Disclaimer: I received an e-ARC from netgalley in exchange for a review.

As someone who enjoys folklore and who loves queer history I knew I really wanted to check this book out as soon as I saw it. If you, like me, already know some part of the overlap of queer history and folklore there will certainly be some stories here that are familiar to you. But even then, there were many that were new to me and even the ones that were familiar were told in an engaging and interesting way. The book is separated into multiple chapters and deals with a variety of folklorical beings, from the ones known from fairytales such as mermaids, unicorns and fairies to the ones known from horror such as werewolves, vampires, witches, demons and ghosts, and finally to more modern folklore featuring aliens, pirates, AI, robots and superheroes. The chapter on ghosts also includes an exploration of the queerly departed, some archeological queer discoveries and gothic ideas and spiritualism. The chapter on AI and robots also explores video games as a form of modern folklore. And as you can see in this short overview the aspects explored in this book are many. The chapters always explore the historical facets of these beings, important queer personalities connected to them as well as modern queer connections to them, which makes them feel very relateable to our modern day and age.
The author writes very accessible despite this being an academic book, allowing his own voice to shine through the book, while providing the reader with plenty of information, and often points out were something might just be queer imagining instead of queer factfinding, while still allowing for a queer imagining. I especially enjoyed the last chapter where the author connects five important qualities combining folklore and queerness and think it could have served a bit better as a introductory text to get the reader excited about what was to come than as a big finale, but I still enjoyed it either way.
At points the stories were somewhat skimmed over and a bit more exploration of modern queer folklore and the way queer people connect to it nowadays separated from outfits at pride and memes online could have made this story even more interesting to me. Particularly in regard to gender and the way many trans people connect to creatures from folklore, while present a little bit, seemed a bit understated to me. Finally the chapter on witches didn't really need to mention She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named, as the only queer connection she has is through queer people engaging in fandom (and tbh if that is enough to make folklore queer then this book would need to double in size!) and there is a multitude of actually queer literature exploring witches out there instead, where queer people can find a real connection. While I appreciate the author making her transphobia explicit in the text and calling it out, as a trans reader it was a reminder I didn't need and one that I am not sure I needed from a cis author.
All in all however this was a quite interesting (and accessible) exploration of the connection of folklore and queerness and despite the parts I did not enjoy as much I still had a good time reading it.

TW: mentions of sexual assault, executions, murder, pedophilia and abuse, as well as historical homophobia, transphobia and sexism.