Top Ten Tuesday: Mythical Beasts

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday departs from The Broke and the Bookish. Instead, we will look at our favourite books containing mythical beasts – dragons, unicorns, phoenixes, griffins, and more!

Yash

Ugh. This is so hard. I don’t think I’ve actually read a whole lot of fantasy that has creatures. Fantastical people maybe but not a whole lot of creatures. Um. Let’s see …

1. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling: I like that cerberus is Hagrid’s pet and he named him Fluffy.
2. Artemis Fowl and the Opal Deception by Eoin Colfer: Not my favourite book in the series, but I really enjoyed that escapade with the trolls. That Opal is a devious little baddie.
3. Zombies vs. Unicorns edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier: When I first read this collection, I went in fully expecting to hate the unicorn stories, and I was pleasantly surprised by them. So, yeah, the unicorns from this series are not very creature-like, but I think I prefer that.
4. Tinder by Sally Gardner and David Roberts: There are wolf-y creatures in this one. I say wolf-y because they can take a human appearance, but they have the most to do in their creature form. Genuinely creepy.
5. Ugh, I’ve already scraped the bottom of the barrel here. Can I just say that I loved Pegasus from Disney’s Hercules? (It just made total sense to me that he would be bird-brained.)

Janet

This is hard. I read a lot of fantasy, and I just know that I left a lot of good books out of this list.

1. “The Sixty-Two Curses of Caliph Arenschadd” in Book of Enchantments by Patricia C. Wrede. This is my absolute favourite of Wrede’s short stories in a collection that has a number of provocative looks at fairy tales, which range in tone from humourous to wry, to dark, to bittersweet, to eerie, and back again to cheerful absurd logic. I also recommend Wrede’s Enchanted Forest Chronicles, if you want to read about dragons, giants, a magician, a witch, numerous cats, a lot of evil wizards, and a flying blue donkey that used to be a rabbit.
2. Dark Lord of Derkholm and Year of the Griffin by Diana Wynne Jones. Griffins! Dragons! Demons, elves, wizards, enchantresses, elves, unicorns, werewolves, Marsh people… These two novels are companions to Jones’s Tough Guide to Fantasyland but can be read apart from it with unimpeded enjoyment of the characters and story.
3. If I may be allowed to include “elves” among mythical beasts, on the grounds that elves are not human, and because I don’t think we’ll have a separate TTT on elves and other human-like species, The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope. The Fairy Folk have a bewitchment all their own.
4. Calcifer from Howl’s Moving Castle, Castle in the Air, and House of Many Ways. Actually, just about everything by Diana Wynne Jones.
5. The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup by Rosemary Sutcliff and Emma Chichester Clark. The friendship between Lucky and the minstrel is beautiful.
6. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, for Mrs. Lupescu’s extraordinary turn of understanding lycanthropy.
7. The Night Runner and End of Days by Max Turner. If you like vampire stories (I don’t, with this and Vivian Vande Velde’s Companions of the Night as exceptions), here is a nice, logical series. Plus it will inspire you with the desire to run.
8. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander.
9. Garth Nix’s Abhorsen books, for Kibeth and Mogget.
10. Rachel Hartman’s works, for the dragons, half-dragons, and Pau-Henoa.

Steph

1. Hen Wen from The Black Cauldron by Lloyd Alexander – because I just wrote that post on the classics and remembered how much I loved this chatty little pig – ooh, and Gurgi too!
2. Bernie the Wombat from The Witch and the Wombat by Carolyn Cushman – this is actually a really fun fantastical read. It witty and whimsical and really quite satirical. I really really love Bernie. It’s a worthy read.
3. The Unicorn from The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle’s classic – it’s actually a really good read, though many of you probably know the story from the 80s animated film. Great depiction of magic and magical creatures – not just the unicorn but all the creatures in the “circus” and also the Great Red Bull.
4. The Yew Tree monster from A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness – one of my favourite “monsters” in literature of late.
5. I love the creatures from Michael Ende’s The Neverending Story – The lion of many colours, the Darkness, Wembly. It’s a great story made even greater by the amazing world and the creatures that dwell within it.
6. Mokona in the many works of CLAMP – this little guy is just adorable and I love how it is creature of significant power who is present in all the stories but not necessarily a large player. Indeed, many of these magical animal types seem to play a background role.

 

 Nafiza

This is a tougher topic than I thought it would be. Okay, I think I can do it. I’m pretty sure I can. Hmm. Let’s go!

1. Harry Potter series – J. K. Rowling.
   This shouldn’t come as a surprise because I love Harry Potter. And there are many mythical beasts in there, I mean Hagrid is almost a mythical beast himself. Isn’t he? Haha. But my favourite is probably the tree. And no, I don’t remember the name of the tree but I just love how menacing it is.
2. Indelible – Dawn Metcalf
   This one has a head toad dude that I really liked. I know, the boss is a toad. A huge toad that talks and makes important decisions. Yep.
3. The Raven Cycle – Maggie Stiefvater
   I can just SEE Yash being all…wait, there’s a mythical beast in here? And you’re going to either scowl or laugh when I say yes, there is. Ronan. HAHA. He is!
4. Chronicles of Elantra – Michelle Sagara
   So this one has many mythical beasts, dragons being one of them. But the one I love the most if is a lion who is the boss of the police – so the commissioner of sorts who hates paperwork. Yep.
5. The Daughter of Smoke and Bone trilogy – Laini Taylor
   There are chimaera in here. I didn’t know what they were before I read the book and now I do. Also angels but I’m not too fond of those kinds of winged beasties.