hey guys welcome to nerd of the Rings today we are talking about a brand new Tolkien book it is
the fall of numenor it compiles all of tolkien's second age writings and for those who might not be
sure why I'm so pumped about this book let me ask you a question that I get here on the Channel all
the time if I want to read about tolkien's second age what book should I buy and if you're not that
well versed with tolkien's writings it might be a surprisingly complex answer naturally you'll want
the Lord of the Rings if you don't already have it because it has the appendices which they do
reference the second age quite a bit but don't forget we also have moments like the Council of
elrond throughout the book that reference the second age as well so you'll definitely want to
pick up and read the Lord of the Rings next up we have unfinished Tails you'll definitely want this
one it has quite a bit about numenor it has some on the estari which we know from tolkien's later
writings he had the blue Wizards showing up in the second age so you'll want to be well versed in the
Wizards and of course the tale of galadril and kelleborn so unfinished Tales is a must
and then naturally you'll also want the silmarillion it has the chapter the akalabeth
which is the downfall of numenor very very important for the second age so that's a good
start but actually there's there's a bit more um we should probably go ahead and get the entire uh
history of Middle Earth because there's uh more about the second age Within These Pages as well
oh and don't forget we also have the nature Middle Earth which was the most recent book
prior to the fall of numenor this also has quite a bit including dancing bears
of numenor and you can't go without that so we've got to throw this in the pile too
so obviously it's been quite an undertaking if you wanted to read about tolkien's second age
up until now and that is where this book comes in handy so I'm going to give you guys a sneak peek
and show you some of the contents within while I talk about why I'm so pumped about this book
all right so we'll take a look at the fall of numenor obviously right off the bat we see the
cover has some amazing Alan Lee artwork and if you fold it out see if I can do this carefully here
see the title being depicted this is the fall of numenor and you can kind of see here
there's just barely visible on the cover there's a little bitty sour
on here so he's kind of standing on what is presumably the ruins of the Temple of
morgoth standing in defiance as the island is being Swept Away buried under the sea
if you want to see it without the slip cover
and then we have the same artwork very nicely presented right off the bat when we open the cover
and I love that this book is uh dedicated to Priscilla Tolkien
who just passed away earlier this year I love that they dedicated it to her
so here we see the chronology everything is laid out according to the tale of years which Tolkien
lays out in the appendices and so what Brian has done here is taken all of tolkien's writings about
the second age and laid them out according to those dates and it's really handy we have the
actual years which I'm a big fan of um as you'll know from watching my videos I'm very big on the
years and locations and everything of of how these events play out and here we have an about this
book section and as we're at this section I wanted to pause for a second and tell you what this book
is and this section lays it out but just so you know I've seen a lot of folks who are very very
confused at this they think that this is somehow original writings taking place in Middle Earth or
this is some kind of new Canon or rewriting or tweaking of tolkien's old writings or something
um but I don't know where that idea came from but that's not what this is this is an assembling of
tolkien's second age writing so this is all still tolkien's text as Tolkien wrote them
um but they're just assembled in in this chronological order uh and in a single volume
for the first time and here we have the tale of years this is where the actual meat of the book
kicks off and right away you'll see one of my favorite features of this book throughout the
book you will see all kinds of um illustrations sketches by Alan Lee and uh Brian Sibley when I
was interviewing him actually said that pretty much up until the deadline Alan was continuing
to send more and more illustrations like he just kept going and so there are a lot of sketches
especially in this book and as we'll see some full color illustrations as well and right here we have
our first full color image and it is the host of the Valar descending into engband so this would
be at the end of the war of Wrath so this is the very tale end of the first age where the host of
the valard descends into angband and they chain and uh bind morgoth and cast him into the void
after this so we can see a dead Dragon I believe uh yeah there we go a dead dragon head there um
as the good guys descend into the lair of the bad guys so to speak to put it simply and here I'll
point out something that if you're not familiar with Christopher tolkien's work uh specifically
in things like unfinished Tales or the history of Middle Earth there's some some Telltale ways to to
know what is actually tolkien's words and what is the editor's commentary and you'll see here
um the sections that are normally spaced as you would expect are tolkien's own words and then
what's indented here and uh the font is slightly different is the commentary by the editor so
Christopher did this a lot uh in his works and we see Brian using the same methods I will also point
out that there's a a good number of footnotes so Brian definitely shows his homework here
um on any commentary that he's making to point point you even further so if you want to dive even
further into the background of some of this stuff you can do that you can look up the appropriate
notes in whatever he's citing whether it's history of Middle Earth or unfinished Tales whatever the
source may be here we see a couple more sketches this looks to be the rising of numenor out of the
sea we see the the water coming down we featured this in the live stream as well but this is
another sketch of Alan Lee's and you'll see these throughout obviously there's there's quite a lot
quite a lot of artwork here we have a section on the geography of numenor and I it was confirmed
the dancing bears that we all found out about in nature of Middle Earth are talked about indeed
in this book here we have another color piece by Alan Lee this is looking West from andunier
which is one of the ports in numenor here's another full color one that is entitled The
forging of the ring so obviously a very very important moment in the second age and I'll
pause here to to kind of tell you why I'm so excited about this book obviously as I pointed
out with the huge collection of uh books that one would have to have to read everything about
the second age it's obviously hugely beneficial uh not only for people experiencing these works
for the first time or looking into them for the first time but for someone like me to not
have to try to remember or bounce back and forth between books um like oh I want to read that bit
about numenor I want to go back and read that was that in unfinished Tales or was that in
silmarillion maybe that was in history of Middle Earth and it can get kind of cumbersome to try to
research about tolkien's second age so I'm really excited because this is a great starting point
whether it's for someone looking for the first time or if it's you know someone like me who
who dives into this stuff more regularly this is a great place to start and if you want to go deeper
Brian's done a good job of putting footnotes in here so that you can go as deep as you'd like
1693 a very important year as the war of the elves and Sauron begins and the three rings are hidden
two years later Sauron invades ariador I can tell this is going to be a fun book to go through I
love the the years and the major event that is being highlighted are the chapter titles
I think that's a great call and I love that organization method oh spoiler alert I guess for
anyone who's a maybe a caliber and boar fan and I think this is a great example right here that
we just happened to open to where Brian pulls in something that you wouldn't necessarily expect or
immediately associate with the second age but in the greater story of the second age it does give
you some insight so what this is is the song of Doran that Gimli sings while the fellowship walks
through Moria and so it kind of talks about Kaza Doom when it's in its Heyday and then what it's
turned into now and what they hope for for the future so this ties in really well uh with this
section of the second age that we're referencing here because this comes in the moment Sauron
overruns ariador so this comes during a time period when Kaza Doom closes its doors and they
are not opened again from the outside until the fellowship comes three thousand plus years later
and of course I feel like I have to mention this in every book review that I do
um but I love when they have the bookmark string I'm sure that has a technical name
um other than bookmark string but I love bookmark strings I guess it's more of a ribbon actually
bookmark ribbon I'm sure like people in the comments will let me know what that's actually
called and now we're getting a bit more into the new manure section of the book uh talks about
umbar and Pilar gear and how numenor gradually descends and we've got tar palantir the repentance
period and then our father is on the golden seizes the scepter in 3255 so we've got a
nice sketch there by Alan Lee again and this is another great illustration that we talked about
on the live stream with Brian is this is the Temple of melkor in numenor and I absolutely
love this image and we talked about it a bit how you don't see the whole temple in the illustration
you just see enough of it to know that it is massive and you see the humans for scale here
I didn't notice it at first but this is actually blood here from the human sacrifices so these are
are people of the faithful you can see their captives and they're being led up appeared to
be sacrificed to melkor [Music] oh and this is a wonderful image here I really like this one
so this is Galadriel leading elves through Kaza Doom as we know kelleborn does not because he's
not a big fan of the dwarves but Galadriel and her daughter and some other elves make their way
to Lorien through Kaza Doom so that's what we're seeing here and gosh I mean how can you complain
about original Alan Lee artwork this is just phenomenal and of course uh one of the final
full color plates we have here is the war of the last Alliance so we have gondorians as well
as elves fighting against the Orcs of Sauron in what is the uh climactic Battle of the second age
and naturally we have the appendices even though some of the some of the writings are
from The Lord of the Rings appendices now this book has its own appendices
that's how you know it's good and then here I just happen to flip open to this but it goes on to
talk about the new minorian chapters from the Lost road which I've talked about in videos here on the
channel before very very interesting stuff from a from a time period where Tolkien was trying to
write a time travel tale and it involved numenor and there's a lot of things from that that kind of
give you insight into the direction he might have gone with some of the characters in the actual
newman-orient tale if he were to flesh it out farther and then here at the end we have a whole
section of notes so these are presumably all of the footnotes that Brian had throughout the book
so it's it's a great piece um this book as I've as I've gone through it and read
some of it before my review here I think it's a great book for whether you're just
interested in the story and you just want to you know find out more about the second age and
um you know kind of kind of get the most complete picture you can of Tolkien second
age with what he wrote or if you want to go deeper and get into tolkien's notes
um there's there's footnotes and things to allow you to do that and Brian has some commentary about
um you know what what sections and how how he broke up things like uh the story of aldarion
and orendus how it's broken up to fit with the chronology of the tale of years within this book
so there we go it's the fall of numenor a brand new Tolkien book um yeah obviously I'm a big fan
of this book as I said uh it's really really handy to have all of tolkien's second age writings or at
least the most complete version of them uh all within a single volume it's gonna make a very
very easy recommendation for me when people want to read more about tolkien's second age
um yeah there's there's not quite any day like new Tolkien book day and uh we've been fortunate
in recent years to have a fair number of those another one we have coming up that I'll talk
about here on the channel is the silmarillion uh the new edition that is illustrated by Tolkien
himself so I'll have that upcoming on the channel but for now uh the book of the day is the fall of
numenor you can get it wherever you get your books so check it out if you want to dive into
tolkien's second age thanks so much for watching and we'll see you next time on nerd of the ranks