(This review was originally posted on Goodreads.)

A collection of monsters for the Basic D&D game, mixing creatures from Basic D&D adventures with new ones (plus a few immigrants from Advanced D&D). The book also includes some guidance for customizing monsters, plus indices of the monsters from this book and the Basic D&D boxed sets (Basic, Expert, Companion, and Master).

Unlike most D&D monster books, which are just organized alphabetically, this collection breaks them down into six Creature Types - quite possibly the inspiration for the creature types of 3rd Edition onward.

• Animals: Mostly normal, giant, or prehistoric, though there are exceptions like the bekkah (a giant jungle cat with a frightening roar).
• Conjurations: Magically created or summoned monsters. Highlights include the iron gargoyle (breathes fire and drops itself on enemies); huptzeen (self-aware defensive magic items); rock/ooze living statue (rock on the outside, gray ooze on the inside); and reflecter (metal on the outside, gooey on the inside, also deflect spells and may be time travelers).
• Humanoids: Highlights include the bhut (human by day, undead-like monsters by night); hephaeston (giants that control metal); lupin (dog-men who hate werewolves); oard (cyborgs, also time travelers); and sollux (relatives, and enemies, of efreet). Also three races of "isolated men": Cynidiceans (subterranean mask-wearers who live lives of indolence); Qauriks (furry arctic humans being horribly duped by their "Firelord" masters); and Traldar (former slaves of the jackal-headed hutaakan, some of which are "Vocals" with a powerful scream)
• Lowlife: Includes insects, plants, and one ooze (giant amoeba). Highlights include the fyrsnaca (fire-breathing worms that feed on ore); slime worm (covers itself in gold from treasure hoards and ambushes the unwary); and vampire rose (stems wrap around prey and feed on their blood).
• Monsters: Sort of a catch-all category for everything else, although some stuff in here probably could have fit under other types. Highlights include the bargda (ugly ram-headed humanoids that spread a Dexterity-sapping disease); brain collector (steals brains to increase its spellcasting); dragonfly (giant dragonflies with the breath weapons of chromatic dragons); dusanu (skeletal creatures that spread an infectious mold); hivebrood (insects that transform others into their kind, and can share consumed humanoids' skills with their hive); hypnosnake (hypnotizing snake, solidly iconic); scamille (can shapeshift into objects, expert eavesdroppers willing to trade for secrets); and white-fang (furry snakes that can freeze victims' blood).
• Undead: Highlights include the agarat (hang with ghouls but aren't ghouls, drain levels with their scream); dark-hood (cloaked spirits that can assume the form of your fear and feed on it); grey philosopher (former evil clerics pondering great questions, whose evil thoughts attack); sacrol (spawned from regions of mass death, appear as skulls with choking mists); and velya (aquatic vampires).

The sections for Humanoids and Monsters are probably the strongest, and those for Animals and Lowlife the weakest. Overall, the book presents a decent selection of options, including many utility monsters like sea serpents. However, many are unfortunately lacking in interesting hooks, making them better suited for random encounters than as major plot points. Despite that, this is definitely a useful resources for Basic D&D players, and there's still enough material here to inspire players of other editions. (B+)

The scan quality is ....................... catastrophic.

Now I have gone on and on (and on and on) about how pivotable the AD&D 1st Ed Monster Manual was to my life in RPGs. So much so that I would later pick up any monster book that came out. I loved AD&D and played it all throughout my High School days and beyond. But it was Basic D&D, in particular, the B/X flavor of D&D that was my favorite. I wanted a Monster Manual for that game. Eventually, TSR granted my wish. The Creature Catalog (AC9), came out in 1986 and was produced in conjunction with TSR UK and it would be one of the last books to do so. It shared a name with a series in Dragon Magazine (Issues #89 and #94), which led to some confusion on my part, but that was soon displaced. A bit of a background story. My then AD&D DM had grabbed this and let me borrow it. He knew I was a fan of D&D (Basic) and a fan of undead monsters, of which this had a lot of. I immediately started pouring over the book and loved all the new creatures in it and new versions of some that I considered "classic" by then. For example, the Umber Hulk (MM1) and the Hook Horror (FF) now shared an entry under "Hook Beast" and the Umber Hulk was now called a "Hulker". Given the time I just decided it was obviously the same beast and just called that in my version of Mystara and my DM kept Umber Hulk for his version of Greyhawk. Simple. Grabbing the PDF a while back I was hit by all these memories of flipping through the book and that sense of wonder came back. Monsters that I had used in games and have since forgotten about came rushing back to me. The PDF is a scan of the original book, so the quality is not 100%, more like 80% really. BUT that is not a reason not to get it. The text is still clear and the pictures, while not high-res are still legible. If nothing else the "imperfections" of the scan match my imperfect memory of the book. So point 1 for nostalgia purchase. The book itself is 96 black & white pages with color covers. There are about 150 monsters here (151 by my quick count). Some should be familiar to anyone that has been playing for a while, but there are also plenty of new ones that reflect the differences in design tone between D&D and AD&D. This book is separated by (and bookmarked by in the pdf) sections. The sections are Animals, Conjurations (magically created creatures), Humanoids, Lowlife, Monsters, and Undead. There are a lot of fun monsters here, many have made it into later editions of D&D, in particular, the Mystara Monstrous Compendium. The index is very nice since it also covers all the monsters in the various BEMCI books for a complete picture of the monsterography of the mid-80s D&D. If you are playing old-school D&D or a retro-clone of the same then this is a great little treat really. The book also has guidelines on where to put monsters and how to make alterations to the monster listing for a different creature. In fact a lot of what I have seen on some blogs and forums over the last couple years about how to "play monsters" has been better stated here. Yet more evidence that there is really nothing new out there. That and people don't read the classics anymore!