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Beasts & Creatures Myths & Tales
Mythological beasts and creatures come in every shape and size, sometimes good, sometimes evil, but often indifferent to the needs of humankind. A beautiful new collection of tales from many different Norse to Celtic, Greek to Indian, Japanese to Egyptian.
With their weird combination of animal limbs, or distorted visions of human perception, beasts and creatures can be found in all myths and legends of the world, often used to demonstrate moral or fabulistic stories, and explain extreme natural phenomena. An ideal companion to Gods & Monsters Myths & Tales, this new collection includes more of the most famous and recognizable beasts, with some insight too into the rare and the little known: the Simurgh – the gigantic mythical bird of Persian mythology and literature – mingles with the monstrous Great Head of Iroquois folklore; the Kraken of originally Scandinvavian legend can be found alongside North America's Bigfoot, or Sasquatch if you prefer. Of course, from the Greek and Celtic mythologies come the Phoenix, Scylla and Charybdis, the Unicorn, Satyrs and Fauns, Centaurs and Minotaurs, the Basilisk and the Griffin. And let's not forget the goblins of the Norse, the ogreish monsters of Japanese mythology, the Oni, and the nymphs, fairies and sprites that appear in many different mythological traditions. This truly is a wonderful collection of tales.
The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.
With their weird combination of animal limbs, or distorted visions of human perception, beasts and creatures can be found in all myths and legends of the world, often used to demonstrate moral or fabulistic stories, and explain extreme natural phenomena. An ideal companion to Gods & Monsters Myths & Tales, this new collection includes more of the most famous and recognizable beasts, with some insight too into the rare and the little known: the Simurgh – the gigantic mythical bird of Persian mythology and literature – mingles with the monstrous Great Head of Iroquois folklore; the Kraken of originally Scandinvavian legend can be found alongside North America's Bigfoot, or Sasquatch if you prefer. Of course, from the Greek and Celtic mythologies come the Phoenix, Scylla and Charybdis, the Unicorn, Satyrs and Fauns, Centaurs and Minotaurs, the Basilisk and the Griffin. And let's not forget the goblins of the Norse, the ogreish monsters of Japanese mythology, the Oni, and the nymphs, fairies and sprites that appear in many different mythological traditions. This truly is a wonderful collection of tales.
The Flame Tree Gothic Fantasy, Classic Stories and Epic Tales collections bring together the entire range of myth, folklore and modern short fiction. Highlighting the roots of suspense, supernatural, science fiction and mystery stories the books in Flame Tree Collections series are beautifully presented, perfect as a gift and offer a lifetime of reading pleasure.
432 pages, Hardcover
Published June 28, 2022
20 people are currently reading
184 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 8, 2024
For starters, there were a lot of typos, spelling errors, and grammatical problems. Like, way more than I'm used to seeing in books. It felt kind of half assed. Secondly, I don't understand the reasoning behind only providing geographical context in the table of contents. I shouldn't have to flip back to that every new story just to figure out if I'm reading something from Germany or Romania or whatever.
My main issue with this arose when I was looking at the table of contents. "How Mad Buffalo Fought the Thunder-Bird" is listed as being "Native American Mythology." Considering the fact that this continent was populated by Indigenous peoples long before Europeans got here, I find it hard to believe this myth can be attributed only vaguely to the *whole.* Nobody bothered to figure out which nation the myth came from? I was also troubled by the fact that, seemingly, every Native American story within the book came from a source as far back as the mid-1800s sometimes (and I also have to assume all three sources are white people), which to me raises concerns about the authenticity and accuracy of the stories.
Obviously mythology from Greece, Rome, and certain areas of Europe (ie Beowulf/ Norse mythology) would be relatively easy to recreate in a book like this with little issue regarding accuracy, purely because of how thoroughly those stories are already ingrained in western culture. But the mythology from "less popular" cultures, like Africa or even North America, feels to me like it maybe needs a little more thorough research to be presented.
Of course, most mythology won't be subject to change if it was recorded accurately the first time. But we have problems with this even regarding Norse mythology, since it was only recorded *after* Christianity had already made it to the areas that were worshipping Norse gods. I just feel like the older sources for some of the less popularized mythologies needed some extra research and maybe multiple sources for one myth, because otherwise I have trouble trusting what I'm reading is accurate.
Also, the print was like, ridiculously tiny for the amount of words they were cramming onto a page. So far I'm not super impressed by the Flame Tree mythology books I've read.
DNF'd
My main issue with this arose when I was looking at the table of contents. "How Mad Buffalo Fought the Thunder-Bird" is listed as being "Native American Mythology." Considering the fact that this continent was populated by Indigenous peoples long before Europeans got here, I find it hard to believe this myth can be attributed only vaguely to the *whole.* Nobody bothered to figure out which nation the myth came from? I was also troubled by the fact that, seemingly, every Native American story within the book came from a source as far back as the mid-1800s sometimes (and I also have to assume all three sources are white people), which to me raises concerns about the authenticity and accuracy of the stories.
Obviously mythology from Greece, Rome, and certain areas of Europe (ie Beowulf/ Norse mythology) would be relatively easy to recreate in a book like this with little issue regarding accuracy, purely because of how thoroughly those stories are already ingrained in western culture. But the mythology from "less popular" cultures, like Africa or even North America, feels to me like it maybe needs a little more thorough research to be presented.
Of course, most mythology won't be subject to change if it was recorded accurately the first time. But we have problems with this even regarding Norse mythology, since it was only recorded *after* Christianity had already made it to the areas that were worshipping Norse gods. I just feel like the older sources for some of the less popularized mythologies needed some extra research and maybe multiple sources for one myth, because otherwise I have trouble trusting what I'm reading is accurate.
Also, the print was like, ridiculously tiny for the amount of words they were cramming onto a page. So far I'm not super impressed by the Flame Tree mythology books I've read.
DNF'd
September 21, 2022
The other Flame Tree books I've read have all been short story collections centred around different genres or sub-genres, so I was expecting this to be the same. This was more of a fairytale/mythology compendium. A few of the sections even seemed more like essays on certain phenomena than stories. It was an odd mix, but interesting and enjoyable nonetheless.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews