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marvelruinedmyspirit's review against another edition
2.0
I have beef with Mr. Alan Bliss as an editor, and where is why:
- Mr. Bliss did everything he possibly could to make Tolkien's text big enough to be a book, including writing a preface and an editor's introduction (there is also an author's introduction), and putting the original texts twice. I feel like if there's only 50 pages' worth of stuff, we could just make the book 50 pages.
- For some reason the translation was put after the textual commentary, which made little sense.
- Said textual commentary as well as the glossary of names should have been edited better (or at all). On the whole, Christopher Tolkien did a much superior job with his father's notes on Beowulf.
- The most interesting part of the book was the few pages of Tolkien's reconstructions (in my opinion), AKA the appendices, but for some reason another appendix was added by Mr. Bliss, which I thought a tad random; I'm not saying his theory wasn't interesting, but it didn't belong there, he should maybe have published his papers on their own and not mixed the two.
- Also, despite stretching the text as much as he could, for some reason he could not be bothered to translate the latin quotes in his own paper.
Tl;dr: Alan Bliss should have just gone ahead and written his own book. Christopher should have taken this one.
basbleu_dans_labiblioteque's review against another edition
challenging
informative
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? N/A
4.0
rayn0n's review against another edition
4.0
I wish I knew more about linguistics as a study, most of the breakdown of grammar and context went over my head, but the reconstructed fragment and Tolkien's explanation of the historical context and his extrapolation on the greater story the fragments are from was enjoyable, as was just peeking into his passion for language and the kind of car and dedication he put into constructing his languages just as he deconstructed the fragment and episode of Finn.
bedneyauthor's review
2.0
This was another one that I really wanted to like, but you are not going to have a good time unless you have at least a working knowledge of Old English and Latin or a great ability to pick up what someone's talking about from context.
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