Giants, Monsters, and Dragons: An Encyclopedia of Folklore, Legend, and Myth

Much like her earlier written Encyclopedia this one once again hits the nail right on the head, giving great refference to thousands of mythological beings at one's fingertips. From the Greek Titans to American Indian tribal spirits, from nursery bogies to humorous antiquities of history this book has it all. A great smorgasbord of the monsters and deiteis of almost every civilization on Earth all convienintly located in one direct and enjoyable resource is both amazing and extreemly entertaining. This book is one that can be both read continously page to page or simply as a refference either way it is fun and interesting to turn from page to page from Appolyon to Garm to Scylla to Baba Yaga and to any other entity that ruminates in these pages of this glorious encylopedia. I would highly recomend getting her first encylopedia "Spirits, Fairies, Leprechauns, and Goblins: An Encyclopedia" as well as looking at such books as "Bestiary: Being an English Version of the Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Bodley 764", "The Book of Fabulous Beasts", "On Monsters and Marvels", and "The Book of Imaginary Beings". although all these books are slightly more informational and less refference and encyclopedia like they are just as enjoyable and do a great job on further investigating monsters and myth.

This is one for both the scholar who needs a quick reference and the casual enthusiast looking to impress friends with mythical trivia (not that many people have friends who are so easily impressed). If you have any interest, academic or casual, in the mythical beasts of yore, I highly recommend Rose's encyclopedias (this, and the "sequel," which contains more benign beings). It's fascinating to see icons from ancient Mesopotamian myth, Japanese legend, Native American religion and contemporary American folklore all on the same page. In addition to thorough explanations of the origins and significance of each beastie, Rose goes one step further by explaining parallels to other cultural icons, common heritages and even manifestations in modern popular culture (for instance, there are numerous entries about creatures from J.R.R. Tolkien's world, which, while not strictly mythical themselves, do draw their inspiration from real-world mythology). There are a number of similar cyclopedic works available, but this one differs from the masses in that it is both thoroughly academic (unlike many of the recent pop-culture anthologies), -and- thoroughly enjoyable. Highly recommended.

I am madly in love with this book. I have been looking for a book like this since I was old enough to read. I've read several dozen monster encyclopedias. This book is very similar to "The Encyclopedia of Things That Never Were," except that everything that Never Were did wrong, THIS book did right! You can actually find what you're looking for in this book! This book does NOT make things up as it goes along. It does not mix the author's opinions with ancient opinions; its voice is neutral, but not dry. It does not contain illustrations which are irrelevant to the text. It is not messy in its layout- everything is perfectly organized. The bibliography is truly perfect, and is referred to constantly. This book does indeed cover giants, monsters, and dragons; and it also covers a lot of gods, spirits, undead, goblins, fictional famous people, and so on. It covers ALL the mythologies of the world, concentrating on them equally. Most books like this will, say, tell you all about European mythics at great length, but only touch briefly on Thunderbird or Rainbow Snake, often the sole representatives of the entire continent they come from, and all their fascinating brothers are neglected completely. This book doesn't mix in movie monsters with the ancient ones (as some books do) although there are some fairly recent entities listed, such as Paul Bunyan. Rather than using modern illustrations drawn by an illustrator who is clueless about how the monster is supposed to look aside from the text description, and so produces something totally useless for reference, this book uses old illustrations, woodcuts and steel engravings- my only complaint may be that those illustrations are few and far between, and all grayscale, but it has a perfect bibliography, so you always know where to look for more- this book is designed to start you off, tell you where to go for more if you want to. Every single entry tells you which books it came from. It's full of some really seriously obscure creatures, too, so that's good. As I was reading an entry about a creature which was born in the mythologies of an area near where I live, I thought to myself: "The only way this book could be any better was that if there was an index in the back that listed all the mythics by location! But of course there won't be, nothing is that perfect." And lo and behold, I looked in the back, and it was THERE. As a counterpoint to the fully indexed alphabetical listing of all the monsters, the appendixes in the back list all the monsters by category, so you may look them up that way. There are category listings such as Thailand, or United States Native. And then there are category listings for type of monster, such as "beings that are horses or part horse," or "dragons- occidental." And so on. You can seriously find whatever you're looking for in this book, and there's plenty of it.

This is a well written book, which focuses on just about every monster from ancient history to modern times - and from just about every culture from the Far East to the Americas. On a few of the more odd or unusual entries there is a short synopsis of the specific legend associated with it, or an explanation of the creature's probable origins - for instance, St. Christopher, who is sometimes depicted as a giant with a dog's head got that way because of a spelling error in the early church - he was designated as a "Canine" rather than a "Canaanite". These and other facts are sure to entertain and delight anyone looking into monsters and the like.

Books of this type are nothing new. There are probably dozens of encyclopedia-style texts out there dealing with magical creatures and mythical beings, but this one is easily one of the more enjoyable volumes I've had the pleasure of reading. As has been pointed out in another review, this is not a book for those who are longing for visuals over text. This is not one of Froud's Fairy books or one of the Gnome texts. As fun as those books are, there is a heavy if not predominate focus on their original illustrations. Carol Rose's book is focused instead on textual descriptions and summaries. There are plenty of great illustrations in the book, mostly woodcuts from Rose's own private collection, but these are not the key focus of the book. But I highly recommend this to anyone who wants a good, searchable reference guide to creatures of myth and magic.