A Red Letter Day, Indeed

The Fall of Númenor [and Other Tales of the Second Age of Middle-earth] (2022), Edited by Brian Sibley and Compiled from The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, volumes from The History of Middle-earth by Christopher Tolkien, and other sources. Illustrations by Alan Lee. 

The day began rainy, cold, and grey, and remained so. But things began looking up when Susan and Andy took us all the Grand Buffet for an early supper. When we returned, I found this book awaiting me on the porch, and things went into a higher gear.

I took the package in and eagerly unwrapped it with trembling hands. I was immediately struck by the beauty of the volume. Illustrated throughout by a dozen paintings and innumerable pencil sketches by Alan Lee, this book gathers together nearly everything known about the island kingdom of Númenor and the Second Age of Middle-earth, all from Tolkien's own published writings or Christopher Tolkien's editing of his unpublished work. It is up-to-date even unto The Nature of Middle-earth (2021, edited by Carl F. Hostetter). It thus contains no 'original work' beyond Sibley's Introduction, Notes, and Appendices.

But it does gather together into one location all the scattered previously published material on Númenor into one well-organized, chronological narrative.  Brian Sibley, as well as being an acknowledged expert on Fantasy and Children's Literature, has had a long-standing relationship with Tolkien's work since he adapted The Lord of the Rings into a series of radio plays over forty years ago.

I watched an interview he gave about the publication of this novel in preparation for its arrival. He was asked the inevitable question about possible ties with Amazon's abomination of The Rings of Power, also set in the Second Age. Sibley was rather cagey in his answers, neither giving it a ringing endorsement or completely handing it over to perdition. He said time will tell when the series has progressed more. I have the feeling that this was a rather politic answer, in view of the changes in the Tolkien Estate. After all, he does not want to be 'canceled', like Tom Shippey.

But here he is treading safe ground for true Tolkien aficionados. It seems very well put together, using Tolkien's own 'Tale of Years' as a skeleton to hang the passages on, and includes a red ribbon marker to hold your place. The book itself is dedicated to Priscilla Tolkien, J. R. R.'s only daughter and honorary vice-president of The Tolkien Society. She died in February of this year, the last of Tolkien's living children.

I, of course, have not had time to do any serious reading in it, but I can hardly wait to go voyaging once again into this 'dark age' of Middle-earth. It will certainly help cleanse my palate after the foul draught of  the streaming service's 'pile of fetid dingo kidneys', and is certain to endure long after that show is an unfortunate but fading memory. Perhaps the 'showrunners' might have benefitted from this book had it been available to them. But then they already had 'Moses and the prophets' and did not listen to them on their road to damnation. Sorry to linger so bitterly on it when this should be more about the book, but it still scrolls my knurd.