A must-have for Tolkien fans
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I have to say I loved this book! It filled in a lot more gaps in LOTR and Middle Earth and went through from The Silmarilion to beyond LOTR. It's amazing the amount of detail Tolkien went in to with these books. The histories, lineages and languages are so detailed and fascinating.
A must for any Tolkien fan.
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Depth and imagination
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J.R.R. Tolkien was a man with the utmost respect for the genre in which he reigned as king. This stunning book simply adds to the incredible tapestry that he has woven so expertly, allowing for a greater understanding of the fantastic tales of Middle-earth. The stories span from a very in depth view of the meeting Galadriel and Celeborn in Doriath to an extended version of the Children of Hurin, which was covered in brief in the Silmarillion and which has now been expanded even further to comprise a whole book of it's own, something the story certainly merits. Further chapters of interest are those concerning the Istari (Wizards) and the history of the Palantiri.
This is a book that adds to the history of Middle-earth, a must have for any budding Tolkienist.
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Utterly brilliant
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Best included as an element in a complete read of all Tolkien's Middle-earth writings but if nothing else is worth the money simply for the tale of 'The Faithful Stone' which is perhaps the lovliest and most moving piece JRRT ever wrote.
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Excellent reading for those who enjoyed LotR
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I'd been putting off reading this for years, fearing that it would be as big a disappointment as The Silmarillion. But in fact, taken on its own merits, there are some excellent bits here. The first half of the book, which is basically three chunks of narrative which didn't quite make it into The Silmarillion, is especially good, although the very first part, a lovely description of Tuor's journey to Gondolin, is a bit short on narrative action.
But then we get to the out-takes from the tale of Túrin Turambar, always my favourite bit of The Silmarillion. We get a new insight into Túrin as flawed hero (and what made him flawed), and new details of the story of his life and death. It is a real shame that significant parts of the narrative are left out, with a note that we should see The Silmarillion for the relevant text. Is it beyond the wit of Tolkien's estate to produce a canonical version of the Tale of the Children of Húrin, pulling together all the relevant material and published as a single volume? There would be a market for it.
The last substantial piece of narrative is the story of an early king of Númenor, whose family disintegrates as a result of his neglecting them to pursue his own personal obsession. Having read Tom Shippey, it's not too difficult to see this as an expression of the author's own fears, if you substitute Tolkien's exploration of Middle-Earth by pen for Tar-Aldarion's explorations by ship. I can't offhand think of another example of marital estrangement in Tolkien's works, certainly not one explored in such depth.
The second half of the book consists of much shorter pieces, some of which are little more than Christopher Tolkien's attempts to retcon his father's unpublished notes with the published material on this or that historical point. I found it interesting that in the last years of his life the elder Tolkien was trying to rewrite Galadriel as almost a more feminist figure. The story of the lead-up to the events of The Hobbit, as told from Gandalf's point of view, was also rather fun. And the pieces on the Woodmen, the Wizards and the PalantÃrs made for decent extended footnotes to The Lord of the Rings.
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Response to previous reviews
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As other reviewers have made clear, this is most assuredly not a book for Tolkien neophytes. Therefore I shall assume the prospective buyer has a basic knowledge of the Middle Earth saga.
Unfinished Tales is indeed "the one truly essential set of supplementary/outtake material", and Tolkien scholars are strongly advised to pick this up as soon as they finish reading The Silmarillion. For two reasons:
1. "The Sil" is hard work - its presentational style, half-Bible/half-history-textbook, renders it inaccessible to a lot of people. But if you manage to finish it you can reward yourself with Unfinished Tales, which deepens your enjoyment of "the Sil" by providing more detailed (more gripping, more compulsively re-readable!) accounts of the same events, even though they are fragmentary and at-variance-with-other-writings.
The first section of the book begins with the expanded account of Tuor's early life and his mission to Gondolin which, for some, is the greatest of all Tolkien's obscure writings. But the piece that follows it, "Narn i hin Hurin" (tale of the children of Hurin), is certainly another candidate for the title - an extensive recounting of the disaster-ridden lives of Turin and Nienor. Even with a large section of the story (including the whole of Turin's sojourn in Nargothrond) missing, it winds up being the most emotionally draining thing Tolkien ever wrote.
The third section gives a more detailed background to the events at the end of the Third Age (i.e The Lord Of The Rings). There are accounts of "The Disaster of the Gladden Fields" and of the past tribulations of Rohan, and its special relationship with Gondor. There is Gandalf's perspective on the background to "The Quest of Erebor" (i.e The Hobbit), and, perhaps of most interest, Saruman's "Hunt for the Ring", or how lucky Frodo and Sam were even to get out of Hobbiton and begin their quest.
The fourth section contains almost all the existing data on the origin of the Palantiri, the histories of the Druedain (aka the woses) and the Istari (aka the wizards).
And what of the second section? Well, for one thing, it collects assorted writings on the subject of Galadriel and Celeborn - Tolkien's view of them continually shifting, a congruent history never quite emerging, even though he fills in a few gaps in the history of the Third Age in the process. The second section also fleshes out the history of the island of Numenor. Which brings us to...
2. Most of these posthumously published "archaelogical" volumes contain at least one "revelation" - a complete one-off in amongst all the spot-the-difference first and second drafts. And in this instance it's the the tale of "Aldarion and Erendis". It interrupts a capsule history of Numenor (a description of the island and a brief history of its ruling dynasty), shifting the focus from affairs of state to affairs of the heart, specifically the doomed romance between the sixth king of Numenor and a woman from the lower classes (so to speak: her shorter life-expectancy becomes an issue here). Where to begin describing this great tale? Well, if I may step out of character and oversimplify, Aldarion and Erendis began like Tristan and Isolde and ended like Charles and Diana. Which means two things become apparent here: Tolkien's flair for romance and his deficient social politics. In the end, whether Tolkien intended this or not, it works as a parable against arranged marriages.
Summary: Unfinished, but definitely not Unnecessary.
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