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A review by thatokiebird
The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
adventurous
challenging
dark
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
Whew this book took me some time now. I've had it sitting on my shelf literally since I was a teenager. It took me years to read through Part I, and I finally finally started Part II near the beginning of this year. I had a four-ish hour airplane journey and thought if I only bring this book and this alone, I could read a large chunk of it since I didn't have anything else to distract me. I read about 75 pages that day, and the remaining 300+ pages took me about six more months.
As challenging as I find The Silmarillion, this multiplies that by at least five. It's a deep deep dive into alternate tellings of the stories of The Silmarillion, but with less fine-tuning and editing. Still it was a lot of fun to read through these alternate stories, and think about how the stories we know and love came to be. Christopher Tolkien does a stellar job with commentary at the end of each story, telling us the different iterations and changes from the included drafts to the final published story. I imagine what an overwhelming daunting task it was for him to take manuscripts, notebooks, scraps of his father's handwriting and turn it into these books, so hats off to him!
As challenging as I find The Silmarillion, this multiplies that by at least five. It's a deep deep dive into alternate tellings of the stories of The Silmarillion, but with less fine-tuning and editing. Still it was a lot of fun to read through these alternate stories, and think about how the stories we know and love came to be. Christopher Tolkien does a stellar job with commentary at the end of each story, telling us the different iterations and changes from the included drafts to the final published story. I imagine what an overwhelming daunting task it was for him to take manuscripts, notebooks, scraps of his father's handwriting and turn it into these books, so hats off to him!