Here are my thoughts on some other books I've finished recently, besides the John Mandeville one. The Oracle of Maracoor, by Gregory Maguire - The second book of the Another Day series has Elphaba's granddaughter Rain escape from prison with the ten-year-old Cossy during an invasion. Some kind of rift in reality leads to mythical creatures showing up in Maracoor, including some harpies who join them on their journey. A few Winged Monkeys also appear, and Iskinaary the Goose returns. The party seeks out the titular Oracle, who turns out to be the Wizard of Oz again, as his balloon brought him to this country after he fled the Emerald City.

I was intending to include this in a post with other book reviews, but I think it deserves its own entry. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville was a pretty fascinating read. It purports to be the memoirs of a fourteenth-century English knight who traveled as far as China. There's no evidence that this author even existed, let alone that he visited any of the places he mentions. Researchers have found that a lot of his descriptions come pretty much directly from other sources, and a lot of it is obviously untrue anyway, although it likely reflects legends and hearsay of the time.

Since the most recent book I've read involves the legend of the Flying Dutchman, I figure I should give an overview of that story. I actually thought I already had, but I can't find it through a Google search. The first reference to the ghost ship, probably based on sightings of a mirage on the waters, appeared in 1795; but it's likely the myth itself predates that. Later, the legend became more specific, focusing on one Captain Vanderdecker or Vanderdecken, who was cursed after insisting on sailing around the Cape of Good Hope despite unfavorable weather conditions, and then swearing that he would round the cape if it took until doomsday.

Breverton's Phantasmagoria: A Compendium of Monsters, Myths and Legends, by Terry Breverton - This is a collection of myths and legends, some ancient and others pretty recent. They include people, places, artifacts, and both mythical animals and weird beliefs about real animals. There's a lot of interesting stuff, but it's not organized very well and the entries tend to be quite brief Most of the legends are just recorded at face value, even when they've been pretty well debunked. It's good for a starting point, and it has a lot of cool pictures.

I know I've mentioned the Reynard the Fox cycle a few times, but I don't think I've ever really gone into detail about it. The version of the story I read is the nineteenth-century adaptation by Henry Morley, which was based on William Caxton's fifteenth-century translation from Dutch. The tales were popular throughout Europe, and are thought to have originated in oral form in France or Germany. The idea of using animals as characters to represent human traits was familiar at least since the time of Aesop, and these stories use some of the standard characterizations, particularly the fox as trickster and the lion as king.

Breath of Death VII: The Beginning - I got this in a package deal with Cthulhu Saves the World, also from Zeboyd Games, and this one came first. I believe there's now a version with souped-up graphics, but that's not the one I have. Since I played Cthulhu first, however, this feels like a prototype. And no, there are no other Breath of Deaths, which I guess puts the game in the same category as Leonard Part VI, although this is actually funny. That's a pretty short game, and this is even shorter.

The Carnelian Cube, by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt - These two authors collaborated on the Harold Shea stories. I've enjoyed other stuff by Sprague de Camp, while the two I read by Pratt solo, The Blue Star and The Well of the Unicorn, didn't grab me. Oh, well. In this book, the archaeologist Arthur Finch finds a magical cube that can transfer someone between worlds based on their desires. He first wants a more rational world, and finds one where he has a job as a poet, but everyone is defined only by their occupations, and there are some strange rules about names and language.

I thought I might take a look at some of the folklore and mythology in Peer Gynt, especially since I've been thinking about trolls recently. I remember seeing an abridged version of Henrik Ibsen's play in college, and the trolls and the Button-Moulder stuck with me. I read the script online, although that isn't usually the best way to fully absorb plays. It jumps around a lot, with Peter traveling all around the world and encountering both realistic and fantastic situations. I've seen Goethe's Faust cited as similar in some ways, and they have the same feel of the characters moving around without a lot of reason and without it affecting them much.

ALT: a black and white pixel art of a tree with a crying face in a forest

SPOILERS for some movies and television I've seen fairly recently. We Have Always Lived in the Castle - This is an adaptation of a Shirley Jackson novel, and the only thing of hers I really know is the short movie of The Lottery that we watched in eighth grade English class. It's about tradition and ritual being followed even when it's dangerous and doesn't make sense. We don't know of any particular reason why this town kills one randomly chosen resident every year; it's just what they do. There was some of that theme in this as well, as the title itself suggests.

Looking for information on various legends from around the world about dragons and serpents, I've found that a South African cryptid called the Grootslang appears to be quite popular online. From what I've seen, however, some of the details that make it interesting weren't really part of the original legends at all. The earliest accounts are just about a really big snake, and that's what the name indicates as well. And since it's from Dutch, the first syllable would be pronounced like "groat," not like the alien tree guy. Its home is said to be a cave in the Richtersveld, known as the Bottomless Pit or the Wonder Hole.

The Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles - This is a prequel to the original game, released three years later in 2012. It focuses on the common prequel theme of how characters already shown as friends came to know each other, in this case Nathaniel Bonnet and the Critter. We learn of the Critter's origin as part of a group of alien beings (well, they do look like the Yip-Yip Martians from Sesame Street) with highly advanced technology. A few of them have set up a base in the Arctic, and Munkus wants them to build a machine that can create mech suits for him and his troops.

Sign of the Labrys, by Margaret St. Clair - This is one of the books that was influential on Dungeons & Dragons, which I haven't played but I've been reading some of the books Gary Gygax cited as inspiration anyway. It's obvious how this book influenced the game, as it's a dungeon crawl with the protagonist finding allies and using magic. At the same time, it's also a post-apocalyptic story with science fiction elements. Our hero, Sam Sewell, lives in a vast underground complex that houses the survivors of a yeast plague that wiped out much of humanity.

ALT: k.k. says yeah man friends are far out in a video game