When i first read this book in the 70s, I was delighted & amazed by the intricate & detailed worldbuilding Tolkien had indulged in; at the time, there was little but the book itself available to me to explain it’s provenance. It’s been a good while since, and much has been said and written and posted elsewhere; i reread this for the first time recently, after I’d watched Amazon’s 1st season of Rings of Power; initially i thought to only seek for the discrepancies between book and the show, but found myself drawn in to reread the whole work once more.

As a book, it has its issues- very stylistic language, no character development of substance- it’s dry and academic, on a subject that’s essentially one man’s extended academic fever dream. But it is a lovely and rich fever dream, extolling upon characters and settings the author had been pondering for decades. His sone Christopher did an admirable job editing what must have a turgid & contradictory pimple into a coherent narrative. As work of historical fantasy, its a good reference for aspirating game masters of what you can do when world building, and a stark warning about what happens if you take such too far…