Ratings295
Average rating4
There are some good stories here, but I don't think Tolkien would've published this as it is in a million years, and I couldnt've got throught it if it wasn't for the amazing performance by Andy Serkis in the audio version.
The introduction chapters by Christopher and the letter by Tolkien himself were super interesting.
The first two chapters add a lot to the middle-earth lore while also being well written and not super dense like the rest of this book and I to my knowledge you can't get the stories they tell anywhere else which is a problem with later chapters.
After those, the book becomes this ultra dense without much editing text of history, that it's that, a history book that you have to study to get the “value” out of it and I don't think you are meant to study fantasy as we do our history, since we don't live in the middle-earth world as much as we would like to XD.
Then come the good chapters, but they have their own standalones fleshing way more their stories out, so really there's no need to read this and I would've love to know this before reading the book.
Overall I still see value in this book as a curiosity thing and I'm not against the idea of it being published, but hey those are my thoughts.