Bestiary: Creatures in a World of Legenders

by Jason Link

Come to where elegant aeriatheas soar through the sky and scaly yaramantas slither the ocean depths, where ferocious harguars roam the wilds and lazy osgothos are always ready to take a nap.

Enter the world of the legenders and discover its strange and mysterious creatures in this illustrated guide.

Genres: Fantasy

125 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 3, 2016

About the author

Jason Link is a high school English teacher by day and an author by night (if by “night” you mean the early morning when it’s still dark).

Ever since he was a kid, he’s been a fantasy nerd in love with the art of story. His world building course for fantasy writers is a bestseller on Udemy, and his writing courses have over 14,000 students enrolled from all over the world.

He lives with his family in beautiful Nicaragua—the land where he once proposed to his wife on an active volcano. (It erupted a week later, but he had nothing to do with that.)

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this as a PDF which really did capture something of the medieval bestiary. The drawings looked as if they had been hand-drawn in an earlier era. Usually bestiaries bestow some allegorical significance on the beasts they portray. There was not a whole lot of this, although there was some world building. Later on in the book (or should I say codex?) there were myths about the creation of the cosmos and the beginning of the ongoing battle between the forces of good and evil.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a fan of bestiarys so picked up the book thinking it was related to such and not actually a fantasy bestiary for a series I have never read before. And since this is my first book by the author, I can't relate to how much these creatures appear within that series.

Anyway Bestiary: Creatures in a World of Legenders takes a look at the beasts and some of the other beings of this fantasy realm. Basic behavior, appearance and utility are the body of many of the entries while other more important entrants also provide readers with lore and history that seem to heavily reflect the biblical Tolkien viewpoint of world-building.

The various entries are grouped under:
-Land, air & water (respectively each are a single category)
-Creatures of blight & corruption
-Insects, rodents & other small creatures
-Creatures of myth

Each entry has a mostly colored illustration of said entrant with its name as title on a background mimicking parchment. Some entrants have their own space while others are grouped due to their "common" grouping or since they are minimal players.

The book doesn't contain a Table of Contents or links so if you are reading this book in digital format there will be some awkwardness if you may want to cross-reference another entry with the one you are reading; although there is an index at the back.

Furthermore there are spots where extra words have been added or others left out thus leaving some awkward sentence formats.

Clearly not a conclusive source, this bestiary does encourage me to at least want to pick-up a first book so I can see just how relatable and helpful this book really is to its series.