Book Review: The search for the Giant Squid

 The search for the Giant Squid

The biology and mythology of the worlds most elusive sea creature 

 

 

Editor:                            Richard Ellis

Publisher:                      Penguin Books

Type:                              Soft Cover

Pages:                             250

Genre:                            non-fiction

Published:                     1998

ISBN:                             9780140286762

The book itself is well made as should be expected from a major publisher. It has many black and white drawings and photographs. Sadly this work does have photos of deceased Cephalopods. The text is a little on the small side for my ageing eyes. The book has on page notes that are very helpful.

Full disclosure; I love Cephalopods they are my favorite animal on earth, and that includes humans,and i am very interested in Cryptozoology. So i really wanted to love this book. 

  At the beginning of the book (page 4) the author states that the Okapi was not suspected to exist until a full specimen was found. This was very worrisome for everything i read afterwords as i believed this statement to be untrue. I went to a trusted resource Cryptozoology A to Z by Loren Coleman and Jerome Clark and indeed i was correct. Now i thought that perhaps the author was simply unfamiliar with Cryptozology but he does mention it a few times and it would be impossible to study the giant squid without studying cryptozoology. So i don't know how this error occurred, but when reading a book and knowing that such errors exist within it it does bring into question everything else in the book.

The book begins with an examination of what the giant squid is. The author seems to dispute the larger sized encounters because i think, the creature was not captured for study.  I would have preferred a more skeptical scientific view, but this is a minor gripe as long as the encounters are not dissed out of hand.
 So this problem was mine and not the books. The author took issue with the fictional descriptions of the giant squid a few times and it struck me as an odd thing to do. Upon consideration i can understand his stance, in that it puts misinformation into the public arena, by those who can not differentiate between fact and fiction. In fact later a whole chapter is devoted to giant squid in fiction. Maybe i would have dealt with the parts about fictional squid in that chapter alone.
The book then looks at various sea creature sightings and tries to see if those sightings were actually not of serpents or other beasts but were misidentified giant squid. the author is reasonably convincing in this endeavor. And it is good to see him admitting that some sea monsters just do not fit the squid at all. It really does bring more credibility to a theory when you can see that your idea doesn't fit every example.

The book examines what we know about cephalopods and what can be extrapolated from this knowledge and applied to the giant squid. We then see the different names and classifications the giant squid has had through history.
  A lot of attention is given to the interaction between whale and squid. And a chapter is devoted to models of the giant squid, which is something i wasn't expecting.

 In the conclusion the author does consider if he has been too eager to dismiss many reports of the giant squid, which is good to see. The back of the book does have a list of "authenticated" giant squid sightings and standings, an extensive reference section, all illustration credits, and the all important index.

 I am really conflicted by this book. Reading it seemed very disjointed and while looking for the ISBN to write this review i noticed that portions of the book had been previously published. I am not really sure if that is what i was picking up or not. It could be the inclusion of fiction, or even the chapter on the models?
 Perhaps in a book about a major cryptozoological success story i had expected the field of cryptozoology to be held up to a higher regard. Trying to give this book a rating is hurting my head. I appreciate it, i think i would have enjoyed it more if i wasn't so interested in cryptozology which is a weird thing t say i know.
 Perhaps despite my love of cephalopods, cryptozology, history, and monster fiction i am not the target reader, but then i am not sure who is. I feel like the book tried to be or do to many things perhaps.  

 I also feel like i am sounding harsher than i actually feel. I would still recommend this book to someone interested in the subjects mentioned, but i definitely would also advice looking into those subjects in separate dedicated works as well.