The Encyclopedia of Monsters

by Jeff Rovin

The Encyclopedia of Monsters is a complete guide to more than 1,000 beasts, specters, werewolves, and other monsters that have chilled the popular imagination -- from the Bible's Leviathan to Hollywood's Alien.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Aliens, Monsters, Horror

390 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1990

Reviews

[Edward · Rating 5 out of 5]

When I was in the 4th grade, this book was within arm's reach of me throughout my library sciences class.

Well, I still have no understanding of the Dewey Decimal system, and the secret history of alphabetical filing remains a closed book to me, but when I first opened this book ten years ago, I embarked upon a journey that I hesitate to call magical, which ultimately led to B-Fest (www.b-fest.com), possibly the greatest annual cinema festival held on the campus of a major American university.

Now, this isn't all Jeff Rovin's fault, but his wonderfully dry prose and his assessments of monsters from myth, films, novels, and comic books are generally spot-on, and have aged pretty well, to boot.

[Jeffery · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a huge part of my childhood. I read it and referenced it all the time with my friend. We also checked monster books out of our school library and had deep, intense discussions about Godzilla, King Kong, The Hydra, Ray Harryhausen, Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolfman etc.

Life was good.

[Benji's Books · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so admittedly, my mom bought this for my older brother for Christmas of 2023 and I just wanted to make sure it wasn't poisoned when it got to my place through the mail, so I flipped through a few pages. A large majority of the pages. All of the pages.

I currently reside in my apartment, where I'm now trying to seek out my own copy on eBay.

[[on hiatus, probably forever] The rockabilly werewolf from Mars · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my kind of encyclopedia.

[Tym · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite books of all time, I will hopefully reading it for 40 more years.

[Glongin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember checking this book out countless times at my elementary school library. Sometimes kids that I knew would purposely check it out so I wouldn't be able to. Good times.

[Stephen Mackey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jeff Rovin's work comes across as a bit archaic, definitely a product for the pre-internet era. It isn't, of course, a COMPLETE encyclopedia of all possible monstrous creatures throughout human history, which would be a rather impractically enormous tome fit to rival Tolkien's sprawling epics. What it is, however, is still a rather interesting and enjoyable read, even when one comes to it with all the resources of the internet, from TV Tropes to IMDB, seemingly invalidating some of its editorial decisions.

It mostly serves as a collection of notable monsters predominantly from Western media - although some particularly famous Asian examples like Godzilla and Gamera do make it in - with straightforward summaries of the plots of their respective works. There are also literary, comic, and folklore entries, but movies make up the bulk of the lot. And it's here where the book really shines, too. If you've an interest in monster movies but aren't sure which of the hundreds of them in your backlog you should get to, the Encyclopedia of Monsters stands a good chance of helping you make up your mind. It also is almost certain to introduce you to a whole bunch of weird obscure ones you had no idea existed, which in my opinion remains its most lingeringly valuable quality.

While the inclusion of pictures was a great choice, and many of them show off excellent art, it's deeply unfortunate that none are in color. There are a few cases where the black and white quality doesn't really help the visibility of the image, and it would have been so nice to sprinkle in a few artbook formatting sensibilities to really do justice to the effort put into the costumes, art, and practical effects. Still, they serve their general purpose well enough even colorless.

The author compromises between brevity and comprehensiveness by cramming quite a lot of more minor monster references into the comments. These are just sort of jammed in willy-nilly. It's dreadfully hard not to think of how much better the space could have been used, if only the bizarrely extensive lists of actors - which have, frequently, nothing to do with the monsters! - had been cut out of all the entries and replaced with more monster-relevant material. Still, within the constraints the author was working under as per the formatting decisions, one does get the feeling that he did the absolute best he could.

Another lamentable omission is the absence of any attempt at detailed analysis of each monster's in-universe capabilities. You will very regularly see a generic line such as 'This monster has no special features beyond being strong.' While not technically inaccurate, it's pretty clear that the author was more interested in providing a broad bird's eye view of the overall story displaying each monster, and didn't care to zoom in on any real 'nerdy' analysis. That may or may not be to your taste.

There is rarely some flippant critical commentary on the artistic merit of the monster's product. Sometimes these opinions are rather amusingly dry and witty, but they also can come across as dismissive towards works of presumed lesser quality. I mostly only find it mildly annoying, since the entries are far too brief to support real detailed criticism, and the occasional brief swipes only served to divert from authorial objectivity for no real gain. But this is a nitpick at best.

TEoM isn't a replacement for more specialized literature, and it certainly can't compete with the internet's infinite repositories of nerd knowledge. But it's still a fun summary of hundreds of works that's doubtless got something new for everyone. Its age might be showing, but I still enjoyed it a lot, and would recommend it to anyone with an interest in man-eating dinosaurs, killer robots, or spooky aliens.

[Colleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really fun to flip through! I used to get it weekly from the library when I was a kid. I would like to know the threshold for what is included (slime from ghostbusters) and not included (Pennywise). But that’s just me being a nerd.

[Samuel Iglesias · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fun entertaining book to read.