Greatpilgrim's Full Review: J. R. R. Tolkien - The End of the Third Age: The H...
Okay, so there’s something a tiny bit fishy about Christopher Tolkien taking 12 volumes to publish his father’s notes on all things Lord-of-the-Ring-related into a huge History of Middle-earth. It smacks slightly of opportunism, no?
But I’ve never felt the kind of moral outrage about it that I probably should.
Until now.
You see, I got The End of the Third Age: The History of the Lord of the Rings, Part 4 (from the library, thankfully) thinking it was the full Volume IX in the part of the Histories where we get to find out about how Return of the King developed. Only to find out – oops – this skinny 160-page book is “included” in SEVERAL other newer volumes in the series. Yeah, ain’t that a kick in the head. Apparently once Christopher Tolkien had finished the whole series he realized some things needed to be added, so he went back and repackaged this book (The End of the Third Age) into Sauron Defeated….but the original book is still being sold. To make matters worse, the Tolkien estate stuck The End of the Third Age into the slip-covered “History of the Lord of the Rings” four-volume set in attempt to make even MORE money off this now-irrelevant assemblage of notes.
If you’re still convinced this book is for you, here’s what to expect. In 12 chapters, Christopher Tolkien takes us through the extant drafts and revisions to parts of The Two Towers and Return of the King. The titles of the chapters will be familiar if you’ve read the Lord of the Rings trilogy: “The Story of Frodo and Sam in Mordor,” “The Tower of Kirith Ungol,” “The Land of Shadow,” “Mount Doom,” “The Field of Kormallen,” “The Steward and the King,” “Many Partings,” “Homeward Bound,” “The Scouring of the Shire,” “The Grey Havens,” “The Epilogue.” The material is told in a more-or-less story-like fashion, with interjections from Christopher in between passages explaining differences in early and later texts.
I really did love the material included in The End of the Third Age. The volume focuses on Frodo and Sam for the most part, and the introductory chapter was a fascinating outline by J.R.R. himself of the events in their storyline. I guess what I found so interesting about the evolutionary writing process shown here was the journey it took as a storyteller to get Frodo and Sam to a place where their heroism made sense in the context of an epic. In these chapters you get to peek at J.R.R. scribbling early concepts of how Frodo could get rid of the Ring, alternate characterizations of Aragon, and several contrasting epilogues that reveal beautiful family moments as well as answering some pertinent questions about “what happened to everybody” after LOTR (answers which did not always appear in the trilogy, mind you!).
I also appreciated the organization of the volume to leave out the many other plot threads happening in Return of the King to JUST focus on the plan to destroy the Ring. This made the revisions and flow of the notes much easier to follow, although it still takes a degree of concentration to understand what Christopher is showing us in the progression of the various drafts. It’s best to read this material with a copy of Lord of the Rings by your side for comparison purposes. This assumes, of course, that you’re interested in the small differences The End of the Third Age presents…so pretty much only for huge Tolkien buffs!
In the interest of thoroughness, I should note that the formatting of this volume is quite reader-friendly, with comfortable margins, large print for Tolkien’s original texts, and Christopher’s commentary in smaller but still readable fonts. It’s also appealingly slender…but therein lies the problem as well. The only “goodies” this book contains are pictures of an Elvish letter from Aragorn and an Appendix with dark charcoal sketches by Tolkien. Contrast that with Sauron Defeated, which contains the exact same material as The End of the Third Age PLUS material that Tolkien intended to publish with Return of the King: a sci-fi story called “The Notion Club Papers” with a futuristic literary club discussing LOTR stuff; a Numenorean legend called “The Drowning of Anadune” and the only explaining of the Second Age Numenorian language (used occasionally by Aragorn), Adunaic. Neat, right? Yeah, if you have the right book – i.e. not this one!
~Bottom line~
DON’T fall for this volume. It may try to trick you with its subtitle “Sauron Defeated,” but the true Volume IX of the History of Middle-earth (and the full Part 4 of History of Lord of the Rings) is actually published as Sauron Defeated and is way cooler. Sorry, J.R.R., your notes are fascinating, but the feeling of being ripped off in The End of the Third Age cancels out the nostalgia of beginning the journey with you and Frodo and Sam.
The End of the Third Age
Authors: J.R.R. Tolkien and Christopher Tolkien
Paperback: 176 pages
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; 1 edition (September 2000)
ISBN-10: 0618083561
ISBN-13: 978-0618083565
The End of the Third Age is comprised of the first section of the hardcover volume published as Sauron Defeated, the ninth volume of The History of Mi...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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