Carol K. Mack

Loved this book full of dark history and lore! It was fun to read and I appreciated the diversity in subjects. It was most especially pleasing to me to read of the demons of our psyche - our internal battles! Interesting and accessible reading.

I got this book hoping for the sort of folklore exploration in the Time-Life Enchanted World series, or William Butler Yeats's "Irish Fairy & Folk Tales", but I was sorely disappointed. I found the format of this book much too repetitive, and it seemed the authors were so determined to get a lot of material in that they didn't cover any of it in much detail. In addition, it could have used better editing. The tiny section on mermaids presents selkie lore as mermaid lore; pretty much an show more unforgivable mistake as far as I was concerned. I admit I didn't even finish the book. I gave up on it after I read a description of an attack that included the phrase "whammed him with her mace". "Whammed"? I wasn't aware I was reading a comic book. show less

The Field Guide is a decent primer for anyone wanting an overview of various figures of myth and folklore. The book is written in a style similar to Max Brooks's "The Zombie Survival Guide," in that it purports to be an actual guide for such creatures. And while it may be entertaining for a few pages, this kind of tongue-in-cheek treatment diminishes the depth of information that the book offers.

I would have liked to see deeper information about the mythology behind the creatures, the tales show more that they come from, etc. But for what it is, the book was pretty decent. Several of the entries also came with interesting illustrations of historic woodcuts, which was a nice touch.

Overall it was a decent read, and it went by fairly fast. It has some interesting information, but at the same time, the book isn't for the serious student of mythology. show less

Have had this for years. Primarily use it as reference material for quick synopses of supernatural entities, although I've read a lot of these entries are very over-simplified and sometimes conflicting. Still a fun little tome for snapshots of the strange and dark entities of the worlds oldest myths.