“Cursing, he caught his balance and pulled his swords free as the monster, long snouted, with sharp teeth, tusks, and pointed ears, stalked toward him on all fours, snarling and snapping its club-like tail behind it.”
“It growled and snapped at him, raising it's barbed tail over its back like a scorpion's sting.”
“The monster whipped its barbed tail down, flying it in like and ax, but Tau skipped away from the chitin-wrapped barb, dodging it and coming close enough to stab the demon in the shoulder of his left foreleg before moving away.”
“It had its oversize maw hanging open the black and blue tongue within flapping up and down as it eyed him.”
-Evan Winter, The Rage Of Dragons
This one was really fun for me. As much as I enjoy a vague "it was too horrible to describe" description, I really love it when an author gives a lot of incongruous detail that I then have to fit together.
One of my favorite monster descriptions of all time is from The Festival where Lovecraft just lists animals that the byakhee looks like or has components of:
""There flapped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things ... not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not recall."
That's a lot of detail but not tedious. Evan Winter does the same thing. He gives a bunch of descriptors without being belabored. There's still room for interpretation.
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