A curious little book with a short history of gnolls. In terse, Lord Dunsany wrote a story on them in 1912, another author wrote a story in 1951 for F&SF, and Gygax included them in D&D as a gnome/troll cross (?!?) that became hyena men somewhere along the line.The public domain Dunsany story is tossed in there as a bonus, along with a few pictures, most notably a photograph of a knitted gnoll doll.

Is it worth it? Three dollars isn't much on one hand, but the text takes up 5 pages, with an additional three firmly establishing the F&SF story as an extension of the Dunsany story. It fails to even include all the information in the Wikipedia article, which is a useful supplement to this volume. For said 8 pages, a public domain story and that photograph, as an ebook, it strikes me as pretty steep. I'll probably get the next one, for this is a promised series, but I really hope the next book and later ones are stronger contenders. ( )