Book Reviews and More: Villainology: Fabulous Lives of the Big, the Bad and the Wicked

Thursday, 15 July 2010

Villainology: Fabulous Lives of the Big, the Bad and the Wicked - Arthur Slade and Derek Mah

Villainology: Fabulous Lives of the Big, the Bad and the Wicked.Arthur Slade (Author)
Derek Mah (Illustrator)
Thunda Books
ISBN 9780887768095

This book and its companion volume Monsterology: Fabulous Lives of the Creepy, the Revolting, and the Undead go side by side like a two pieces of toast. They are wonderful to read. After reading them through the first time, I pick them up and randomly flip through and read different profiles. Wonderfully illustrated with portraits of each villain and small embellishments through the book by Derek Mah, this book is fun and frivolous and just plain fantastic.

In this volume there are profiles of 15 villains are:
The Wicked Witch of The West
Atilla the Hun
The Wolf
Billy the Kid
The Headless Horseman
Morhan le Fay
Qin Hui
Shakespearian Cillians
The Invisible Monster
Emperor Nero
The Queen (from Little Snow White)
Scarface Capone
Scrooge
The Phantom of the Opera (Not the Webbrowser.)
Mephistopheles

Arthur Slade, in a very cheeky fashion, presents a short biography of each of these characters. He tells their story with a mix of the story they come from - myth, legends, and his own twisted take on their life and times. Each profile is an attempt to elicit a response and will probably cause many young readers to pursue some of the classics that they are drawn from. This book is very well done and was a great pleasure to read, and I am sure I will reread it again and again. Bravo.

Books by Arthur Slade:
The Dragonfly's Journey (1996)
John Diefenbaker: an Appointment with Destiny (2000)
Dust (2001)
Tribes (2002)
Monsterology (2005)
Villainology (2005)
Megiddo's Shadow (2006)
Jolted (2008)
Shades: 17 Startling Stories (2011)
Flickers (2016)
Crimson (2018)
Death by Airship (2019)
Mr. Universe (2021)

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