genre fiction

I've really enjoyed this book so far, it's very informative, and is beautifully designed. In 250 pages you can only cover so much of the fantasy universe, but I think they did a good job.

I did notice that there are a lot of opinions, but there are many more facts, and the opinions make for a slightly more interesting read than just facts, as long as you take them with a grain of salt. I didn't notice overly negative opinions though, I saw a mix of positive and negative. And face it, a lot of pulp and mass-produced fantasy entertainment isn't of the best quality, that's just reality; I don't think it's unreasonable to call those types of items 'derivative'.

In summary, definitely a fun book to browse through; even extends into gaming (learning the origins of D&D, etc was very cool). I never would've thought that I'd learn the origins of the name 'Wendy' from this book!

Though the effort, layout and content are commendable I find one key problem with the book as a whole; it's just *FAR* too negative in it's mini-reviews of fantasy material (particularly film and t.v.). The amount of negative comments is so pervasive that I wondered, at times, if the authors even enjoyed fantasy, period. Virtually every fantasy classic is bashed for being anything from contrived to tawdry to banal. Yes, it's a work of opinion but (and I feel this is obvious) anyone who would pick up an Encyclopedia on any specific genre and to read so very much negative review was extremely off putting to me.

As much as I appreciated the general quality, layout and design of this publication, I was "put-off" by the very opinionated writing which I found throughout the book. When I read entries in ENCYCLOPEDIAS, I'm accustomed to INFORMATION, not OPINIONS. Oh well...