This book includes some background and clarification of information that relates to the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Some of the content is notes and I did not read this information. Some of the stories were interesting and rivaled those in the published books. The new TV series on the Rings of Power relates to some information about Numenor. This book is better than The Simarillion but not as good as the earlier published works. ( )

Tolkien's unfinished stories are better than most people's finished ones. ( )

Wow-o-wow! How had I not read this before? What a way to continue a Tolkien journey this year, having read The Silmarillion, Beren and Luthien, The Children of Hurin, The Fall of Gondolin, and now this.

And the audiobook so, so wonderfully narrated by Timothy and Samuel West. So seamlessly trading back and forth from main text to footnotes and back. Just wonderful. And another wonderful experience of reading the text while listening to the audio.

And the stories here. So much that augments both the Silmarillion and the LotR. Such richness. Numenor! Galadriel and Celeborn! Gladden Fields! Cirion and Eorl! The Quest of Erebor! The Hunt for the Ring! The Istari! The Palantíri! So much depth to Tolkien’s building of Middle Earth (and obvious source material for Peter Jackson’s movies- though he did go beyond source material and, to be kind, added his own).

Makes me want to go back and reread the LotR Appendices. (Though I understand the Audible has plans to release Andy Serkis reading the LotR- that is something to look forward to!) ( )

J.R.R. Tolkien is an author who truly creates a world the reader can escape into. I love how detailed and complete his world is. These are books I have read and re-read many times and they continue to hold my interest and to offer me new details each time I dive into them. ( )

I am a diehard fan of Tolkien’s stories and themes, but I don’t really care about the extra minutiae. If you love extra minutiae, you will not like my review.

So, there’s a lot of good content in the Unfinished Tales, but... as a single BOOK, it’s not very good. I know that the History of Middle-earth series was published later than UT, but if there was ever to be a do-over, I think about a third of the content in UT should be in HoME, leaving UT for the more substantial “tales” left out of the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion (and some of the stuff relegated to HoME, like the Athrabeth and the Laws and Customs of the Eldar, might be better at home in the Unfinished Tales). A lot of the Third and Fourth Age content, for example, reads more like lore summaries and extra appendices than actual “unfinished tales.”

“Of Tuor and his Coming to Gondolin” was a delight, on the other hand, and I wish there was more of it. “Aldarion and Erendis” was probably my favorite unfinished tale, full of great characters and fascinating gender politics against a tantalizing backdrop of Second Age Númenor before it descended into darkness. The Narn was also good—not as tight as the abridged version in the Silmarillion, but I liked seeing more of Túrin’s world, and I came out of it with more sympathy for his character. I also enjoyed “The History of Galadriel and Celeborn” for its insight into what the house of Finwë was up to this whole time (because out of everyone in the Legendarium, I have the biggest soft spot for the house of Finwë)

If you are a fellow diehard fan thinking about reading the Unfinished Tales, my advice is this: don’t read it all in one go, and treat the individual stories like their own things. That’s what I did (reading whole other books between chapters) and the experience was much less of a slog than it could have been. Also, don’t feel guilty if something is boring and you decide to skip it. The reason the Hobbit, Lord of the Rings, and the Silmarillion are so good is because they tell coherent narratives and had to be edited for publication. UT feels more like a deep-dive into the parts of those narratives that didn’t make the cut. So it’s interesting, but I don’t think it’s “required reading.” ( )