[Kent2010]

I am not understanding the issue people are having with Sanderson's critique. Compared to Shippey's it is pretty juvenile, but they are writing to two different audiences.

Shippey is a leading Tolkien authority and is an expert in this field, naturally you expect not only a good, but honest, review of the book. However brilliant of a review he writes, it is for a specialized and smaller audience. It's for people who seriously want to engage and hold a scholarly conversation about the book. I don't know who this Sanderson guy is, but he is writing for a national newspaper, a different and larger targetted audience. To compare the two and discount one as being completely irrelevant is something I don't understand.

Sanderson mentions Jackson twice, he does not "continually" drop Jackson's name. He brings up film's success in the beginning and at the end makes a statement that refers to the Jackson 'fan franchise' probably going to be confused by the two stories. I don't like his tone in the first paragraph, but overall his review does bring up a poignant point.

The movies targetted a larger, more general audience, and film fans will most likely not find it interesting, because The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun is for a specialized audience, not like the Lord of the Rings (book or film) which attracted a wide, diverse fanbase. Whether his assumption that if the films were not successful this book would not have the hype around it, is accurate or not, I really don't know. However, the point is worth considering, because of the burst in published works by Tolkien (or books about Tolkien/LOTR) has grown since the success of the movies.

So, you do wonder whether this is a marketing ploy that is attempting to capitalize on the film's fan base - Tolkien is a contemporary popular author, and has remained one since the popularity of LOTR. What I took from Sanderson's review is you can't overlook the burst in getting "everything Tolkien" since the movies, and the attempt to capitalize on his sustained popularity. Plus, his opinion that the general film fan base will not be interested in this book.

That might not be true, and it might not really seem necessary to say, but the review shouldn't be immediately discounted because you don't agree with the review, or it's not at the level of Shippey. What are you going to expect from a publication in a national newspaper? I have seen just as many reviews giving positive reviews on books that make me wonder if the reviewer was the author's spouse! However, that doesn't mean these should be discounted as simply being popular hogwash not worth the time of serious "intellectuals."