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istiel's review
adventurous
hopeful
informative
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
vince_reads's review
Only read the parts pertaining to the new show "The Rings of Power".
octavia_cade's review against another edition
3.0
I read and reviewed each of the five volumes collected here separately, so this is really just for my own records. The rating for the collection is the average of the individual ratings - everything got three stars, apart from The Lost Road (also the last read) which got two. It dropped down to two stars because I was, frankly, sick to fucking death of all the repetition. It's long been a reading goal of mine to work through the histories of Middle-earth, because The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit are some of my favourite books of all time, but talk about sucking all the joy out of things...
I would like to credit Christopher Tolkien with all the work he's done on this series - and it's been a lot, credit where credit's due - but my goodness are his endless notes pendantic, dull, and deeply, deeply repetitive. By the time the reader has waded through these five volumes, plus The Silmarillion, they've had to read through same stories multiple times. With only very minor differences in each volume. (I never liked goddamn Turin but I fucking HATE him now. Frankly I'm siding with the dragon.)
The original material is genuinely interesting. But it becomes ever more apparent, as the histories go on, that they are as much a money-making exercise as anything else, because the sheer weight of repetition that readers are expected to both buy and swallow as these volumes go on is just plain exploitative. It's so bad I've actually taken a break from reading the histories because I'm so fed up with the same damn thing all over again.
I would like to credit Christopher Tolkien with all the work he's done on this series - and it's been a lot, credit where credit's due - but my goodness are his endless notes pendantic, dull, and deeply, deeply repetitive. By the time the reader has waded through these five volumes, plus The Silmarillion, they've had to read through same stories multiple times. With only very minor differences in each volume. (I never liked goddamn Turin but I fucking HATE him now. Frankly I'm siding with the dragon.)
The original material is genuinely interesting. But it becomes ever more apparent, as the histories go on, that they are as much a money-making exercise as anything else, because the sheer weight of repetition that readers are expected to both buy and swallow as these volumes go on is just plain exploitative. It's so bad I've actually taken a break from reading the histories because I'm so fed up with the same damn thing all over again.
kimmysanders's review against another edition
5.0
I wholly understand that not everyone is even into The Lord of the Rings series, much less what amounts to the related ephemera. However, if you are, as I am, a deeply unashamed Tolkien dork, then these are a must-have. These are the first five, which deal with the creation and cosmology of Middle Earth itself, and not the actual writing of the books. Perfect for the sort of nutbar like myself who would really like to convince themselves that the world could exist. You know.
Standouts are The Fall of Gondolin in Lost Tales Vol. 2, the whole of the Lays of Beleriand, and the etymologies in The Lost Road, for students of that kind of thing.
Standouts are The Fall of Gondolin in Lost Tales Vol. 2, the whole of the Lays of Beleriand, and the etymologies in The Lost Road, for students of that kind of thing.
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