Because of its fragmentary nature, you can pretty much start anywhere in the book, which has its advantages.For the true Tolkien fanatic, the sort of person who wants the names for the other two Istari, who is fascinated by the explanation of the Teleri dialect of Elvish, or who was curious as to just why the cats of Queen Beruthiel were proverbial, this book is an absolute gold mine, even more 'fun' in its way than the Silmarillion. It includes a much longer version of the tale of Turin, a large fragment of the story of Tuor, substantial information on Numenor and the line of kings, various versions of the history of Galadriel and Celeborn, some fascinating fragementary material on the Five Wizards, and jillions of footnotes and appendices to all, which describe variant versions, point out apparent contradictions, and provide fascinating supplementary information. Rather than a narrative, it's really a sort of organized memory dump of Tolkien's filing cabinet. This book ('Unfinished Tales' by JRR Tolkien, $15 from Houghton Mifflin) is definitely not a book for a general readership, nor even for the mass Tolkien consumer, who thinks that Lord of the Rings is a swell story, but all that linguistic and historical stuff is just a lot of window-dressing. While I haven't read even half of it, I think I've read enough to produce a helpful review, so here goes. (Original Review, )The new Tolkien book is out.

Unfinished tales of numenor