Monsters: A Bestiary of the Bizarre

by Christopher Dell

Genres: Non-fiction
Rating:

Synopsis:

Monsters have preoccupied mankind from the earliest times: even cave art includes animal-human monsters. Certainly monsters were present in the ancient religions of Egypt and Mesopotamia; the Old Testament describes the giant land and sea monsters Behemoth and Leviathan, while in the world of Classical mythology, monsters embody the fantasies of the gods and the cruellest punishments of human beings. While we may no longer worry about being eaten by trolls on the way home, there remains a fascination with these creatures who have shadowed us throughout history. This book explores monsters down the ages and throughout the world. It provides a dark yet engrossing visual history of the human mind, lit up by flashes of wild and unearthly inspiration.

Christopher Dell’s Monsters was a bit of a random choice from the library while I happened to be in that area of the library for something else. It’s a pretty fun volume, largely reproducing images of monsters with only brief discussion of those monsters — it’s all in full colour, glossy pages, etc, so it certainly looks good.

I would’ve loved a bit more discussion, of course, but that’s not really what the book is meant for. If anything, given that, it felt like it needed to be longer and include more examples and images. In addition, it’d have been helpful to have an info bar about each individual image, rather than just a bare list of the images on preceding pages.

Interesting, but not well executed.

Rating: 2/5 (“it was okay”)