GREENLAND'S MYTHS & MONSTERS: MYTHICAL MONSTERS OF GREENLAND: A Survival Guide, & BESTIARIUM GREENLANDICA: A compendium of the mythical creatures, spirits, and strange beings of Greenland

BESTIARIUM GREENLANDICA: A compendium of the mythical creatures, spirits, and strange beings of Greenland
MARIA BACH KREUTZMANN (ed.), UJAMMIUGAQ ENGELL, AGUST KRISTINSSON, CARINA LILLEGAARD LØVGREEN, CHRISTIAN FLEISCHER REX, COCO APUNNGUAQ LYNGE, JONATAN BRÜSCH, MAJA-LISA KEHLET
Eye of Newt Books
$25.18 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: Meet the motley crew of dangerous, cheeky, and fantastical beings of Greenland!

The world of Greenlandic mythology is inhabited by creatures that have played a vital role in Inuit beliefs and stories throughout the ages. The Bestiarium is a collection of what is generally known about these diverse beings, spirits, and animals. Their stories are gritty, cruel, and reflect from the harsh landscape and lifestyle of ancient Greenland.

Descriptions are paired with illustrations by contemporary Greenlandic illustrators that transport these mythological beings into the 21st Century. A brief history of Greenland and the shaman tradition launches the reader into the ancient world of Greenland and how myth and legend told generation after generation can mould and depict a place that was dark and grim as mischievous and lively and full of natural wonders.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A world of mythology I was utterly unaware that I was unaware of has gripped my imagination.
where we're going

what we're speaking

how we know what we're talking about is legit


some explanations of how this all goes down

She seems nice. Not. Also, aren't you cold, ma'am?

NIGHTMARE!

Poochie's got some 'tude.

They're creepy, and they're gorgeous.

An amazing tale; an artwork that's stare-able.

Who on your gifting list loves mythology? Loves to poke into cultural corners not already familiar? Is there a budding Greta Thunberg who would like to know what it is we're protecting when we shout at the PTB to stop playacting at solutions to the emissions debacle?

A book like this one will fill that slot under the Yule tree with only a minimum of tutting about its technological origins. I think you'll get big points for reaching outside the easy, ordinary ideas, too.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


MYTHICAL MONSTERS OF GREENLAND: A Survival Guide
MARIA BACH KREUTZMANN (illus. Coco Apunnguaq Lynge)
Inhabit Media
$24.95 hardcover, available now

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: This book introduces kids to all the creepy, spooky, and downright scary creatures told about in traditional Greenlandic mythology.

What should you do if you encounter a Qivittoq? Can you outrun the fabled Ikusik? And what is a Tupilak made of?

About 4500 years ago, the first Inuit landed in Greenland via North America, bringing with them stories about the mythical beings that lived alongside them. These creatures and monsters have survived the ravages of time and tide, although they have sometimes had to re-invent themselves to fit the modern world.

This handy pocket guide will help guide you through the do’s and don'ts should you encounter any of these creatures in the Arctic wilderness.

Happy hunting!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Back to Greenland we go, thence to learn more about the cultural fear and coping with the unknown traditions.

What an excellent personification of vengeance! Really looks the part, and goodness knows we're in for a spell of that entity's ascendance.

The Northern lights are the road of the dead in Inuit tradition. I'd like to travel that road when I die.

This dude, OTOH, can stay right the hell away!

I think this is one of the world's great unmined storyverses. The scope to being these down to the rich, film-hungry Global South could do this small, Indigenous-run press pretty darn well financially.

The scope of Inuit culture is steadily changing. Climate change means we're at risk of not knowing what it is we're putting in danger of disappearance. Spending some pleasantly scary time learning what makes the Inuit kids have nightmares isn't remotely painful with this beautiful object as a guide.

A good way to get some coolness credibility with your grand or nibling whose environmebtal consciousness hasn't made them lose interest in getting Yule gifts.

KAIJU UNLEASHED: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Strange Beasts, ideal #Booksgiving gift for your otaku lover of kaiju

KAIJU UNLEASHED: An Illustrated Guide to the World of Strange Beasts
SHAWN PRYOR (foreword by Jason Barr)
Epic Ink/Quarto
$29.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Kaiju Unleashed offers a general introduction to the exciting film genre, serves as a guidebook to its film highlights, and celebrates its practitioners, trends, and stories.

Celebrate the world of movie monsters and beasts with Kaiju Unleashed, a complete reference guide to strange creatures in film and how they came to be.

Kaiju (Japanese for “strange creature”) is a film genre that emerged in Japan in the early ’50s. The movies center on giant monsters battling humans, machines, or other beasts. First popular in the ’50s and ’60s, this film category has stomped its way back into mainstream culture.

This comprehensive guide features:

A foreword by Jason Barr, author of The Kaiju Film and The Kaiju Connection

A thorough discussion of monster movies (Gamera; Rodan; Destroy All Monsters)

Insight into how kaiju has impacted international films (Ant-Man; Attack of the 50-Foot Woman; Jurassic Park)

Stunning movie posters and film stills, plus fan-made tributes to some of the kaiju classics (Godzilla; King Kong; Mothra; Pacific Rim)

If you are a kaiju fan or are interested in kaiju’s cultural influence worldwide, this display-worthy volume provides the perfect general introduction to the genre, reference to its film highlights, and celebration of its practitioners, trends, and stories.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Whatever you think of this film genre, you should at least admit it's got serious cultural staying power...seventy years and counting...and think of the millions of fans it's spawned who've gone on to make very successful careers out of this born-of-anxiety monster-laden universe in many fields. The author goes into manga, anime, and of course film, practitioners of all sorts of kaiju storytelling.

This heavy-on-the-graphics volume goes into the highlights of how, when, and to a limited extent, why the genre got its hooks into pop culture. The text is not the whole point; the illustrations and graphics are not the whole point; the gestalt is superior to any of its constituent elements.

It's never going to be obvious to non-fans (to which group I belong) why this genre appeals enough to be an organizing principle for one's life. It also doesn't matter a whit. Even if you can't reliably tell the difference between Godzilla and Rodan, you probably have someone close who can, does, and has dreams in kaiju-ese. Nibling, grand, or sibling...perish forbid, spouse...they'll love this celebratory festival of behind-the-scenes stories and images, faces to put with names the fan's heard before, and technical effects illustrations.

Never forget all the King Kong-verse films! They're kaiju, too.

You'll get really big points from your otaku giftee with this celebratory recounting of the development and impact of their doted-on genre. I predict a quiet hour or two as the flipping and dipping and kvelling start when the wrappings fall. Exactly the spirit of Jólabókaflóð/Booksgiving.

2024 NEBULA WINNER: SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN, Literature's pipe organ with the "Strange" stop pulled all the way out

SOMEONE YOU CAN BUILD A NEST IN
JOHN WISWELL
DAW Books
$28.00 hardcover, available now

WINNER of the 2024 Nebula Award!

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Discover this creepy, charming monster-slaying fantasy romance—from the perspective of the monster—by Nebula Award-winning debut author John Wiswell

Shesheshen has made a mistake fatal to all monsters: she's fallen in love.

Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past meals: a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent co-parent: an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the area: she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly deadly, Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.

And the bigger challenge remains: surviving her toxic in-laws long enough to learn to build a life with, rather than in, the love of her life.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I really hoped that I'd find something that recalled for me the affect and effect of Mrs Caliban in this book.

Not so much.

This being the twenty-first century, I get it; that kind of quiet exploration of repressed rage and thwarted love is not the way this louder, more boisterous time copes with Life. Also, the author's an ace man. We aren't much for writing quiet women unless they are silenced by our power and privilege over them. (Look at the mind-numbing abundance of male-authored "thrillers" centering sex crimes against women sometime.) What this book does, then, is entirely unlike what I was prepared for.

This is a large pipe organ's keyboard. The stops, those round thingies, are the way the organist chooses the kind of sound...brash blaring trumpets, quiet soft woodwinds...the instrument will send into your ears. Author Wiswell pulled the "Strange" stop on his book's keyboard all the way out and then used the loud pedal.

The idea of this being reproducing in the same unspeakably horrifying way that wasps do is nightmarish enough for me. I absolutely abominate wasps. But then to be confronted with Shesheshen, the wasplike alien's, twisted psychology...finding its parasitic fatal-for-Homily (her intended victim) reproductive strategy LOVING!...and I thought, "that's me out!"

And then...

The reason I kept going, pushing past the extreme horripilation induced at the mere notion of this, this travesty on Love was the strength of my horror. If I am this repulsed and infuriated, the author is saying something loud and clear, and however much I don't *like* hearing it I should listen. I am honestly surprised to say I am glad that I did.

Female-presenting monsters are having A Moment, it seems...Alasdair Gray's Poor Things, a book I did not like but a film that was a note-perfect adaptation of it most recently....and Author Wiswell's more SFnal take on it surpasses that deeply strange story. In imaging an alien just trying to exist, as "Bella Baxter" does, as Frankenstein's monster does, but in such a revulsion-evoking way, Author Wiswell makes his readers stop and think: "where is my horror coming from?" Survival by consuming one's host is appalling! When one is the host, yes; but really, are we any different? We are using up the planet, we are complicit in the slave labor that provides us the benefits of food to eat, as well as the devices you're reading and I'm writing this on, and that offers the laborers nothing but early graves.

Some people who reviewed the book on Goodreads had some reservations about the nature of a man writing a love story between a woman and a female-presenting alien, when the love was not sapphic but asexual. To me, this felt like a feature, not a bug (!), because the point was asexuality. That was something I found moving, once I wrapped my head around it; the lovers are genuinely in love and they cannot deny or repress their feelings, nor are these feelings physiologically expressed through sex. If this is something you are unfamiliar with, I recommend reading the excellent Ace by Angela Chen. It was that book that, for the first time, presented me with information about the experience of asexuality, by an asexual person; it is extremely illuminating for someone not asexual.

The attentive have noticed my rating lacks a star despite my laudatory comments. This is not due to its sexual challenge to the allo overculture. It is due to the frankly peculiar pacing, too slow then zooming through character-building opportunities; it's due to the amount of body horror exceeding my personal limits; it's due to my very old-fashioned purseylipped response to the amount of lying Shesheshen does to Homily, that never causes any comment or evokes any sense of betrayal, nor causes Homily to require some assurance that she *can* trust Shesheshen.

Also I kept reading her name as "Hominy" and, considering she was being assessed as a meal by Shesheshen, it made me giggle most immaturely.

None of my minor crotchets should stop you from getting this deeply affecting and very peculiar story into your eyeholes. Soonest.