An entertaining look at cryptids, myths, and their lore. ( )

There isn't much to day about this book.

While the authored covered many different types of "monsters", they never went into great detail on any of them.

The eye witness accounts were skimmed over, and it felt like a lot of details were left out.

My suggestion? Read it to find out about the cryptids you don't know about, then find books that Go into greater detail on those you're truly interested in. ( )

I was expecting an in-depth look at the cultural background of each legend in the book. The book was divided into sections. Air, water, land, etc. The topics covered basically got a few pages to describe their story. The topics need some context, some history to them. ( )

This book truly sums up a lot of my frustration with [a: Linda S. Godrey]'s work. While she is very coherent and informative in interviews, and even in some of her blog posts delves deep into lore, her books for the most part are shallow rather than informative. She tells of encounters of various beasts but rarely goes deep into their history, what such a monster might need in order to live, and the history of such encounters in anything other than passing. I would love to read more history of the folklore she is telling, as well as more musing as to what might cause X to be, rather than the simple throwaway mentions she gives.

This book, admittedly, was rather ambitious in its breadth of topics covered. It is divided into Monsters of the Sky, Monsters of the Water, and Monsters of the Land. The Water section deals with most of the scaly beasts one would imagine, although she admits many monsters would fit more than one of those categories. It was perhaps a bit too ambitious a project, as she shines best when zeroing in on a single monster or monster 'type'. The stories, thus, are maybe one or two pages - the longest story in this book is also the best, that of the Florida Gator-Man, which I also might begin referring to my husband as.

Overall this book would have been more fun to dip in and out of than read straight through. It is a great book of monster encounters, or fun true stories to tell around the campfire. I would have much rather read something with more substance, though, and I wish [a: Linda S. Godfrey|102574|Linda S. Godfrey|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1371234107p2/102574.jpg] would put out something that would really allow her to flex her folkloric and monster history chops. She could do much better! Her Coast to Coast interviews prove that. ( )