Rating - ⭐⭐⭐1/3
"A Cornucopia..of Mythical Places,.. People, Beings and Beasts
Where does the boogeyman come from?
What creatures feast on faithful men?
How do you defeat a minotaur?
What really riles a dragon?
Where would you find real-life werewolves?
What happened to Atlantis?
From dragons, vampires, werewolves and fairies to flying carpets, lost cities and modern-day mysteries,
this delightful compendium of over 250 weird and wonderful legends, myths and monsters will entertain and astound anyone."
Breverton's Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths and Legends is a nonfiction by Terry Breverton.
As the title suggests, this book is a compendium of various monsters, myths and legends from all around the globe. The book is divided into several sections and covers wide topics such as people, places, objects, and things that go bump in the night.
On the whole, I did enjoy this book, mainly due to the fact that I am someone who loves learning and this book covers a lot of subjects I like. That being said, the reason why I gave it the rating I did and not anything higher is because this was rather chunky. This is only over 350 pages but I felt like it was taking me forever to get through it.
For the most part, the author did well at keeping things concise and only giving smaller snippets of information for each entry. And I say for the most part because there were some rather long sections, some filled entirely with italics which is a bit hard to read. The length did make it a bit of a chore to get through the book.
I also found that there was some repetition. Some topics would be repeated a few times because they overlapped in different sections. Certain topics such as premonitions and prophecies were also focused on a lot. I think that it would have been better had the author split the book up section by section into smaller books. That way it would not feel as dense and hard to get through. Some sections were also so short that they could have been taken out to make the book shorter, but if it was separated then it would have been fine.
Enjoying this book would also come down to personal preference. A good of the content I already knew as a history major, and a good amount I cared less about and was more inclined to skip over it.
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