Olento Salaperainen

Olento Salaperainen is a pen name. The publisher's biography places the author living a solitary existence on the Shetland Islands in the North Sea, studying mythological and legendary beasts, and the name itself is Finnish for something close to mysterious creature, which is the joke.

The identity behind it has not been publicly disclosed, and the conceit is part of the design of the book instead of an attempt at concealment. A field guide to creatures that do not exist benefits from a field naturalist who may not either.

A Field Guide to Fantastical Beasts, published in 2016 and reissued as An Atlas of Fabulous Creatures, Enchanted Beings, and Magical Monsters, covers fifty creatures arranged in six categories: fairies and little people, demons and the undead, water creatures, hybrid beasts, humanoid creatures, and the sacred and the divine. Each entry runs one to two pages with an appearance, a habitat, notes on behavior, and field notes drawing on myth, recorded incident, and popular culture, and there is a full-page illustration every other page.

The distinguishing feature is the attention to what popular culture did to each creature. The entries note where a beast came from and also which film, novel, or franchise produced the version most readers now carry, and those are frequently different things.

The book has been reviewed as a well-produced and basic introduction suitable for younger readers, weighted toward Greek, British, and Norse sources, with the criticism that it does not distinguish clearly between folklore, literary invention, and modern cryptid claims. It includes a glossary, a bibliography, and an index, and is most useful as a starting index for a writer who intends to read further.