Review: I enjoyed it; often intriguing and fascinating
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 10 25, 2012
I'll cut right to the chase and say I enjoyed this Kindle ebook tremendously because the subject matter interests me greatly; for its intended audience - folks like me who are fascinated with strange creatures and the eerie phenomenon that surround them - this is a can't miss selection.I'm not going to give it five stars, however, for reasons I'll explain in just a bit. But first, a brief summary for those who want to know what's in the book:Phantoms and Monsters : Cryptid Encounters is a collection of raw eyewitness accounts of legendary beasties: Bigfoot, mothman, dogman, giant birds and there's some serpent-like river monsters and "little people" encounters thrown in for good measure. You will read raw or only partially edited email letters from average folks who were astounded to encounter strange creatures in their everyday lives.I should say there is also a number of reports of some really weird sightings - bizarre, peculiar creatures -- some of which I have never heard of before -- and for that I add extra praise.However, the buyer should be aware of what they're getting here: This is not so much a formal book but a series of "cut-and-paste" selections from the author's popular blog. And here is where I have some mild quibbles, based mostly on formatting:The text is not well-edited. Granted, the author wanted to retain the exact flavor of the original reports of folks on the ground, and I applaud him for that. But the dicey production values go beyond just lack of editing to other factors, especially a constantly shifting text size. Sometimes the font size goes from bigger to smaller from page to page, and this makes little sense to me - and for many it will be distracting.There are also some raw reports that should have been edited a bit more rigorously - the most intriguing and fascinating report involves an Ohio man's encounter with the famous mothman entity -- made even more interesting because  his story relates to the famous Silver Bridge collapse disaster of 1967, which killed 46 people.This entry is exceedingly bizarre, frightening and gripping - but I had to stop and re-read many passages several times over to be clear about just what they guy was trying to say because his writing was so muddy. If it was me, I would have provided additional editing or perhaps inserted commentary to help the reader understand this man's amazing story.So, this is an ebook created mostly from a "raw dump" from a blog with minimal formal editing - yet, it still gets a sky-high recommendation from me because the content is so interesting, and contributes valuable information to the record.