[Son of Númenor]

I would not go quite as far as Mr Johns or Miss Locko in criticizing the new novelization of Peter Jackson's epic. Most of the changes Tolkien made were reasonable enough, although I was somewhat dismayed to learn he left out Legolas's gnarly Hornburg railgrinds, Aragorn's famous "Let's hunt some orc!" and Gimli's thoughts on dwarf-tossing.

I found it a bit strange that Tolkien would bog his adaptation down with all the trite stuff -- historical allusions, poems, Bombadil -- that Jackson rightly chose to gloss over. The pacing bordered on the ludicrous (Seventeen years before Frodo leaves? Where's the urgency?), the characters were given less than their fair share of witty one-liners despite the abundance in Jackson's films, and the nature of Sauron and Saruman's relationship was plain wrong.

Despite these shortcomings the book was pretty snappy, if overlong. It captured the 'essence' of Jackson's work: unfortunately the written word is by nature a constrictive medium -- reading is simply not the same as seeing when it comes to a world as brilliantly composed as Middle-earth -- but Tolkien manages to get around this and still provide new insight into Jackson's world.

I highly recommend The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien as a companion to Jackson's Legendarium. I would go as far as to say it holds as much weight as Jackson's own movie picture guides and Monopoly game sets, though others might not be so liberal with issues of canonicity.

At any rate I would not be completely disappointed if this Mr Tolkien was chosen to write the adaptation for Dead Alive or King Kong, though I think it needless to say that Professor Jackson ought to hire another author to adapt The Hobbit should he choose to pen and direct it, lest the trolls be made to speak and the elves made to sing like children.