The Nature of Middle-Earth – Review
I am a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien and you could put his name on almost anything and I would likely buy it. I’m not alone and that is why, even though Tolkien has been dead for decades, new books with his name on it come out regularly.
Many of those posthumous books were published by his son, Christopher Tolkien, who went through his father’s papers and edited some of the unpublished and unfinished stories, as well as alternate versions of stories that were published in other books.
Now Christopher Tolkien is gone as well but that will not stop the Tolkien publishing machine. Not that I’m complaining.
My most recent purchase was The Nature of Middle-Earth, while sort of written by Tolkien, was put out by Carl Hostetter.
Like the books put out by Christopher Tolkien, this also is a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien’s unpublished notes. In fact, these notes were never meant to be published. These are his files that he jotted down on the back of whatever paper was available as he tried to make sure the world he was creating made sense.
If you are considering this book, do not think that you are going to be reading a collection of stories by Tolkien. These are notes that reflect how Tolkien was thinking as he was writing those stories.
For example, he has quite a few notes on the aging of the elves. You might have thought that elves developed much like humans except they never got old and died. However, Tolkien saw the elves as developing at their own rate, a certain amount of their years for every human year. This also meant that there was a certain age when they got married and when they had children and they rarely went outside of that.
There are many aspects of Middle-earth that the reader gets a glimpse of which Tolkien never thought would be made public. There are things like what happens to elves when they die, how they can be sent back to Middle-earth, or even be reincarnated as a baby.
Yes, some of what is found in this book can get boring as we get numerous notes on the same topic, reflecting Tolkien’s evolving thought process. And the topics are not necessarily that which has attracted the majority of Lord of the Rings fans.
But if you are a true Tolkien fan, you will appreciate this collection. If nothing else, it gives the reader a sense of how much thought Tolkien put into creating Middle-earth.
