The Resurrectionist by EB Hudspeth, a fantasy field guide full of anatomical illustrations of monsters and cryptids.
The musculoskeletal systems are fun to look at, but not nearly as in-depth as I would have liked. If you have more than a passing knowledge of taxonomy (or in my case, access to Wikipedia), a lot of the details fall apart under scrutiny
The harpy has four upper limbs connected to one shoulder girdle; it shouldn't have arms, only wings
The sphinx is not classified as a mammal, but is still somehow in the family Felidae with cats (and like the harpy is also drawn with only two girdles despite having six limbs. I will give the author credit for giving the sphinx a keel for the wing muscles to attach to)
It lists the Hindu deity Genesha as a cryptid, which is a no-no.
Cerberus is also explicitly not a mammal, but somehow still a canine (literally in the species Canis with wolves, dogs, and coyotes)
Both mermaids and dragons are listed as members of the order Caudata; the only extant members of Caudata are salamanders, which kinda makes sense for dragons, but not so much for mermaids (also, the author keeps playing it fast and loose with cladistics; both mermaids and dragons are in the same order despite being in different classes, and while dragons are explicitly said to be amphibians, mermaids are given the fictional class mammicthyes, which means mammal-fish. At that point, why not just call mermaids amphibians? Why make up a fake latin hybrid name?)
But what bugs me most of all is the classification of the Minotaur as its own order of mammal when in mythology it is explicitly described as a hybrid of two known species (made possible only by the cruel machinations of the divine, but still)
To use actual taxonomical nomenclature, the minotaur's species would be B. taurus × H. sapiens (specifically B. taurus♂ × H. sapiens♀; there are, to my knowledge, no legends of H. sapiens♂ × B. taurus♀). That's how ligers, tigons, mules, zorses, pizzly bears, narlugas, etc., are described.
If I had written this book, I would have leaned more into evolutionary biology. Most land animals have four limbs because they all evolved from boney lobe-finned fish, which split off from the boneless sharks and rays millions of years earlier, so any six-limbed vertebrates would need to be descended from a fictitious category of six-finned fish which would either be an offshoot of boney fish/tetrapods (I guess they'd be hexapods, though that term refers to insect arthropods), OR a precursor to boney and cartilaginous fish that both clades split away from much earlier (it's easier to lose structures than to gain them, so it makes more sense for a six-limbed ancestor to spawn four-limbed descendants than the other way around).
Think about how different elephants are from humans, and humans are from aligators, and aligators are from penguins, and remember that they all evolved from the same ancestor tiktaalik, an amphibious fish that existed some 375 million years ago. Imagine a precursor six-limbed species and how diverse all its descendants would look after 400 million years. Save for the occasional instance of convergent evolution causing two unrelated species to independently evolve similar body plans to fill the same niche, tetrapods and hexapods would look nothing alike. There would be very little recognizable overlap between the two. A six-limbed "pegasus" would not look like a real world horse, and a six-limbed "dragon" would not look reptilian/dinosaur-ish, for much the same reason that giraffes don't look like frogs; they're just too distantly related. Bonless sharks and boney fish and whales/dolphins all have similar looking bodyplans only because their environment requires the same hydrodynamic shape, while terrstrial vertebrates are much more physically diverse.
It was not out of the ordinary for children to possess both a pathological fear and an insatiable obsession with the four-legged Beasts of the past. The pre-Vanishing ecosystem was seldom spoken of, and only in hushed tones.
Sometimes, if an older relative grew drunk enough to feel absolved for any improper remarks, a certain sense of dark humor kept the topic tolerable, and children would ask questions about the Beasts. It was rare enough an occurrence, normally suited to post-festival gatherings. One drunkard, oft battle-scarred, slurring a diatribe about trading Beasthide as little cousins sit attentive, hugging grass-stained knees to their enraptured hearts.
‘Uncle, what of the Beasts that didn’t vanish, those who were already meat or leather?’
‘Yes, yes! Did we bury them? Did we give them rites? What sort of rites befit a Beast?’
‘Children, children, your dear old uncle has had too much wine and fermented fish. I shall answer in the morning, I shall regale it to thee you plainly, as my grandfather regaled it to me.’
Of course, when the morningdove crowed, the family’s children would find rolled-up cots and the sound of grownfolk arguing over missing silverware, no sobered-up old soldier in sight.
Reader,
Next time you find yourself in the Crescent, go to a tavern. A nice one, don’t get yourself slashed. The kind full of young grownfolk, 20 winters or older. As them about ‘the Vanishing Uncle’. It has become somewhat of an archetype to the natives, much like the linen-silk trickster of the East, or the bruin-hugging Gaul. Do take care who you say this to, some don’t admire the bravado.
We all knew him, or knew someone who knew him. Everyone had a story of irresponsibility and embellishment. When speaking of this sort of man, we would preface: “Now, these are the thoughts of a distant uncle, not I…” In some villages, this is still so. In some villages, gossip on the matter is acceptable, but anything more is offensive.
For brevity: It wasn’t discussed. A rule, an unspoken rule akin to covering your loins and boeing your when a woman or widuu enters the baths — if you were raised correctly, you never had to be told outright. Adults were never to discuss the specifics of the Vanishing around children.
Especially not Adel and Utor.
As a boy, Adel was fascinated by the Beasts of the past. From hulking grey brutes with coarse skin and horned faces to the cherubic mutants ancient men kept as soft-furred companions, every child had a favorite. Children often had encyclopedic knowledge that would soon wear off as they lose interest and enter middle childhood. At 6 and a half, Adel was no different. His favorite vanished beast was the Dog.
Adel's best friend, Utor, favored the common Horse. Utor was a sensitive child. He played nicely with boys and girls, yet preferred to play alone. Usually polite, he had an occasional defiance streak, and a strong sense of justice. Regarded, perhaps prematurely, as a precocious sign or intelligence or virtue, this judiciousness was encouraged by the village tutors. Utor was the only child who played with Adel. The two engaged in imagination-play, crawling around on all fours, imitating sounds that could have been. What it must have been like to be them, to see them, the four-legged Beasts of yore.
They spoke of many things, but the Vanished Beasts sparked many conversations. Arguments, too. Utor’s parents and Adel’s mother never had to intervene, not until one day in Springtime.
While weaving crowns of daisies in the field, just ever so slightly out of the watchful eye of his overworked mother, Adel stole Utor's ring of daisies and crowned his own head with a triumphant display of listless bluffing.
Utor was upset, but he centered himself. He refused ‘caste-sink to the aggressor’ as his militant uncle would put it. The thought of this own mercy emboldened him. He reached out to swipe the crown off his thieving friend.
To Utor’s shock Adel slapped his hand away. Far harder than a friend had ever slapped him prior. The kind of slap reserved for the lowest of disciplining. Utor clutched his aching hand, dewdrops of tears welling up in his eyes. Silence became tensions as they watched the wheels in each other’s expressions start to turn. Utor thought carefully, as carefully as he could think with a stinging hand.
"I see why you like the Dog. It was the most meanest four-leg of them all."
It was the first insult he could think of. A cogent retort, or so he thought. Adel was being cruel. Adel loved the Dog. Utor only liked the daisy chain, but Adel hurt him physically. In young Utor’s mind, this exchange of blows was Hammurabian. Surely, they would resume playing.
To his surprise, Adel retorted instantaneously.
“The Horse carried meaner men than any Dog.“ Though it was mumbled with unmet eyes, its tone was as if Adel had been waiting say this all year.
A new, foreign kind of humiliation thrummed in Utor’s chest. His fair-skinned face burned ruddy. It chemical-burned from rejection into rage. It burned so much, made so much pressure in his skull, he was screaming like screaming kettle he said, “when hungry, the Dog would eat…. raw….”
Utor’s shaking voice snagged on taboo, yet still, he elaborated.
“The raw pulp of their own. Of fellow Dogs.”
Adel was never an expressive child. (He had not even cried at birth, even as the midwife chanted a hearty mantra, unsheathed her stiletto to sever the umbilical cord round his neck.)
"Dogs ate their masters."
"That's not true."
"Dogs ate their masters even when they weren't hungry. Dogs bit-“
Utor’s vision eclipsed into sudden darkness as Adel’s left-hook struck him. A slap, why- every child has been slapped. That was life in the Crescent. This was not a slap, this was a balled-fist strike.
Utor stayed in a heap on the ground, even as the teal-green sky phased back into sight above him, quick tears quickening the kohl to run from his eyelids to his snot-dripping chin. Finally, he manages:
“You hit me. You HIT me! I’m telling your mother! I’m telling hyr!”
No response. Just heavy breathing from Adel, looming above him with an uncharacteristic scowl. The whimpers continued.
“You’re no worse, no worse at all, than a vanished Dog,” he cried.
Adel’s mother heard the exaggerated wail of Utor from nearly sixty strides away. Hy wished it to be a playful holler, waited a pinch. Alas, another scream. More anxious than agitated, hy gathered up the hem of hyr silks and headed for the field. What a horrid child, hy thought fondly, just like his father.
Year ago, when the midwife cut the noose around his neck, Adel drew his first breath as a sort of trade.
He began to cry. And cry, and cry. His mother bled, and bled, and bled until she passed, became his foremother. His father cried too. His father, he-now-hy, cried so hard, that the soul of the foremother passed into the gouge in hyr heart. That must have been why, the villagers thought, that Adel’s father became Adel’s widuu mother so willingly. This was what the villagers gossiped, anyway, and continue to do so.
I love you hard science fiction I love you hard fantasy I love you stories that explain exactly what happens and why I love you logical progressions I love you magic treated like science I love you detailed explanations of fantastical situations
Unicorns for a hard-fantansy head world I’m building out. Kind of mixed deer/kirin inspirations with more western horse unicorns. I imagine there some sort of taxomic anomaly; something that mostly resembles an equine but has cloven hooves and a horn that behaves more like a rhinoceros that a deers alter or bovine horn. Wild species native to wetlands and other wet places, as a small nod to Kirins
Hey would you be able to recommend any good hard fantasy works?
I don’t usually give recommendations, but I think the two best examples I can think of are Codex Alera by Jim Butcher (which I’m sure I’ve suggested before, but I’ve read the series about 7 times) and basically anything by Brandon Sanderson. Brandon Sanderson is the king of hard fantasy, so he’s probably the best person to go towards for hard fantasy.
