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bexwalsh's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.0
maxwellthomas's review against another edition
(This is a review I started back in August of 2021, never posted, and never updated Goodreads with my completion of the book. So here it is as it was written back around August 2021.)
The Nature of Middle-Earth makes for a wonderful addition to any collector or reader of Tolkien. The title itself, The Nature…, is an indication of the two broad categories that essentially make up this volume: one being the physical nature of the facets of Middle-earth (ie. There is a section titled Of the Land and Beasts of Númenor), but also of the metaphysical characteristics of Middle-earth (ie. Sections titled Fate and Free Will or Knowledge and Memory).
In the “Editorial Practices” section that follows the “Forward,” Hostetter details the ways in which he “edits” the work of J.R.R. & Christopher Tolkien’s writings to ensure the reader that the words are not his own, and are in fact Tolkien’s. In this section Hostetter also informs the reader that familiarity of The Silmarillion is assumed with ready access to Unfinished Tales and volumes X-XII of The History of Middle-earth as further aid in understanding the texts including in this title. Having touched on the the assumed familiarity with The Silmarillion, I would add that any reader wishing to further their exploration into Tolkien’s works should acquire (and read) both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales rather than this particular title.
In form, it feels quite similar to The History of Middle-earth in regards to the revelation of the painstaking detail that J.R.R. Tolkien put forth in creating his mythology, with sections of charts and mathematical equations explaining the growth and aging of Elves in regards to their “Growth Years” versus their “Life Years” and how the time equaling one year is not the same between the two. Having said that, I must admit that I merely skimmed some of these pages and flipped to sections that I found more interesting.
All in all it's a great addition to any collector of Tolkien's works, but for the average Tolkien reader who may not have read / enjoyed the Silmarillion and Tolkien's other works outside of LOTR and The Hobbit, this may not be one that will grab your attention.
The Nature of Middle-Earth makes for a wonderful addition to any collector or reader of Tolkien. The title itself, The Nature…, is an indication of the two broad categories that essentially make up this volume: one being the physical nature of the facets of Middle-earth (ie. There is a section titled Of the Land and Beasts of Númenor), but also of the metaphysical characteristics of Middle-earth (ie. Sections titled Fate and Free Will or Knowledge and Memory).
In the “Editorial Practices” section that follows the “Forward,” Hostetter details the ways in which he “edits” the work of J.R.R. & Christopher Tolkien’s writings to ensure the reader that the words are not his own, and are in fact Tolkien’s. In this section Hostetter also informs the reader that familiarity of The Silmarillion is assumed with ready access to Unfinished Tales and volumes X-XII of The History of Middle-earth as further aid in understanding the texts including in this title. Having touched on the the assumed familiarity with The Silmarillion, I would add that any reader wishing to further their exploration into Tolkien’s works should acquire (and read) both The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales rather than this particular title.
In form, it feels quite similar to The History of Middle-earth in regards to the revelation of the painstaking detail that J.R.R. Tolkien put forth in creating his mythology, with sections of charts and mathematical equations explaining the growth and aging of Elves in regards to their “Growth Years” versus their “Life Years” and how the time equaling one year is not the same between the two. Having said that, I must admit that I merely skimmed some of these pages and flipped to sections that I found more interesting.
All in all it's a great addition to any collector of Tolkien's works, but for the average Tolkien reader who may not have read / enjoyed the Silmarillion and Tolkien's other works outside of LOTR and The Hobbit, this may not be one that will grab your attention.
shannasbooksnhooks's review against another edition
5.0
RTC. I read this after buying it and during my wait for my sister to finish up with her work training. I want to reread it before giving it an actual review.
But this is definitely an enjoyable and well-worth read (although some parts took a couple of reads).
But this is definitely an enjoyable and well-worth read (although some parts took a couple of reads).
baruchbarnes's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
1.5
I hate so many of Tolkien's opinions so much it makes me froth at the mouth but I did have a good time roasting a lot of the Lore with my bestie so I'll give it credit for that. A lot of this is simply unnecessary and self-contradictory though.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism and Colonisation
pedanther's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
3.5
aiwendil's review against another edition
3.75
This is a sort of informal volume 13 to the History of Middle-earth. A fair number of the texts presented in it have been previously published in the periodicals Vinyar Tengwar, Parma Eldalamberon, and Tolkien Studies, but it's nice to have them in a book (particularly because most of the issues of Parma Eldalamberon are out of print).
About half of the book is devoted to (and I realize this will sound ridiculously abstruse and esoteric to non-Tolkien fans) the numerous notes and tables wherein Tolkien tried to work out the consequences of his decision to change the Valian and Elven year from being equivalent to about 10 solar years to being equivalent to 144. In particular, he was trying to work out a chronology and a rate of Elvish growth and reproduction that would allow him to have a large enough population of Elves by the time they come into the stories. Much of this is very dry and repetitive, but in the course of working this stuff out, we see him arrive at a number of new ideas about the early parts of the story of the Silmarillion, particularly with regard to the awakening of the Elves and the Great March. The remainder consists of a variety of short texts on various subjects, many (or perhaps most) of them arising from etymological work on the Elvish languages - everything from Elvish death and reincarnation to which characters in The Lord of the Rings had beards.
Carl Hostetter (a name that will be familiar to serious Tolkien fans) has, in many respects, done an admirable job in deciphering, editing, and presenting these texts. In other ways, though, I do miss Christopher Tolkien's hand. In The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien always provided great clarity as to the chronology and relations between texts, so far as those could be determined, and his commentary offered an excellent guide to the development and evolution of his father's ideas. In The Nature of Middle-earth, the ordering of the texts at times seems arbitrary, and it can be a little confusing - for instance, when a text from c. 1968 is presented in the midst of a large group of texts from c. 1959 without comment - and there is very little commentary on the development of ideas seen in the texts. Strange, too, is the appendix, where Hostetter provides citations from the texts grouped under various concept headings, with the express purpose of demonstrating that Tolkien's Legendarium is indeed a "fundamentally Catholic" work. Quite frankly, I don't know what this is doing here; it belongs in a paper in Tolkien Studies or another journal, not in a book whose purpose is to present Tolkien's writings, and I wish that the pages devoted to it had been used instead to offer some guidance as to the relations among the texts and the place of some of the ideas seen here within the wider corpus of Tolkien's Silmarillion material. But in saying this, I do not mean in any way to denigrate the good work that Hostetter has done, and I freely acknowledge that he had a difficult task, and that it's easy for me to criticicize.
(Incidentally, and this is in no way a criticism of the book at hand, can I just mention that it's slightly perverse that we now have many detailed tables of calculation of Elvish populations, presented down to every minor emendation and correction, and yet there are still passages of actual narrative from the Lost Tales that have never been published - and we still don't seem to have any prospect of getting Tolkien's verse translation of "Beowulf"?)
About half of the book is devoted to (and I realize this will sound ridiculously abstruse and esoteric to non-Tolkien fans) the numerous notes and tables wherein Tolkien tried to work out the consequences of his decision to change the Valian and Elven year from being equivalent to about 10 solar years to being equivalent to 144. In particular, he was trying to work out a chronology and a rate of Elvish growth and reproduction that would allow him to have a large enough population of Elves by the time they come into the stories. Much of this is very dry and repetitive, but in the course of working this stuff out, we see him arrive at a number of new ideas about the early parts of the story of the Silmarillion, particularly with regard to the awakening of the Elves and the Great March. The remainder consists of a variety of short texts on various subjects, many (or perhaps most) of them arising from etymological work on the Elvish languages - everything from Elvish death and reincarnation to which characters in The Lord of the Rings had beards.
Carl Hostetter (a name that will be familiar to serious Tolkien fans) has, in many respects, done an admirable job in deciphering, editing, and presenting these texts. In other ways, though, I do miss Christopher Tolkien's hand. In The History of Middle-earth, Christopher Tolkien always provided great clarity as to the chronology and relations between texts, so far as those could be determined, and his commentary offered an excellent guide to the development and evolution of his father's ideas. In The Nature of Middle-earth, the ordering of the texts at times seems arbitrary, and it can be a little confusing - for instance, when a text from c. 1968 is presented in the midst of a large group of texts from c. 1959 without comment - and there is very little commentary on the development of ideas seen in the texts. Strange, too, is the appendix, where Hostetter provides citations from the texts grouped under various concept headings, with the express purpose of demonstrating that Tolkien's Legendarium is indeed a "fundamentally Catholic" work. Quite frankly, I don't know what this is doing here; it belongs in a paper in Tolkien Studies or another journal, not in a book whose purpose is to present Tolkien's writings, and I wish that the pages devoted to it had been used instead to offer some guidance as to the relations among the texts and the place of some of the ideas seen here within the wider corpus of Tolkien's Silmarillion material. But in saying this, I do not mean in any way to denigrate the good work that Hostetter has done, and I freely acknowledge that he had a difficult task, and that it's easy for me to criticicize.
(Incidentally, and this is in no way a criticism of the book at hand, can I just mention that it's slightly perverse that we now have many detailed tables of calculation of Elvish populations, presented down to every minor emendation and correction, and yet there are still passages of actual narrative from the Lost Tales that have never been published - and we still don't seem to have any prospect of getting Tolkien's verse translation of "Beowulf"?)
luthien_tinuviel's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
I was so excited when this book was first announced and it did not disappoint. On the whole I loved learning more about Tolkien’s writing and found it really informative. There is a wealth of information in this book, but I particularly enjoyed the sections on the ageing of the elves and chronology of the first age, the descriptions of characters, mind-pictures, elvish reincarnation, the lives of the Numenoreans and the lands and creatures of Numenor.
Some bits were a bit difficult to get through, for example, the sections that were primarily about language, I personally found a bit boring. It also took a while to wrap my head around some of the maths in the first part but once I did it made me appreciate how much thought and detail Tolkien put into things. I find it so impressive how immersed in his own created world he was, which makes it so much more immersive for the readers.
Some bits were a bit difficult to get through, for example, the sections that were primarily about language, I personally found a bit boring. It also took a while to wrap my head around some of the maths in the first part but once I did it made me appreciate how much thought and detail Tolkien put into things. I find it so impressive how immersed in his own created world he was, which makes it so much more immersive for the readers.
iwi's review against another edition
4.0
I loved the little bits of info in this, some of it felt a little tedious and not for me but I still really appreciate what went into putting this together and the insight into much of what Tolkien built.
peristasis547's review against another edition
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
2.0
There is a reason why actual garbage bins of authors usullay don't get published. It's okay if you lend this book to have a look at it put please don't spend money on it