Snag Your Copy The Nature Of Middle-earth Developed By Null Supplied As Audio Book

been eagerly anticipating this books for months, and devoured it as soon as it arrived, It was chock full of all kinds of new information about Middle Earth and its history: the nature of Elvish birth, growth, death and reincarnation, population figures for the Elves in the period after they first awakened, descriptions on the physical and metaphysical nature of the universe and the power of the Valar within it, and so forth.


This book gave me exactly what I wanted and expected, but the general reader has to understand what it actually is: a series of loosely related and often incomplete essays as Tolkien explored ideas on how the world of Middle Earth worked.
It's not a collective of narratives, and the ideas presented are largely in draft form,

Nevertheless, there is quite of lot of never before seen and extremely valuable information in this book, a delight to the hard core Tolkien fan, As many of the other reviewers have said, the target audience for this book is the serious Tolkien enthusiast: the type of reader who enjoyed The History of Middle Earth, and the technical sections in Unfinished Tales.
For that audience, this book will be rewarding and interesting, Personally, I loved it. It will leave everyone else cold hence the distribution of both very high and very low review scores, For a casual reader, it is not even a good route into a detailed consideration of the Middle Earth mythos, It is best seen as a technical addendum to The History of Middle Earth,

The publisher, Harper Collins, deserves some blame, The lastyears has seen elements of Tolkien's work repeatedly restructured for republication in ways which emphasized specific stories eg Beren and Lúthien The Children of Hurin, seeking to make them accessible to the general reader.
The publisher's publicity blurb does not make it clear that this is a very different book, encourages the casual buyer to think that it includes narrative elements than it actually does, and is than a bit misleading.
Caveat emptor! Previous reviewer is clearly not a deep down fan of all the minutiae of Middle Earth, But that's okay. I am! And I love the Silmarillion, thus this book, along with the Histories and the Unfinished Tales all combined to flesh out that much of the world that JRR Tolkien created.
I'm half thru it after one day, and enjoy it immensely, You don't have to memorize every sentence in this book to enjoy the insights that different parts provide,.shipping At this point they are just publishing anything to induce fans of LOTR to spend money, Im a huge Tolkien fan but this is mind numbingly boring, Random napkin notes about Middle Earth printed in a nice looking volume, If you cant get enough of the Simarillion this may be for you, but for the rest of us just start rereading Fellowship of the Ring instead, If you are the sort of Tolkien fan who wants to know exactly how Tolkien calculated the ages of elves, with pages of mathematical table, or exactly what kind of paper and with what ink Tolkien wrote each piece of manuscript under discussion, this book is for you.


But if you are the sort of fan who loves LOTR, but can barely tolerate "The Silmarillion," this book is not for you, You will find the occasional nugget of interest, but otherwise you will be skimming through the book in dismay, However, those of us who always wondered about the life, and especially the reproductive life of Elves will be repaid by staying alert, The book is focused chiefly on elves I would like to have learned of the other peoples of Middle Earth,

Not a book for the casual fan, Soon they will be publishing Tolkien's laundry lists, But fun for the most ardent enthusiasts, This book is, in effect, Volumeof The Complete History of Middle earth, and how you feel about it will be exactly the same as how you felt about its twelve predecessors.
I can't imagine that you'd enjoy it if your interest in Tolkien is only casual, But if, like me, you love his legendarium so much that its every tiny detail is a thing of absorbing interest, The Nature of Middle earth will reward you with much new information about his world that'll absolutely fascinate you.
Presumably the last book of its kind, it is, as it were, the cheese board concluding the banquet that Christopher Tolkien bestowed on us, full of delicious things to nibble and savour.


What nobody can dispute is that in their deluxe edition, HarperCollins have kept up the high, almost Folio Society quality standard that has made their seventeen earlier deluxe Tolkien books a delight for any Tolkien fan who's a bibliophile as well as a hobbitomane.
The paper is acid free and smooth, the print quality superb, the silk bookmark present and correct as usual, the binding elegant and beautiful with a JRRT painting of the Tree of Amalion on its front board, the slipcase sturdy and exquisitely decorated.
The Ted Nasmith painting of the shore of Aman that's used on the jacket of the standard edition is included as a fold out frontispiece, and the endpapers are decorated with some Tolkinian arithmetic.
Whether the luxury of the special edition is worth its premium price is a matter of opinion, but I guarantee that, if you were happy with the earlier books in the JRRT deluxe series, you won't regret buying this one either.
I have read the entirevouume study by Christopher Tolkien, giving much unpublished material, So I'm not sorry I got this book, but it may disappoint those who've not done such studies,

There is a lot about the ages and stages of lives of elves, Do we really need to know

Some about theology, though the best items were already known, Besides, I admire Tolkien as a writer of fiction, My viewpoint is not Christian and I viewed the theological stuff as just an extension of something foolish in the first place,

Regarding the stories, there are a few extra items, but not really justifying a very expensive book, Not for the non expert, Like any book based on Tolkien's writings, you have to take everything here with a pinch of salt, Scraps of paper and notes in margins do not a narrative make, but the theories and conclusions in this book are agreeable enough, I found it to be a lot drier than Unfinished Tales which is written in a similar style, and I switched off when the author went into the details of his mathematical solutions.


As a reference book, much like History of Middle Earth and Unfinished Tales, it does the job, I would absolutely recommend this to any Tolkien enthusiast to add to their collection, Casual fans / readers who prefer narratives would probably be less likely to get a lot out of it, My copy arrived today. Sep., the day of the The Nature of Middle earth's hardback publication in the UK, so obviously I've not read it cover to cover as yet, However, I have skimmed through it, and found an interesting store of detailed knowledge about Tolkien's creation Middle earth, As one would expect from Tolkien, and indeed of Carl Hostetter who edited this book, everything has been set out logically, with appropriate annotations that add to, rather than clutter the text, which is very nicely presented.


I would caution prospective purchasers that this book will not give you a story to read: there is no substantial narrative or connected text for you to get your teeth into.
What you will find here is a collection of fairly short pieces, delving into some detail or another of Middle earth, to enable to truly committed to enjoy and visualise the realms in which were set The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and the other posthumous publications such as The Children of Húrin and The History of Middle earth.


So if it's not a story, what do you get in this book The body of the book is divided into three parts each with its own short introduction, together with a brief Foreword and introductory matter at the beginning, and a couple of Appendices and an Index at the back.
Here's an outline of its content

ONE TIME AND AGEING
This is the longest of the three parts, and consists ofshort chapters averagingpages each, The first four are JRRT's workings of the horology of Middle earth: they are surprisingly detailed scientific even and parts are presented in tabular form, Then comes a short piece describing the 'life cycle' of the Quendi Elves, and another in two versions on the origin 'Awakening' of the Quendi, alternating with two 'mathematical' interludes which calculate the growth of their population across successive generations.
The next three sections explore in detail the chronology and ageing of the Quendi, and these are followed by a chapter called Key Dates which is the draft of a 'timeline'.
The next four chapters are highly numerical expositions of Quendi Generational Schemes, Then come two on Elvish Ages and their life cycles, before we return to two brief purely horological pieces, The last two chapters in Part One are fragments from the Annals of Aman and the Grey Annals: each fragment is only a page long, but the latter includes a short poem.


PART TWO BODY, MIND AND SPIRIT
Seventeen chapters, averagingpages each, discuss all sorts of attributes of Tolkien's peoples beauty, goodness, gender and sex don't worry: nothing to frighten the horses, hands, fingers, hair, beards, minds, and memories.
There's a version of 'Ósanwe kenta' different to that in Vinyar Tengwar VT, relating to communication of thoughts, and perhaps one of the most interesting sections of all Tolkien's commentary on his visualisation of some of his characters, as related to the Allen Unwin poster map of.
Notes on Órë is a representation of a short piece already published in VT it is somewhat linguistic in nature, as are the following chapters entitled Fate And Free Will, The Knowledge Of The Valar, Spirit, and The Visible Forms Of The Valar And Maiar.
Atpages, Elvish Reincarnation looks like a fascinating collection of pieces, previously only available in different form in a French publication, Part Two concludes with a portion of The Statute of Finwë and Míriel that did not appear in The History of Middle earth X: Morgoth's Ring, and a final piece on Death.


PART THREE THE WORLD, ITS LANDS, AND ITS INHABITANTS
Potentially the most interesting and accessible, but one I have barely looked at yet, so this 'description' is little than a summary of the chapter headings.

Like the second part, the third occupies aboutpages, It consists ofchapters, some onlyorpages long, They discuss Dark and Light, Spirit, the Powers of the Valar, Lembas, the Economy, Dwellings, the Founding of Nargothrond, Manwë's Ban, some calculations as to how fast Elves could travel on horseback, and a short passage that Tolkien

chose not to use in The Lord of the Rings' chapter 'The White Rider'.
There There are chapters concerned with the lives and ageing of Númenóreans, the land and beasts of their domain, and even mushrooms! There are musings on the Númenórean catastrophe, Galadriel and Celeborn especially their names, the Silvan Elves and their language, and short notes on 'the delay of Gil galad and the Númenóreans in attacking Sauron', Dwarvish voices, and the Dwarf Road.
A 'new' brief fragment of The Hunt for the Ring follows, and the main text ends with a longish discussion of the topography of Gondor updated and streamlined from Hostetter's own version that appeared in VT.


The longer appendix discusses methaphysical and theological themes, and the shorter is apage Quenya glossary,

If you've not read any Tolkien before, do not under any circumstances start with this! But if you've read everything there is and are still hungry for , this volume may fill some of the gaps in your knowledge.
.