cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/13thFloor/t/468547
David Day's A TOLKIEN BESTIARY is a scholarly, definitive and enchantingly beautiful explanation of all the imaginary beasts, monsters, races, nations,deities, fauna and flora of J.R.R- Tolkien's fantasy worlds of Middle-earth and the Undying Lands.
David Day has identified, analyzed and described 129 separate races. Each is lucidly explained in terms of its physical appearance, language, behavior and culture. A TOLKIEN BESTIARY does not retell their stories: its purpose is to make Tolkien’s own books more accessible by identifying his living creatures and explaining their roles in his epic world.
While not the most accurate of the Tolkien Bestiaries, this one was the first, and the one with the best artwork.
Downloads for the novels:
I miss how unique and unpolished the art in old school speculative fiction used to be allowed to be. I love the angle-dragon and I feel like nothing like him would be allowed to exist on the cover a non-self-published book nowadays.
The artist who drew the dragon also illustrated a version of Michael Creighton's Eaters of the Dead which was just amazing. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. His first name is Ian I believe
This whole paragraph is giving me deja vu. I know I've read it before. Update: I remember! It was a dream I had last year about an "angle-dragon" that lived in the angles of reality. I had just finished reading China Mieville's The Scar which contains a character that moves through the angles of reality. Weird!
If you're talking of the angle dragon seen on this image, then I must say that's definitely not unpolished IMO and I love it. I definitely prefer this over the generic dragons we get on book covers.
I wasn't saying it as a bad thing, just saying it looks a lot more raw and unfiltered than your standard DND sourcebook.
I guess it's just a different style.