Books and other printed materials >> Great Tales of Middle-earth Box Set: The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin
So turns out I got this by accident as I forgot I had pre-ordered it from Amazon Germany when it was initially announced...
Anyway, got a bumped corner to the slipcase and top of CoH in the post (usual Amazon thing of putting the HC box in the bigger box with a tiny bit of crumpled paper), but also had a defective dust jacket on B&L which was not shipping damage. These matte un-laminated jackets really are crap. I'll be very, very happy when the fad for them dies as they add to so much refund/return wastage.
They have already been refunded due to the corner damage and jacket fault (usual situation with Amazon when you show them just how much the return is going to cost from NZ, they just say 'keep it'), but they did give me a chance to compare the 1sts prints with these. I'd say these are actually better made books overall (sewn vs glued+), but I just can't jive with the paper stock. For reasons I can't quite pin down, I simply don't like it, and I don't think I'd even like it on an unillustrated book. I just prefer normal trade hardback paper printed offset, which is beige and cheap, but has sharp text and doesn't look/feel like a stack of photocopy paper. This has been a problem for me with HarperCollins books for the last few years, and I'm glad I have the older titles that don't look like they were spat out of a DeskJet 500.++
The illustrations on the new edition of CoH are a lot smaller than in the old edition due to the addition of borders, and the reproduction is pretty terrible+++ in comparison. I haven't really compared/looked at B&L and FoG yet, but the originals were both vibrant, using the photo paper stock for the plates and I assume the new editions are broadly the same as CoH.
Verdict: Meh/10.
+ The Australian 1st print of CoH (printed in Hong Kong) is actually sewn and a really nice book. The UK 1st (printed in Italy) is glued.
++ I complain, but I loved that printer after upgrading from my ear-destroying dot-matrix!
+++ I used the word terrible :) But it is really relative to the originals which were nicely reproduced.
Anyway, got a bumped corner to the slipcase and top of CoH in the post (usual Amazon thing of putting the HC box in the bigger box with a tiny bit of crumpled paper), but also had a defective dust jacket on B&L which was not shipping damage. These matte un-laminated jackets really are crap. I'll be very, very happy when the fad for them dies as they add to so much refund/return wastage.
They have already been refunded due to the corner damage and jacket fault (usual situation with Amazon when you show them just how much the return is going to cost from NZ, they just say 'keep it'), but they did give me a chance to compare the 1sts prints with these. I'd say these are actually better made books overall (sewn vs glued+), but I just can't jive with the paper stock. For reasons I can't quite pin down, I simply don't like it, and I don't think I'd even like it on an unillustrated book. I just prefer normal trade hardback paper printed offset, which is beige and cheap, but has sharp text and doesn't look/feel like a stack of photocopy paper. This has been a problem for me with HarperCollins books for the last few years, and I'm glad I have the older titles that don't look like they were spat out of a DeskJet 500.++
The illustrations on the new edition of CoH are a lot smaller than in the old edition due to the addition of borders, and the reproduction is pretty terrible+++ in comparison. I haven't really compared/looked at B&L and FoG yet, but the originals were both vibrant, using the photo paper stock for the plates and I assume the new editions are broadly the same as CoH.
Verdict: Meh/10.
+ The Australian 1st print of CoH (printed in Hong Kong) is actually sewn and a really nice book. The UK 1st (printed in Italy) is glued.
++ I complain, but I loved that printer after upgrading from my ear-destroying dot-matrix!
+++ I used the word terrible :) But it is really relative to the originals which were nicely reproduced.
onthetrail wrote:
The late Stu wrote:
So turns out I got this by accident as I forgot I had pre-ordered it from Amazon Germany when it was initially announced
Guy in a galaxy far, far away orders from Amazon Germany and it has arrived.
I order from Amazon Germany on 8 March and am still waiting for it to arrive in Germany.
Make Amazon make sense.
Ha Ha. Yeah, that's nuts. I was surprised at how quickly it arrived. My pre-order was round about the same time as you (11th March). Hopefully your set will be OK. I just noticed on this set that the back of FoG has a 1" tear and loss of colour on the rear of its jacket. Also not shipping damage as the slipcase was in undamaged shrink-wrap and it was only the corner of the slipcase/CoH that got bumped. Typical Rotolito quality problems. Sigh.
Weird Amazon Germany thing is that they have refunded me for this one (already in my account), but have also ordered me a replacement copy at $0. I assume it is a cockup due to me having to arrange the refund via the chat as the UI wouldn't let me do it (it would bomb out and tell me to contact support). Perhaps when I don't return this one (which they have told me not to), I will get charged for the replacement after 14 days or somesuch. Mysteries of Amazon...
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