- Hardcover: 184 pages
- Publisher: Simon & Schuster (April 1, 2000)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0684869578
- ISBN-13: 978-0684869575
I received this book from a friend who was giving Pagan books and things from her sister to other Pagans since she herself is an atheist. It was in the stack, I honestly hadn't looked at it until recently. I've always been quite skeptical about Faeries/Faerie Wicca and anything related to it. Whenever I've picked up a book about it to browse in the book shop, I always found that it was too "Tinkerbell" and Disney for me. (I don't own either of those, by the way!!!) I was hoping that I'd feel differently about this book, so I tried to give it a chance, I really did.
The first thing that somewhat bothered me about this book was how they tried to present it as an ACTUAL encyclopedia. When writing about stuff from folk lore and fairy tales, I prefer my books to actually state that they are anthologies, or something of the like, to show that they are a collection of stories. As far as the stories included in the book go, they actually are pretty decent at going through European and nearby folk lore to show the Fae in all their mystery. The illustrations are mediocre at best. I've seen some gorgeous fantasy art between gaming conventions and various Pagan stores I've browsed. If these pictures were prints, I wouldn't be bothering to buy them to put up on my walls. The drawings are more sketches hastily filled in with water color, versus actual drawing that would give life to the pictures, and are a completely different style from the beautiful images on the cover of the book.
I know this is my shortest review yet, but there is so little content to actually review! My advice? Definitely don't consider this a source for any magical practices, but, it is a sort of cute kitschy coffee table book if you get it cheap enough, and certainly not at the $25 MSRP.
Actually if you look into the mythology, only a very small portion of the gentry really fit into the Disnified version like Tinkerbell (which coincidentally I also do not own). Since you didn't mention it in your review (and its quite possible it was never mentioned in the book as I haven't read that particular encyclopedia on the little folk, does that particular book have any mention of how to contact them or invite them into your home, or how to deal with them? Or is it primarily just a collection of folklore and stories?
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