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I love Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and find the world he built intricate and fascinating, but I'm not sure how I feel about the posthumous work h

I love Tolkien's The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings and find the world he built intricate and fascinating, but I'm not sure how I feel about the posthumous work his son has released. I know they were based off his father's extensive notes and manuscripts but for reasons I can't put my finger on it seems somehow cheapened. I have yet to try them so anyone with more informed opinions on their quality would be welcome to tell me I'm wrong.

ghaff 9y ago
For me, it's not so much that they cheapened anything but that I never found them terribly interesting. Both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were great stories (for the most part) set in a richly imagined world. But that doesn't mean I want to plod through hundreds or thousands of pages about the background mythology in great dry detail.
- calibas 9y ago
  Yeah, it's more like a history textbook than a novel.
BerislavLopac 9y ago
Actually, the posthumous books edited by Christopher Tolkien are not based off his father's extensive notes and manuscripts -- they ARE, quite literally, his father's extensive notes and manuscripts, organised and annotated by Christopher into a coherent series of publications. Whether you should try them or not depends on what is your personal favourite form of reading material. Tolkien himself once quoted G.W. Dasent: "We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled." If you enjoy a good soup, I recommend you to read The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales, even though they might not be as delicious as The Lord of the Rings. But if you are a connoisseur of raw bones, enjoying reading the different versions, drafts and scraps of those stories before they were published (and many others never actually published, like the beginning of a LoTR sequel, or a time-travel novel connecting Numenor with 20th century England) -- in other words, if you enjoyed the Appendices as much as LoTR itself -- you will definitely find the right reading material in the HoMR books. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Middle-earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Middle-earth

ghaff 9y ago

For me, it's not so much that they cheapened anything but that I never found them terribly interesting. Both The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were great stories (for the most part) set in a richly imagined world. But that doesn't mean I want to plod through hundreds or thousands of pages about the background mythology in great dry detail.

calibas 9y ago
Yeah, it's more like a history textbook than a novel.

BerislavLopac 9y ago

Actually, the posthumous books edited by Christopher Tolkien are not based off his father's extensive notes and manuscripts -- they ARE, quite literally, his father's extensive notes and manuscripts, organised and annotated by Christopher into a coherent series of publications. Whether you should try them or not depends on what is your personal favourite form of reading material. Tolkien himself once quoted G.W. Dasent: "We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled." If you enjoy a good soup, I recommend you to read The Silmarillion and The Unfinished Tales, even though they might not be as delicious as The Lord of the Rings. But if you are a connoisseur of raw bones, enjoying reading the different versions, drafts and scraps of those stories before they were published (and many others never actually published, like the beginning of a LoTR sequel, or a time-travel novel connecting Numenor with 20th century England) -- in other words, if you enjoyed the Appendices as much as LoTR itself -- you will definitely find the right reading material in the HoMR books. More details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Middle-earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Middle-earth