undertherowantree’s Reviews > Mythopedia: An Encyclopedia of Mythical Beasts and Their Magical Tales > Status Update

The illustrations are so busy with so much to look at I feel they could make a great colouring book based off of this. There is something almost psychedelic about the maximalist illustrations with all their bold clashing colours.

I'm currently just finishing off the section on Africa and considering it is the continent with the most countries, I am quite disappointed how small this section is as well. I think perhaps I just want even more, which I guess is not a bad thing. MORE!!

Also, I would have liked perhaps some more representation from northern Latin America, for instance, Mexico and other nearby countries have beautiful folktales and mythology. Again, Aztec mythology felt dominant in this section.

So far Europe was the most underwhelming chapter. Although, I appreciate the thought and variety of the other continents. It feels like Europe was an afterthought. In most literature and media there are significant parts of Europe that are often forgotten with rich cultures and I was hoping this would fill this gap. Plus, I feel Greek and Norse mythology, if anything, is overly represented.

I would love to see them tackle myths about humans, gods and goddesses. I feel like this is a nice round up of all the well-known and best loved myths, although I would like to see some lesser known tales from smaller minority communities tackled in a future volume.

I do also have a concern whether it it very "Western" of us to call these all myths. 'Myth' implies fictional undertones and I wonder whether the indigenous cultures themselves actually consider these myths or truths, in which case it would be somewhat offensive for us to label them "myth", even though in our experience that would be what our experiences and beliefs tell us (in the West) to label these.

I think a volume 2 to fill in the gaps would be a great idea. There is no shortage of myths to cover.

I wish that they would also specify countries/regions for each, however I think this would highlight that large regions have been missed out. I know that trying to include everyone would be impossible, but maybe picking one Greek, Norwegian, Aztec creature instead of a few and allowing the space to give other cultures a little more voice would have improved the collection.

I am actually quite disappointed with the diversity in the Europe section apart from one tale from Russia they are all either Greek or Norse (Scandinavian), completely disregarding most of Europe and it's rich variety of cultures. What about Eastern Europe? I was also hoping for a Celtic/Gaelic myth to creep in somewhere. Nope.