Volume Three of the Monstrous Compendium (1989) is dedicated to monsters from the Forgotten Realms. It’s the first to be referred to as an Appendix, which to me implies it should be filed at the back of the main work, but in fact, you can file the individual pages into the alphabetical arrangement of Volume One and Two without issue. So that’s what I did. This is not true of any further Compendiums to my knowledge.

Three has one of my favorite Easley covers of the run. I don’t think that is a particularly good rendering of a thri-kreen, and I’m neutral on the revenant. That cloaker is tops, though, and the color scheme of the grouping is really nice. Inside is where I first made the acquaintance of Tom Baxa. It took me a while to really GET his artwork. I don’t think the juxtaposition of Mark Nelson, with his welcoming use of zipatone, did Baxa any favors.

These days, I blame my ambivalence to Baxa here on the monster selection. It ain’t great. A lot of these don’t feel particularly “of the Realms” to me. Dinosaurs? For real? Some, like the dracolich, sure. But there is an odd prevalence of critters that are just slightly monstrous animals. There is also, ironically, a concentration of monsters that previously appeared in the Fiend Folio, a book Ed Greenwood reviewed for Dragon Magazine and hated.

Anyway, not my most referenced of the appendices.