The Book of Dragons & Other Mythical Beasts

Rating:
Summary: Not what I expected but great nonetheless...
Review: I really bought this book to do research for a film that I was writing... but it doesn't contain the dense mythological detail that I thought it would. It is however quite informative and well illustrated. All references are well cited.

The sections about dragons are particularly interesting - details are well supplied.

Don't expect expect a historical text based on mythological references, but this book is still a great read.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good.
Review: Nigg's a cool guy, he's written a few other books along these lines. This one is extremely artsy, colorful on every page, illustrated by eight different people. It's divided up into four sections: dragons, quadrupeds, birds, and aquatic creatures. (Plus a one-spread micropedia at the back of additional creatures, each described in only a sentence, and only a few of which are illustrated.) Within the four sections, each creature is given a spread, one page full of text, the other page full of a colorful modern picture. It covers both popular, well-known creatures (such as the Centaur) and obscure creatures who rarely appear in legend and art (Vegetable Lamb.) It does have an index and a bibliography, which many such books lack. However, aside from having extroadinarily nice illustrations and covering all the bases, this book does not do anything new or uncover any particularily rare information.