 1971 and winning the cartoon caption contest in the New Yorker in 2010. William lives in Berkeley, California, and often travels to New York City.
THANKS AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my tender and luminous family, my husband Philippe, and my daughters Diane and Marine, who continue to valiantly support their wife and mother with humor and lucidity. Thank you, darlings. Without you, this book would not exist.
It took seventeen years for my girl wizard Tara Duncan to see the light of day. I wrote Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders (Tara Duncan et les Sortcelier) in 1987, the year my daughter Diane was born. That is the first book in this series. But at the time, I couldn’t get a single French publisher interested. I waited, kept writing, and sometimes cried my eyes out. But my very sweet husband Philippe kept saying, “You have so much talent. You’ll see; one of these days Tara is going to take off.”
That day came thanks to a boy wizard with glasses and a scar on his forehead. Harry Potter’s success had such an impact in France that when I sent out my manuscript for the nth time, three publishers suddenly wanted options on it. Since then, the Tara Duncan books have been published in eighteen countries, adapted for television by Disney and Moonscoop, and sold some eight million copies.
Thanks go to my marvelous family, which has supported my stories about dragons for some twenty years now—you are heroes! To my publisher Tony Lyons, who gave me the chance to be published in the United States, the eighteenth country in which Tara Duncan has been translated. Let’s hope we conquer the world together!
Thanks to Jennifer Lyons, my wonderful and dynamic agent; to my translator William Rodarmor, who ties his brain in knots rendering my improbable wordplay; to Karissa Hearn, who is publicizing my book in the United States; and especially to my marvelous American fans who write me (and whom I answer!) at [email protected].
To everyone, thanks for reading my books. You are true friends.
Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian
Paris, Winter 2013
ALSO AVAILABLE
Tara Duncan and the Spellbinders
by HRH Princess Sophie Audouin-Mamikonian
Translated by William Rodarmor
Though only twelve years old, orphaned Tara has developed strange telekinetic powers that allow her to bend space and levitate others high above the ground, as if they are lighter than air. Her two best friends, Betty and Fabrice—often the victims of Tara’s uncontrollable abilities—are the only ones who know about Tara’s secret. Even her grandmother and caretaker, Isabella, doesn’t have a clue. That is until Tara learns that she is a spellbinder, descended from a long line of powerful magic-wielders born on the planet OtherWorld. Forced to flee her Earth home when Magister, the Master of the Bloodgraves, attacks, Tara escapes to planet OtherWorld, where she finds loyal friends and learns about her mysterious powers. But when Tara discovers that her mother is alive and being held captive by Magister, will she be able to save her?
Tara Duncan is an inspiring heroine, whose adventures and personal struggles will captivate readers already hooked by fantasy adventures and characters like Harry Potter. This is the first installment of the Tara Duncan series—an epic adventure full of magic and bravery that is sure to cast a spell on young readers!
$16.95 Hardcover
Tara Duncan and the Forbidden Book Page 41