RaveThe TimesNever did J.R.R. Tolkien more energetically celebrate his \'high-elven\' culture. Never did he write a more sustained account of battle. With dragons and fiery balrogs galore, the attack on Gondolin makes Peter Jackson’s souped-up cinema battles look like tabletop games. Forged in the heat of youth, the tale lacks the depth and granular detail of the maturer Tolkien. The prose is clear but archaic, unleavened by the hobbit voices of later works. But Tuor, the lone mortal man in this elf-centred epic, anticipates Bilbo and Frodo—a reluctant hero unexpectedly burdened with a weighty and perilous mission ... With language honed by long years and an immeasurably enriched vision, he never bettered the rising of the sea-god Ulmo in a storm as told in the 1951 version published here. It is a tantalising testament to what might have been.
