The Black Bestiary: An Alejandro Pardo Compendium
Budjette Tan
This is a follow-up to “The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo,” and while both are good, I enjoyed this one more. (Unfortunately neither is available in the US, and even finding Filipino books in the Philippines can be difficult!) The BB mostly drops the “bestiary” format of the LJ (despite the name!), and focuses more on some creepypasta-style stories. (Really, the titles of the two books should be switched.) There are a couple of bestiary entries here, but they felt a little out of place, and I would have liked the book even better without them. The book really gets going with the final extended narrative from Pardo’s companion’s journal.
I hope Tan et al. will publish a follow-up that is exclusively an in-universe creepy narrative!