An Illustrated Guide to Welsh Monsters and Mythical Beasts by Collette J. Ellis - A simply beautiful book

 

I try to keep my New Years Resolutions pretty simple, things I know I'm going to accomplish so I'm not setting myself up for failure. My 2022 resolutions were therefore to read more books on Folklore and mythology from across the globe as I previously really only focused on Japanese mythology (Japanese history was my major in college at one point so their mythologies and folklore were easy to focus on) and to finish reading the many "classic" books I own. I've done a pretty good job keeping up with the Folklore/mythology portion of that resolution and this was such a delightful little book that helped me further it. 

    It really is just a short high-level overview of the various monsters, spirits, and beasts that make up the mythology of Wales and of course, the Arthurian legend however it was still highly informative for only being fifty-two pages long. Many of these creatures would be familiar to most people through either their own culture's versions of them or through pop culture references ranging from books (of course) to video games. I found it extremely interesting that a lot of the monsters found in many of my favorite video game franchises have their origins in these tales and I kinda can't wait to replay many of them with the new knowledge acquired from this book! 

   The forward and introduction to this book I found to be possibly one of the best I've read in books of this nature. I'm not a big person on quotes but I found two that I believed were important enough to include here and really whenever speaking on these topics in the introduction by Sian Powell The first was "There should never be a "correct" version of a story or single description of a monster."  And honestly, I feel on one level that is self-explanatory and yet such an important distinction to make. Being an avid gamer I will never get the giant balls of evil fluff that make up the Cockatrices in the Final Fantasy Tactics franchise. They are actually some of my favorite monsters in the game. You'd be hard-pressed however to find some similarity between Ellis's Cockatrices and Square-Enix's and that's kind of what makes these monsters wonderful. We all have different versions of them in our heads. And they are all "correct". 

    In the next paragraph, Powell expands upon this idea "One of my favourite things about folklore is that similar stories and creatures can be found in various cultures across the world. This is proof to me that human beings are linked by a key motivation, storytelling and the oral tradition, no matter where we are from. But for all that beauty in similarity, there is also the danger of loss if we do not celebrate some of the differences too." Again, rather self-explanatory but an important distinction to make. The loss of culture I believe begins with the loss of a culture's folklore and mythology. These stories, fairy tales to us today, are the basis for many of the morals and values that a culture possesses. I also believe that they make up the "heart" of a culture so to speak. If we ignore celebrating the distinctions between these then we risk losing the culture that created them, no matter how similar one culture's folklore may be to another's the differences are what marks them as being distinctly theirs. And that should be celebrated and even cherished. 

And I cannot write a review of this without mentioning the gorgeous art included. Ellis was able to capture the snarl of a dragon and the terrifying visage of the Angelystor beautifully. Her Morgen (mermaid) is quite possibly one of the coolest depictions of a mermaid I've ever seen. Honestly, it's truly badass and I want a print of it. I have to say though the drawings that stood out the most to me though were any that included winged creatures, they are incredibly detailed and her drawing of a Pooka is by far my favorite in the book, to be fair on that count Pooka are some of my favorite little faes so I am a tad bit bias but still. 

I honestly cannot wait to purchase this book and I want to thank Edelweiss and the people at Eye of Newt publishing for the eArc, this book was truly a treat!