The Fall of Númenor mini review

I attended the launch of The Fall of Númenor yesterday evening, at Waterstones, London Piccadilly branch.

Maggio “Boromir”

This mini review is of the UK Trade edition, which is being held by Brian Sibley (left) in the photograph, Alan Lee is on the right.

The book does not contain any new text, but Brian has gone through all of Tolkien's published writings on the Second Age of Middle-earth and put them into order and into one volume. This makes it so much easier to read about the History of the Second Age and means that you can read First Age content in The Silmarillion, Second Age in The Fall of Númenor and Third Age in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There is some duplication of content with The Silmarillion, but that is only to be expected.

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The Fall of Númenor (HC) (2022)

TOLKIEN, J.R.R.
9780008537838
HarperCollins (2022-11-10)

£25.00 HarperCollins (Hardback) - Availability: Click to check

$32.99 Amazon.com (Hardcover) - Availability: IN_STOCK_SCARCE

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The Fall of Númenor: Deluxe (UK, HB)

TOLKIEN, J.R.R.
9780008537845
HarperCollins (2022-11-10)

£75.00 HarperCollins (Hardback) - Availability: Click to check

$66.83 Amazon.com (Hardcover) - Availability: LEADTIME

£51.00 Amazon.co.uk (Hardcover) - Availability: LEADTIME

€59.54 Amazon.de (Gebundene Ausgabe) - Availability: IN_STOCK_SCARCE

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I also like the fact that Brian has placed the texts into chronological order for the Second Age, a good example is the story of Aldarion and Erendis which in the new edition is split up to reflect the time that it happened.

Brian has not included everything about the Second Age, but has included footnotes for items that were not included so that you can easily find them in other Tolkien volumes.

At the launch event, Brian stated that people could ignore the text in the book and just buy it for the wonderful illustrations by Alan Lee. Of course that is not true, the illustrations complement the text of the book, with 11 colour plates

Giugno “Grampasso - Aragorn”

The Temple of Sauron by Alan Lee, (c) HarperCollins

and over 50 pencil sketches

Luglio “Battaglia con gli orchi”

Alan Lee, (c) HarperCollins

The colour plates are fantastic, though ideally glossier paper would have been used in the book, but I really love what Alan Lee describes as 'doodles', the pencil sketches. Alan draws them at a larger size, and they are shrunk down to fit in the book, which works really well, in terms of increased detail in the drawings.

Overall, this is a wonderful volume that is a recommended purchase for anyone with an interest in Tolkien. However, a problem does arise for people who have just watched Amazon's TV serial, this book is not the same, but is what "really" happened in the Second Age.

Finally, I was very pleased to see that the book is dedicated to Priscilla Tolkien, a very nice touch.