A Wizard's Bestiary: A Menagerie of Myth, Magic, and Mystery Review

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A Wizard's Bestiary: A Menagerie of Myth, Magic, and Mystery ReviewFirst let me say, A Wizard's Bestiary is probably one of the most informative books relating to cryptids, myths, and other supernatural beasties out there. It doesn't just focus on Greek or Egyptian mythology as most do, nor on north American cryptids. Instead, it delves into various countries and belief systems, shining a spotlight on well known and obscure creatures.
However, the information comes at a price. The editor must have been asleep at the wheel, because every couple dozen pages or so there's a misspelled word, a word omitted, a word the runs into the drawings on the pages, or what have you. Almost every error is in the first section, the Glossary titled "A Magickal Menagerie" and some of these problems are due to the positioning of the artwork. In the actual encyclopedic section, the creatures are split amongst groups and spoken about in an interesting and in-depth manner, some more than others of course (sea monsters alone have a VAST wealth on them). While a few sections have wording that might seem a bit ego-leaning, those are few and far between (the author for example, seems dead-set on lake monsters being slugs, and goes so far as to say something akin to "I refuse to accept them as anything else," as if it's their place and only theirs to deem what is acceptable or not. Perhaps this is just how it comes across to myself, I'll leave it up to the other readers to decide. Lastly, I think it's a bit unusual that many of the art pieces go uncredited. While some are from clipart or other sources and some DO have their artist given their do, the author states themselves that they "raided google" for many, and therefore quite a few go without credit (this could have been remedied either by asking around on the sites they were found, or by hiring a few artists to create new pieces for the creatures).
On a positive note, another area where the book stands out is at the end of each encyclopedic section, where it says how one can find media that star some of the creatures therein; particularly via film but also in book or even video game forms. The haiku at the start of each letter for the menagerie are a neat touch as well.
All in all the book is pretty good, but the editing mistakes, some of the near-hubris level of a few sections (luckily only a scant few), the lack of credit for many pieces, and the art getting in the way of the wording take away from what would be an otherwise GREAT book. Perhaps in a future publication these editing issues will be fixed, as this reviewer hopes. One suggestion could be perhaps to do the menagerie section in a column-form: one side of the page for the creatures descriptions, the other for the artwork. Although this would make the book slightly longer than usual, it's one of many possible ways to improve that section.A Wizard's Bestiary: A Menagerie of Myth, Magic, and Mystery Overview

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