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Creatures of Near Kingdoms
Zedeck Siew's feverishly imaginative prose intertwines with Sharon Chin's stunning lino prints and pattern designs.
Sometimes fantastical fancy, at other times of nightmarish quality, the book catalogues the flora and fauna in and around Malaysia. From worms that live in your digital devices, to ants and crows that explode - these 75 creatures surely do not exist, but they should. Because they explain so much of what we are and where we came from.
So take a breather, sit down - for you will very well need to - and jump into the world of these Creatures of Near Kingdoms.
Sometimes fantastical fancy, at other times of nightmarish quality, the book catalogues the flora and fauna in and around Malaysia. From worms that live in your digital devices, to ants and crows that explode - these 75 creatures surely do not exist, but they should. Because they explain so much of what we are and where we came from.
So take a breather, sit down - for you will very well need to - and jump into the world of these Creatures of Near Kingdoms.
158 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2018
9 people are currently reading
205 people want to read
About the author
Zedeck Siew
35 books28 followersZedeck Siew is a writer based in Port Dickson. He has been a journalist, essayist, editor, and game designer. He writes short fiction in English and translates from Malay. Creatures of Near Kingdoms is his first book. zedecksiew.tumblr.com
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Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews
February 19, 2019
An inventive and delightful illustrated bestiary of imagined Malaysian flora and fauna, threaded through with sly humour.
November 24, 2018
Fuhh, finally done! I have so many mixed feelings about this book.
For one, I truly enjoyed it. It reads like an encyclopaedia for magical creatures in Malaysia. I love reading Malaysian things and being able to say "heh, I know what you mean!". This book is like if "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" took place in Malaysia.
Hell Dog was definitely one of my favourites, but Ghost Cat sure tugged at the heartstrings. Also, I wish Giant Skunk Pleco was a real being.
Has a good kick out of watching my bf read the Red-Headed River Terrapin entry, heh.
As for the illustrations - so gorgeous! I had to resist the urge to colour them in with all that lovely, lovely white space.
So what I didn't really enjoy about the book is - weirdly enough - the writing.
I think this is largely due to the fact that I expected this to be a light and breezy read, but the prose was too flowery and had too many bombastic words in an effort to paint the scene for you. So at times, it felt like a chore to read through.
For one, I truly enjoyed it. It reads like an encyclopaedia for magical creatures in Malaysia. I love reading Malaysian things and being able to say "heh, I know what you mean!". This book is like if "Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them" took place in Malaysia.
Hell Dog was definitely one of my favourites, but Ghost Cat sure tugged at the heartstrings. Also, I wish Giant Skunk Pleco was a real being.
Has a good kick out of watching my bf read the Red-Headed River Terrapin entry, heh.
As for the illustrations - so gorgeous! I had to resist the urge to colour them in with all that lovely, lovely white space.
So what I didn't really enjoy about the book is - weirdly enough - the writing.
I think this is largely due to the fact that I expected this to be a light and breezy read, but the prose was too flowery and had too many bombastic words in an effort to paint the scene for you. So at times, it felt like a chore to read through.
November 11, 2018
What Zedeck managed to do was letting us see the world through his eyes, but at the same time made us think these are all what we have been thinking about all along. Each creature feels like a micro fiction of its own. Every word carefully selected, every sentence carefully constructed.
July 11, 2021
Need to re-read this book to understand more, Zedeck Siew is so creative in making a metaphor to criticize our country in a really subtle way. Way too subtle until some of us don't even want to know what it is. It is a real mystery book. By the way, the illustration is so gorgeous. Great work from Sharon Chin!
p/s: I like Hell dog (because it's too easy to understand and so relatable)
p/s: I like Hell dog (because it's too easy to understand and so relatable)
November 1, 2018
Pick up the book in your hands.
It's light, pages near-translucent. Strong black marks of monochrome pictures show through the text from the un-flipped page beyond.
The cover is luxuriant, a royal purple, it flexes and flops in your hand. The urge to bend it is near-irresistible!
It is written in second-person like cookbooks, choose-your-own adventure texts and a handful of literary experiments. Very fancy and unusual!
Who is the "you" in the book? You seem to change gender (by inference at least) and job and circumstances of life but it seems like almost all of these yous are Malaysian, alone at the moment of encounter, probably not beyond thirty or under twenty, generally educated, and reluctant to talk to others about what you (they) have experienced.
Many yous have a garden. There is always something strange in the garden. It is rarely a good thing.
You begin to realise that writing this review in the style of the book may have been a mistake. There are now too many yous. The protagonists of the book are many shadow you's, the you writing this is another, the you reading (and editing) this a microsecond after your cognitive tide has washed a finished fragment into being is arguably yet another you, and all the you's reading the finished review are yet another shadowy multiplicity of yous.
An even more difficult question is who is the person addressing the 'you' in the book? They are as vague and omniscient as a Gygaxian sage, and as tricky as a riddlemaster. A lot of these fragments involve the narrator slowly revealing something to the second-person protagonist. It is rarely a good thing.
(Run protago-theys! Run from the page before they get to the last paragraph. You have rights!)
This book is by two people.
One is anxious, slightly silly, enmeshed in the minutiae of daily life, except more absorbed in a kind of dream of daily life where things are not quite themselves. They are anxious about their garden (the garden is a major character), and a range of progressive political matters about which they feel largely helpless. They are either familiar with the scientific jargon of biology, or like reading books with those words. This must be Sharon, you think.
The other is completely silent and communicates only through the carving of smooth black lines, like woodcuts, except probably not wood. They are fond of bold and impudent animals, concerned with dream images and complex baroque patterns. You assume this one is Zedeck.
As usual, even though the book is only half text and is also half art, its easy to talk about the text (text always wants to be transformed into more text, like a happy virus) and hard to talk about the art, which gets shunted off to paragraphs like these while the reviewer tries to grapple with it.
The patterns are one thing, and even though the method of creating them is explained at the back of the book you still cant work out exactly how many of them work. Your eyes have looped the lines and been unable to find the repeating cores. Possibly you are visually stupid.
You like the large, charismatic, singular cheeky and mildly threatening animals the most. Though you think that probably the patterns might be 'better art', whatever that is. You are aware that you have pretty basic tastes in art and the patterns are strange and complex and might well have some kind of life beyond the context of this book, you imagine them proliferating over walls and laptop backgrounds, on tiles and the pieces of games.
The artist likes black, which you approve of, and does not fuck about adding the fiddly bits of shit which mediocre (in your opinion) people confuse with 'realism' and 'quality', which you also approve of. There is no digital trash in the backgrounds or layout, praise the gods.
Some of these images are near-heraldic, some could be scenes from storybooks and legend, some could be T-Shirt designs, (there should be a 'Crowned Dugong' T-Shirt on Redbubble by now you think), they are strong, singular, thick with character and identity, requiring no reference to make sense of them.
You could read the book backwards, silently, letting the pages fall open so the rhythm went image-text-image, the eye catching the image first, only then looking to the text. It would be a different book with a different pulse.
The book is full of creatures and plants and most of them (surely) are imaginary. Its actually pretty hard to tell. Some of these could easily be real plants and creatures from Malaysia that you don't know about. Do they really have their own local syrup plant? Is Agarwood a real thing?
It occurs to you (that is the you writing this, and reading it as you are writing it, not the other you who is the main character in the book) that this is probably a very different book if you are Malaysian, or just live in SE Asia, and of you are not.
A lot of these creatures, plants and situations are part of a network of subtle inferences and references which probably make very different sense if you are familiar with the environment and politics of Malaysia. To someone there, this might be like a kind of imaginary map of a real place, with everything tilted a little, but still familiar, a shard or lemon-twist of recognition. You imagine urbane Malaysians raising their eyebrows to each other over cups of rich coffee; "Ah yes, of course, a 'lantern squirrel', an artful re-contextualisation of something something something..."
But you, (the you you, not the other you) have no idea if there actually are lantern squirrels, real ones that is, or things like them. Do they have Dugongs in Malaysia? It seems like something they would have, probably not sentient ones though. You could google it but that seems like cheating somehow.
So for you, the book is twice-reflected. There is an extra hovering layer of interpretation. And also a lot of it is just the impression of someone in a cold grey place reading about a bright warm place (you actually feel a little colder in comparison when you read). In the place of the book, things are always growing, everywhere, and more than here, and there are lots of different animals, again, you think, more than you have around you.
You wonder if that might be orientalism? Does it only seem that way because you are familiar with your ecosystem and this one is cherry-picked and strange (and largely made up)? Only statistics will be able to work that out. You are sure someone on a blog is working on it.
Plus there are definitely no pigs under your house.
The extra layer, or double gleam of unknowing, either doesn't hurt, or helps you feel like you know the place in an intimate way. There are lots of fragments of life that would never show up in any story you would read. You feel like you know what its like to be in a traffic jam because of Buffalo, to worry about parking your car beneath rare and aggressive species, to wake up prickling because of lizards, pigs under the house. Complex meanings in relatives gift-plants, an aggressive bioform on the beach, neighbours with ritual problems.
And of course, finding something complex and penumbral growing in your garden. Then worrying about it. You feel like that might happen every day.
It's light, pages near-translucent. Strong black marks of monochrome pictures show through the text from the un-flipped page beyond.
The cover is luxuriant, a royal purple, it flexes and flops in your hand. The urge to bend it is near-irresistible!
It is written in second-person like cookbooks, choose-your-own adventure texts and a handful of literary experiments. Very fancy and unusual!
Who is the "you" in the book? You seem to change gender (by inference at least) and job and circumstances of life but it seems like almost all of these yous are Malaysian, alone at the moment of encounter, probably not beyond thirty or under twenty, generally educated, and reluctant to talk to others about what you (they) have experienced.
Many yous have a garden. There is always something strange in the garden. It is rarely a good thing.
You begin to realise that writing this review in the style of the book may have been a mistake. There are now too many yous. The protagonists of the book are many shadow you's, the you writing this is another, the you reading (and editing) this a microsecond after your cognitive tide has washed a finished fragment into being is arguably yet another you, and all the you's reading the finished review are yet another shadowy multiplicity of yous.
An even more difficult question is who is the person addressing the 'you' in the book? They are as vague and omniscient as a Gygaxian sage, and as tricky as a riddlemaster. A lot of these fragments involve the narrator slowly revealing something to the second-person protagonist. It is rarely a good thing.
(Run protago-theys! Run from the page before they get to the last paragraph. You have rights!)
This book is by two people.
One is anxious, slightly silly, enmeshed in the minutiae of daily life, except more absorbed in a kind of dream of daily life where things are not quite themselves. They are anxious about their garden (the garden is a major character), and a range of progressive political matters about which they feel largely helpless. They are either familiar with the scientific jargon of biology, or like reading books with those words. This must be Sharon, you think.
The other is completely silent and communicates only through the carving of smooth black lines, like woodcuts, except probably not wood. They are fond of bold and impudent animals, concerned with dream images and complex baroque patterns. You assume this one is Zedeck.
As usual, even though the book is only half text and is also half art, its easy to talk about the text (text always wants to be transformed into more text, like a happy virus) and hard to talk about the art, which gets shunted off to paragraphs like these while the reviewer tries to grapple with it.
The patterns are one thing, and even though the method of creating them is explained at the back of the book you still cant work out exactly how many of them work. Your eyes have looped the lines and been unable to find the repeating cores. Possibly you are visually stupid.
You like the large, charismatic, singular cheeky and mildly threatening animals the most. Though you think that probably the patterns might be 'better art', whatever that is. You are aware that you have pretty basic tastes in art and the patterns are strange and complex and might well have some kind of life beyond the context of this book, you imagine them proliferating over walls and laptop backgrounds, on tiles and the pieces of games.
The artist likes black, which you approve of, and does not fuck about adding the fiddly bits of shit which mediocre (in your opinion) people confuse with 'realism' and 'quality', which you also approve of. There is no digital trash in the backgrounds or layout, praise the gods.
Some of these images are near-heraldic, some could be scenes from storybooks and legend, some could be T-Shirt designs, (there should be a 'Crowned Dugong' T-Shirt on Redbubble by now you think), they are strong, singular, thick with character and identity, requiring no reference to make sense of them.
You could read the book backwards, silently, letting the pages fall open so the rhythm went image-text-image, the eye catching the image first, only then looking to the text. It would be a different book with a different pulse.
The book is full of creatures and plants and most of them (surely) are imaginary. Its actually pretty hard to tell. Some of these could easily be real plants and creatures from Malaysia that you don't know about. Do they really have their own local syrup plant? Is Agarwood a real thing?
It occurs to you (that is the you writing this, and reading it as you are writing it, not the other you who is the main character in the book) that this is probably a very different book if you are Malaysian, or just live in SE Asia, and of you are not.
A lot of these creatures, plants and situations are part of a network of subtle inferences and references which probably make very different sense if you are familiar with the environment and politics of Malaysia. To someone there, this might be like a kind of imaginary map of a real place, with everything tilted a little, but still familiar, a shard or lemon-twist of recognition. You imagine urbane Malaysians raising their eyebrows to each other over cups of rich coffee; "Ah yes, of course, a 'lantern squirrel', an artful re-contextualisation of something something something..."
But you, (the you you, not the other you) have no idea if there actually are lantern squirrels, real ones that is, or things like them. Do they have Dugongs in Malaysia? It seems like something they would have, probably not sentient ones though. You could google it but that seems like cheating somehow.
So for you, the book is twice-reflected. There is an extra hovering layer of interpretation. And also a lot of it is just the impression of someone in a cold grey place reading about a bright warm place (you actually feel a little colder in comparison when you read). In the place of the book, things are always growing, everywhere, and more than here, and there are lots of different animals, again, you think, more than you have around you.
You wonder if that might be orientalism? Does it only seem that way because you are familiar with your ecosystem and this one is cherry-picked and strange (and largely made up)? Only statistics will be able to work that out. You are sure someone on a blog is working on it.
Plus there are definitely no pigs under your house.
The extra layer, or double gleam of unknowing, either doesn't hurt, or helps you feel like you know the place in an intimate way. There are lots of fragments of life that would never show up in any story you would read. You feel like you know what its like to be in a traffic jam because of Buffalo, to worry about parking your car beneath rare and aggressive species, to wake up prickling because of lizards, pigs under the house. Complex meanings in relatives gift-plants, an aggressive bioform on the beach, neighbours with ritual problems.
And of course, finding something complex and penumbral growing in your garden. Then worrying about it. You feel like that might happen every day.
December 21, 2019
It's an interesting collection of fictional "creatures" inspired by real ones. Each has a certain origin or trait that really makes one think deeply, as it is usually a cloaked commentary on the happenings in Malaysia. The art inside is also really exquisite, I was surprised to learn that they're linoprints, and not digital art.
March 14, 2023
I have to admit that I bought two copies for friends in different countries before finally reading my own. And I regret nothing! It's a book made with care in both art and writing, I loved that every page was a flash fiction, and that all together they form a magnificent bestiary of Malaysian / Southeast Asian imaginary fauna.
January 20, 2019
The last time I read this kind of book in a Malaysian context was The Malaysian Book of the Undead. Both books are encyclopedias of fantastic creatures endemic of our country, so many were immediately familiar to most and possibly even sighted by others.
As a book, 'Creatures of Near Kingdoms' presents itself as one-page entries by Zedeck Siew, accompanied by a woodcut illustration by Sharon Chin. All 75 of them.
I read somewhere else that this book spent a long time in the making, and I think it was worth it. The fauna and flora were described in lush prose that leaves you wondering about Haunted Frangipanis and Obligation Worms and Allergy Bunnies. The illustrations lent an old-time-y sense of being back in the old days where collectors and scientists machete their way through the tropics to discover specimens.
Most of them start with "Look", which is a nice hook that connects all the entries together, but also grated on my eye-ear after a while. Not a one-sitting read for this spotter. I eventually left the book in the toilet so I can get a few more pages in, and be away long enough to wonder what else is coming. Feel free to adapt this strategy.
Do I recommend this? Heck yeah. It's the kind of book I'd come back to over and over, just to dip in at a random page and see what I find. Hopefully I won't find some other nefarious creature hidden inside the four pages that are mysteriously thicker than others.
As a book, 'Creatures of Near Kingdoms' presents itself as one-page entries by Zedeck Siew, accompanied by a woodcut illustration by Sharon Chin. All 75 of them.
I read somewhere else that this book spent a long time in the making, and I think it was worth it. The fauna and flora were described in lush prose that leaves you wondering about Haunted Frangipanis and Obligation Worms and Allergy Bunnies. The illustrations lent an old-time-y sense of being back in the old days where collectors and scientists machete their way through the tropics to discover specimens.
Most of them start with "Look", which is a nice hook that connects all the entries together, but also grated on my eye-ear after a while. Not a one-sitting read for this spotter. I eventually left the book in the toilet so I can get a few more pages in, and be away long enough to wonder what else is coming. Feel free to adapt this strategy.
Do I recommend this? Heck yeah. It's the kind of book I'd come back to over and over, just to dip in at a random page and see what I find. Hopefully I won't find some other nefarious creature hidden inside the four pages that are mysteriously thicker than others.
October 9, 2018
This was such a delightful rollicking read. Each story is a page long, but it's packed with so much detail and atmosphere that it doesn't feel too short at all. Each story was a perfectly packed spoon of nasi lemak, to use an entirely Malaysian cliche because this book makes me feel so very connected to my roots and surroundings here in the Nusantara, where the bite is balanced and has a bit of everything and just right. A fair amount of the stories had a sense of menace, danger, haunting, while others were humorous, yearning, dreamlike. The prints were beautiful and mesmerizing (I loved the flora ones best, I think), and as absorbing as the words.
March 15, 2020
Ok, that was not what I was expecting, and all for the best. The book describes various plants and animals that are similar to the plants and animals we know, but then there are not. There are Firecracker Crows, Tropical Rock Maples, Allergy Bunnies, Auntie Wasps and many more. Each one is a story of its own, where you've just met one of this amazing creatures. And each one is accompanied by a beautiful illustration, which you come back to now and then while reading.
December 26, 2018
3.5*.
Encyclopedia-ish. Quite an interesting read.
Encyclopedia-ish. Quite an interesting read.
December 8, 2018
The book is ~160 pages, paperback, liberally illustrated with woodcuts. There are 25 flora and 50 fauna inside, with each described on the right-hand page via a short second-person vignette with ecological digressions, and illustrated on the left-hand page. It could be described as a bestiary of a near-future mythical Malaysia.
I loved this book. The second-person narration seems strange at first, but it quickly becomes very comfortable, like the voice you talk to yourself in your head with. I don't think you are meant to be a specific person. Instead, each new vignette gives you new family, new surroundings that immerse you in the narrative much more deeply. The creatures are not described scientifically, but rather they are brought to life by the ways that they interact with your newly-assumed everyday life.
My heart was broken several times and I laughed out loud a few times also.
It is hard to describe the illustrations in a way that do them justice, but they are critical to the mission of the book.
I loved this book. The second-person narration seems strange at first, but it quickly becomes very comfortable, like the voice you talk to yourself in your head with. I don't think you are meant to be a specific person. Instead, each new vignette gives you new family, new surroundings that immerse you in the narrative much more deeply. The creatures are not described scientifically, but rather they are brought to life by the ways that they interact with your newly-assumed everyday life.
My heart was broken several times and I laughed out loud a few times also.
It is hard to describe the illustrations in a way that do them justice, but they are critical to the mission of the book.
July 1, 2020
Creatures of Near Kingdoms is a beautifully illustrated bestiary of Malaysian flora and fauna. Each one-page description is accompanied by a full-page illustration or lino print.
It's whimsical. And fantastic. And witty.
And occasionally confusing if you're trying too hard to figure out The Point.
It's best read in short bursts. Take it as a collection of microfiction, if you will.
It's whimsical. And fantastic. And witty.
And occasionally confusing if you're trying too hard to figure out The Point.
It's best read in short bursts. Take it as a collection of microfiction, if you will.
January 21, 2019
Another book that took me months to finish, simply because I appreciate bits by bits of the story.
I usually finish a page and sip the freshness and go deep inside my thoughts. Satisfying read.
I usually finish a page and sip the freshness and go deep inside my thoughts. Satisfying read.
May 27, 2019
I've always been a huge fan of fantasy and science fiction, so this book immediately drew my interest when I found out about it. Now, I've read compendiums of fantasy creatures before, but this is unique of course because it focuses on South-East Asia and Malaysia, more specifically.
What I enjoyed the most was discovering the quiet creativity of Zedeck Siew. Rather than retell stories of pontianak and other local beings, all of the fantastic flora and fauna in the book were unknown to me, all newly imagined into existence. While unique and certainly not real, I feel like many of the specimens found in the book could very well exist anyway.
Seeing as this is a local production, I was happy to find a distinctively Malaysian flavour in the book. Beyond that, I loved that certain topics were highlighted in the snippets about the creatures. Current international politics, local politics, conservation issues. As a environmentalist, I particularly like that current problems we have in nature were included. Reading the book, you can see that effort has been put in to make it logical, understandable and scientific. While you may not be able to learn biology from here, it is enough to spark an interest to discover more, I feel. Unfortunately, at times it feels like the author does not fully understand the ecological concepts that are used.
The best way I can describe the writing is by calling it whimsical. It's somewhat dreamy but still rooted in reality. Reading the stories for me was sometimes very difficult. The writing just wasn't as smooth as it could have been. I think that it could definitely have benefited from some more editing. And there too-liberal use of commas sometimes made me want to pull out a red pen.
On to the linoprints. I love them! They're all very detailed and paint a great picture of the creatures. However, I feel like the use of patterns for the plantlife could be very confusing. I understand and really like the reason for the choice, but I feel that it perhaps wasn't executed as well as it could have been.
Overall, Creatures of Near Kingdoms is a beautiful book.
What I enjoyed the most was discovering the quiet creativity of Zedeck Siew. Rather than retell stories of pontianak and other local beings, all of the fantastic flora and fauna in the book were unknown to me, all newly imagined into existence. While unique and certainly not real, I feel like many of the specimens found in the book could very well exist anyway.
Seeing as this is a local production, I was happy to find a distinctively Malaysian flavour in the book. Beyond that, I loved that certain topics were highlighted in the snippets about the creatures. Current international politics, local politics, conservation issues. As a environmentalist, I particularly like that current problems we have in nature were included. Reading the book, you can see that effort has been put in to make it logical, understandable and scientific. While you may not be able to learn biology from here, it is enough to spark an interest to discover more, I feel. Unfortunately, at times it feels like the author does not fully understand the ecological concepts that are used.
The best way I can describe the writing is by calling it whimsical. It's somewhat dreamy but still rooted in reality. Reading the stories for me was sometimes very difficult. The writing just wasn't as smooth as it could have been. I think that it could definitely have benefited from some more editing. And there too-liberal use of commas sometimes made me want to pull out a red pen.
On to the linoprints. I love them! They're all very detailed and paint a great picture of the creatures. However, I feel like the use of patterns for the plantlife could be very confusing. I understand and really like the reason for the choice, but I feel that it perhaps wasn't executed as well as it could have been.
Overall, Creatures of Near Kingdoms is a beautiful book.
January 22, 2026
I think this is the perfect bestiary.
I loved it for every merit by which a bestiary might be judged. Each entry was mystical and transportive enough to be a window to a culture that I know regrettably little about (although I plan on learning more!), but also grounded in a clear love for biology and the creatures of the world.
As in ancient bestiaries, each story managed to fit in a moral or allegory, but in a way that never felt awkward, or like it detracted from the selfhood of the creature described.
I especially want to recognize the beautiful linoprints of Sharon Chin, which always served to enhance or even draw out new details from their associated stories.
To heap on one last bit of praise- it is so rare that a book of this nature would pay any attention to plants beyond maybe the plant-animal hybrids of mandrakes or giant carnivorous flytraps - I really appreciated how much care was put into the plant stories, they made the book for me.
I loved it for every merit by which a bestiary might be judged. Each entry was mystical and transportive enough to be a window to a culture that I know regrettably little about (although I plan on learning more!), but also grounded in a clear love for biology and the creatures of the world.
As in ancient bestiaries, each story managed to fit in a moral or allegory, but in a way that never felt awkward, or like it detracted from the selfhood of the creature described.
I especially want to recognize the beautiful linoprints of Sharon Chin, which always served to enhance or even draw out new details from their associated stories.
To heap on one last bit of praise- it is so rare that a book of this nature would pay any attention to plants beyond maybe the plant-animal hybrids of mandrakes or giant carnivorous flytraps - I really appreciated how much care was put into the plant stories, they made the book for me.
March 13, 2019
I had to special order this from Malaysia, but I'm very glad I did. This is a unique book that blends beautiful illustrations with a kind of prose poetry. Together, the book is a kind of bestiary - not your typical RPG monster book, but a magical realist take on the concept. What I liked best about it is how author Zedeck Siew transports the reader into everyday Malaysia through his short but superb descriptions of flora and fauna. Highly recommended for open-minded readers, and worth the wait in ordering. And props to Questing Beast for turning me on to the book.
February 16, 2019
Love the book. Gorgeous, detailed illustrations. The descriptions of the creatures were mythic, mysterious, at times alluring and creepy, but nevertheless still feels every bit as magical as both Zedeck and Sharon intended. Really tough to pick a favorite but if I had to, 'Rainmaker Frog' made me smile the most.
Volume 2 please, if you will.
Volume 2 please, if you will.
March 20, 2019
The art is great and the descriptions convey a sense of place that makes me want drop every other creature or plant into a roleplaying game, although it'd be more challenging to use some of them as active parts of plot hooks.
March 24, 2019
Gorgeously, beautifully weird but oh so recognizable to Southeast Asians.
September 9, 2019
zedeck siew introduces a hidden world page by horrifying page - coupled with delightful illustrations by sharon chin - i am intrigued & terrified & i cannot help but believe every word.
January 5, 2021
Provocative prose rich with imagery, humour, and questions readers regarding what we actually know about the flora and fauna around us. About how they are creatures with their own stories to tell.
November 25, 2019
For those who see or want to see the magical in inanimate objects and living beings around us.
June 10, 2023
Pretty interesting book - a series of entries on fantastical creatures with a Malaysian twist - a sort of beastiary if you will. Not exactly what I expected it to be but quite the read nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 24 of 24 reviews