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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on August 10, 2017
Please don't flame me for this review.
I wanted something like the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or even the Silmarillion. That's not what I got.
It starts with a pedantic explanation of the history of the history of Middle Earth or something. Quite frankly it was as boring as watching grass grow. After 30 pages of this the story itself begins. It is a wonderful story and worth five stars. I loved it. But it is only sixty pages long. Then comes over 100 pages of poetry.
I hate poetry. It's hard to write and hard to read. I don't know why people bother with it. This poetry is particularly bad - it is verse upon verse of iambic tetrameters in A,A,B,B,C,C format. Just doggerel really. I forced myself to read a few pages but then I had to skip forward desperately looking for prose.
When I found more prose I was two thirds of the way through the book already and all I found was more boring, tedious explanation of how the story was put together from scraps of J.R.R Tolkien's notes and how it evolved over time and how many letters the author wrote to Unwin, who probably couldn't give a damn about the gory details, just like me.
If you've ever seen Monty Python's Travel Agent sketch "Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first entry in a menu of 'International Cuisine'..." then you will know exactly what I mean.
I would have given this two stars but the illustrations are spectacular and worth an extra star
I wanted something like the Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or even the Silmarillion. That's not what I got.
It starts with a pedantic explanation of the history of the history of Middle Earth or something. Quite frankly it was as boring as watching grass grow. After 30 pages of this the story itself begins. It is a wonderful story and worth five stars. I loved it. But it is only sixty pages long. Then comes over 100 pages of poetry.
I hate poetry. It's hard to write and hard to read. I don't know why people bother with it. This poetry is particularly bad - it is verse upon verse of iambic tetrameters in A,A,B,B,C,C format. Just doggerel really. I forced myself to read a few pages but then I had to skip forward desperately looking for prose.
When I found more prose I was two thirds of the way through the book already and all I found was more boring, tedious explanation of how the story was put together from scraps of J.R.R Tolkien's notes and how it evolved over time and how many letters the author wrote to Unwin, who probably couldn't give a damn about the gory details, just like me.
If you've ever seen Monty Python's Travel Agent sketch "Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup, the first entry in a menu of 'International Cuisine'..." then you will know exactly what I mean.
I would have given this two stars but the illustrations are spectacular and worth an extra star
