The taxonomy of giants matches the Grenadier line as well: chaos, dwarven (?!), fire, forest, frost, hill, sea, stone, storm, two-headed and death giants, as well as titans. The book provides some cultural details for each type, as well as example homes. The death giant’s “necromanor” is one of the stupidest lairs I’ve ever seen. I love it. I do wish there was more information on the dwellings though. Some of the odder ones, like the massive pyramid of the titans, are hard to conceptualize (something further complicated by the cryptic and possibly sloppy map insets). There are even some ill-advised rules for giant player characters.

This is the last Role Aids sourcebook before the line went on hiatus for a few years (plenty more adventures to go through, though). Both here, and in Undead, there is a sense of chaos. Not that anything goes, but maybe that nothing really matters? A rueful futility? I dunno, they’re definitely odd, slapdash, a little frantic and unconcerned with details or consistency. This, strangely, makes them better rather than worse, I think. I enjoy how erratic they are.

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Faeries is really the solid gold hit of the series, endlessly fascinating, extremely varied. Gnomes feels expressly designed to capitalize on eddies of folkiness in 70s pop culture. Compared to them, Giants feels a bit one note and a bit in search of a vibe. When it boils down, it is essentially a book about very large people. It often plays to that core truth effectively, but it never feels so singular as the other two books, if that makes sense.

Partly that might just be that there are too many folks involved. Where Gnomes is one artistic vision and Faeries and elegant duet, the trio here never quite finds its harmonies. All three deliver stellar work, but rarely does that work collaborate with its neighbors in the way Lee and Froud play off each other. Giants are hard, too, because without markers for scale, they just look like people doing stuff, but if every painting has markers for scale, it gets repetitive. Both of these pitfalls are on view here. One can’t help but wonder why they didn’t do dragons instead.

Which isn’t to say this book isn’t worth getting! It totally is. Put it right on the shelf with the other two, your other Alan Lee books and your copies of the Time Life Enchanted World series. It is certainly a key part of the fantasy art renaissance of the 70s and 80s. Sure, it doesn’t measure up to Faeries. But where else are you going to find a whole book on Giants? They just don’t make ‘em like this any more. (OK, not entirely true — Johan Egerkrans is bringing this sort of thing back with his books Vaesen, Norse Gods and The Undead — thank goodness!).

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