 The cover depictsNúmenor being drowned in theremaking of Arda. | |
| Editor | Brian Sibley |
|---|---|
| Author | J. R. R. Tolkien |
| Illustrator | Alan Lee |
| Cover artist | Alan Lee |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Tolkien's legendarium |
| Genre | High fantasy |
| Published | 15 November 2022 |
| Publisher | HarperCollins |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| Media type | Print (hardback) |
| Pages | 332 |
| ISBN | 978-0-00-853783-8 |
| OCLC | 1341269947 |
| Preceded by | The Nature of Middle-earth |
The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-Earth is an edited 2022 collection ofJ. R. R. Tolkien'sSecond Age writings. The editor,Brian Sibley, uses extracts from "The Tale of Years" in theAppendices ofThe Lord of the Rings as a framework for the writings. The materials in the book cover the foundation, history and destruction of the land ofNúmenor; the forging of theRings of Power; and theLast Alliance againstSauron that ended the Second Age.
Reviewers have commented that the book, timed to coincide withAmazon's television seriesThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, set in the Second Age, will prove useful to its fans, giving them a grounding in Tolkien's writings. They note however that it offers little to scholars, as unlikeThe Nature of Middle-earth it contains no previously unpublished materials. Further, its purely chronological approach neither establishes a coherent narrative, nor traces the history of Tolkien's many drafts.
The Fall of Númenor collects already-published materials about theSecond Age of Middle-earth into a chronological format, its structure exactly mirroring the timeline supplied byJ. R. R. Tolkien in "A Tale of Years" in Appendix B ofThe Lord of the Rings.Brian Sibley gathered the materials from the 1977The Silmarillion, the 1980Unfinished Tales, the 12-volume 1983–1996The History of Middle-earth, and the 2021The Nature of Middle-earth.
Sibley's introduction to the chronology is titled "The Saga of 'A Dark Age'".
The body of the book, titled "The Tale of Years (Chronology of the Westland)s", covers the foundation, history and destruction of the land ofNúmenor; the forging of theRings of Power; and theLast Alliance againstSauron that ended the Second Age.
The chapters concerning Númenor from the 1987The Lost Road and Other Writings are included as an appendix.
The Fall of Númenor was published on 15 November 2022,[1] its launch timed to coincide with the release of the television seriesThe Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, set in the Second Age.[1]
Sibley provides new introductions and commentaries. The book's cover, ten colour paintings and several line drawings are by theTolkien artist, the illustratorAlan Lee.[1]
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, reviewing the book forTolkien Studies, writes that whileThe Fall of Númenor provides nothing that was not already in print, its largely chronological rearrangement of the materials has value. In his view, the handsomely produced volume successfully "walks a fine and perilous line" between being a "readerly" or a scholarly book.[2] Given that it was released at the same time as Amazon'sRings of Power, Danehy-Oakes remarks, it offers fans a view of the feigned history of theSecond Age, without what he calls the "distort[ions] and misrepresent[ations] of the television series.[2] Brenton Dickieson comments that the book is skilfully illustrated, but that without any new material, which, he writes, seems to have been exhausted withThe Nature of Middle-earth (as its editor,Carl Hostetter, implies, barring linguistic or philological texts), the book "serves primarily to root viewers of Amazon'sThe Rings of Power in the richer soils of Middle-earth."[3]
Douglas Kane, inJournal of Tolkien Research, writes that scholars expected that Sibley would either write a continuous narrative, as inChristopher Tolkien's 2007The Children of Húrin, or would trace the history of J. R. R. Tolkien's many drafts and fragments on the subject, as in Christopher Tolkien's 2018The Fall of Gondolin.[4] Instead, Sibley made the "unfortunate"[4] choice of "treat[ing] the Second Age as mere fodder for backstory toThe Lord of the Rings".[4] In Kane's view, this fails to recognise the value of the material; fails to establish "a coherent narrative";[4] and fails to trace the history of Tolkien's drafts properly.[4] Kane notes that Sibley uses Tolkien's "The Tale of Years"[5] as his framework, supplying the titles of his chapters, and then "attempt[ing] to pigeon-hole excerpts" from all the sources he employed under those headings.[4] The result of this cut-and-paste approach "often results in an incoherent mess."[4] He quotes Eldy Dunami's view of the book's use of the tale ofAldarion and Erendis, which she calls "the most egregious example" of cutting up a story and interleaving the excerpts with fragments from other places. In her view, the result is "akin to an 'explainer' blog post'".[4]
Hamish Williams, reviewing the book inJournal of Inklings Studies, writes that for readers unfamiliar with Tolkien's writings, the book "ably fills" the gap in published works, with nothing before it providing a "clear, cohesive, comprehensive summation of the Second Age" as the book does.[6] However, he questions whether the rearrangement of the stories is "a constructive (i.e. not damaging) enterprise", or whether Tolkien's "narrative design" would not be ruined, its "aesthetic appeal" lost.[6] He describes the book as "an edited version of edited versions [his emphasis] of Tolkien's work": in editorial terms, in his view, something of anested set of Russian dolls.[6]
