Koristan priručnik, iako ima grešaka.

Beautiful artwork and a pleasure to dip into now and again.

Fascinating <3 Small Tolkien's vocabulary or handbook for better understanding the Middle-Earth characters, landscapes and realms. Never gets tedious and the one should read it every month or so.

Tohle je taková malá zrůdnost. Plno gramatických chyb jako takových, překlepy v názvech míst, vynechávání spojek a stylisticky hrozně poskládané věty. A nakonec ilustrace? Některé opravdu stojí za to.

Obsahově kniha pobírá neskutečné množství pojmů, ale rozhodně je lepší mít načtený jak Silmarillion, tak trilogii a Hobita. A nakonec je to David Day, neříkám, že dělal kopance, ale nechává se rád unést vlastní prezentací.

As a fan of Lord of the Rings, I was drawn to this book as soon as I saw it. Even the cover art seemed to imply the usefulness and beauty waiting to be found inside. I wasn't disappointed! A great reference filled with beautify illustrations, and, although I am a big fan of the movies and their aesthetic, I was happy to see this book was uninfluenced by them.

a multitude of flora and fauna covering a time span of thousand of years a must for people who like Tolkien

In ye olden days of the mid-1980s books and bookstores focused on money and power. Finances and the law were hot topics...elves and magic, not so much. So when I, a humble Tolkien fan, discovered this brilliant tome of all things Tolkien I nearly cried.

A Tolkien Bestiary is an illustrated collection of Middle Earth creatures. The drawings are stark, they are beautiful, they evoke emotion and brought to life the author's work at a time when there was little else to go on visually aside from - though personally beloved and earnest as they were - honestly subpar animated movies.




I reveled in this thick book packed with all manner of man and monster. It sparked imagination in me in a way few things have ever done.

Rating: 4 stars w/an extra given purely out of love.

Very very cool~!

This got three stars mostly because I love Tolkien in an irrepressible, nostalgic way. Frankly, this is not a high-quality encyclopedia. I thought the entries were organized and linked poorly. Day should have made better use of some sort of "See Also" tag to make navigation easier. In addition, the map was incomplete (I can't tell you how many times I scoured the map for a location listed in the text only to be disappointed), and the timelines were confusing. The writing style was your typical, overblown, inverted-sentence-structure, high-fantasy silliness. The illustrations were hit or miss. But I just love reading about elves and dwarves and ents, so I still enjoyed reading this.

A nice quick reference guide to the world of tolkien

More like an illustrated encyclopedia inspired by the medieval bestiary tradition than a true bestiary.

There's much more broad Tolkienic lore here than a focused guide to beasts would contain, and the illustrations are nothing like an alchemic anatomy or even an Audubon fieldbook. More often they depict scenes, events, and moods instead.

A decent resource, despite the misleading title.

"A bestiary is a book about beasts," writes author David Day in the introduction to his own splendid addition to that unique literary genre, a class of books that has come down to us from the medieval imagination and refuses to be extinguished by modern science altogether. And Day's book is indeed about the beasts and alien life of Tolkien's wonderful world (fire-drakes, dwarves, giant spiders, elves, eagles, orcs, trolls, ents, half-orcs, and of course Hobbits, to name but a few), but it is so much more as well. Intermingled with all the articles and descriptions about Middle-earth's various monsters, animals and even races are valuable nuggests of information and history tied in to virtually every facet of Tolkien's beloved dreamworld, plus a quality map of Middle-earth and a pair of timelines helpful for sorting out some of the historical background at a glance. Turning through this book's beautiful pages is not only an opportunity to savor monsters of myth and magic, but a chance to see how the various elements of a great writer's imagination all fit together to create one of the most enduring literary landscapes of all time. Be that as it may, it is still a book that fulfills its face purpose masterfully. The alphabetized catalogue of Middle-earth's legendary denizes is written in a clear, rather academic but eminently friendly and engaging style that makes reading its contents an easy, almost compulsory task. The illustrations, both color and monocrhome, are eye-catching, classy, and distinctive. Perhaps too distinctive for some tastes; attractive as the pictures are individually and as a whole, they are highly stylized and often quite unrealistic. Those who are accustomed to more true-to-life pictures may not be satisfied with much of this book's otherwise outstanding artwork. Overall, however, the book is both visually appealing and intellectually stimulating, and one that most any Tolkien devotee or fantasy devotee should enjoy through many repeated perusals. Definitely recommended.