Book review: Medieval Monsters

Medieval Monsters

Author:                          Damien Kempf & Maria L. Gilbert

Publisher:                      The British Library

Type:                              Hard Cover

Pages:                             93

Genre:                            non-fiction (art)

Published:                      2015

ISBN:                              9780712357906


 The book itself looks nice, it has a bright colorful dust cover and once that is ripped off it has a blue hard cover with golden title on the spine.  

 The book begins as most of this sort do with a definition of what a monster is. Some of the monsters looked at include, the Siren, Unicorn and werewolves. 

 The use of "God" as singular is jarring especially when the book doesn't limit itself to solely monotheistic sources. I am left to assume that when they say "God" they mean one of the christian variety's, but when discussing non christian monsters this may not be an accurate assumption. The book also uses the outdated BC/AD timescale instead of the secular BCE and CE.
 While the focus on Christianity indeed gets boring the book does devote some pages to the famous gay Greek  ruler Alexander the Great. Specifically how he was conceived by a magician transformed into a dragon posing as a God. It also briefly mentions some monsters he encountered on his journeys before the subject again turns biblical.

I feel like the different people discussed should have a heading at the top of the page instead of just launching into it. 

 I am sorry to say that this book is rather disappointing, it hardly delves into any details about monsters, and seems to get distracted with biblical stories, iv read quite a few different versions of the christian bibles as i am sure most readers have, i would have preferred the book address the road less traveled or the monsters less well known.

 The art however is incredible and lavishes every page, some pages are devoted only to showing off this medieval art. While it does have a illustration credits section in the back, i would have preferred to learn more about the actual monsters depicted in the art. 

 I would only recommend this as a book for children, to help inspire imagination and an bolster an interest in history. Or perhaps to someone very interested in medieval art.