* 3.5 Stars *

Being the fairly invested mythology buff that I am, when I saw this book on the 'featured' shelf at my library, I just snatched it up without a second thought. I'll make this review pretty straight-to-the-point.

The myths covered in this collection of stories are not really what I would define as "twisted". Is it because I've already read so many different myths that nothing truly surprises me anymore? Possibly. However, the myths in here resembled each other a lot, and it started to get less "messed-up" and surprising as the book continued. The illustrations are probably the only extremely interesting parts in this book (filled with color, brought the stories to life).

McHugh does a good job incorporating world myths in here, which is a breath of fresh air from the already-large collection of Greek/Roman mythology re-tellings.

Overall, not my favorite book of mythology, but I would consider this to be a good way of getting into mythology from a general standpoint.

This one was a bit of a mixed bag for me and I was left feeling a lot disappointed because I was so excited to read it originally! Some of these retellings were absolutely enthralling, especially the first few. But after that it just went downhill fast and I quickly lost interest and just wanted it to be over. Its only saving grace was how truly gorgeous and intricate the illustrations were, they alone made it worth finishing!

The stories contained within this book are just simply myths. Most people will know at least one of these myths, either from their own culture, or from school. They didn't even change the myths. Well that isn’t really true, they condensed them and cut out a lot, and I mean a lot of the myths in order to make them shorter. This condensing and cutting has actually made the myths less interesting and even a bit confusing. Many of the myths have more than one jammed together. For example, the Greek myth about the birth of Zeus and fall of Kronos is compacted into the same myth as Prometheus and Pandora. Or the Egyptian myth about how we got a 365 days in a year tied in with the myth about the death of Osiris. It makes for a muddled mess of a book. I love ancient myths and cultural tales, however this book was a terrible version of these stories.