"The Fall of Numenor", coming November 2022

[Huinesoron]

Originally Posted by Galadriel55

Thing is... I feel like people who would be super pleased to read this book are unlikely to be super pleased by the series, and vice versa.

I feel that's a bit harsh. How many people got deep into Middle-earth on the back of the movies? I don't think I started collecting HoME until after the trilogy was complete, and Fall of Numenor will probably be less scholarly than that.

Particularly if they centre it on "Aldarion & Erendis". Having an actual narrative in there, with a detail level closer to LotR than Silm, is likely to snag a lot more readers than HoME did. The Estate has known this for a while - that's why they pushed Children of Hurin so hard.

They've also got potential to snag people who read LotR and Hobbit, but were put off by the Silm and avoided things with "Unfinished" and "History of" in the title. I suspect that sort of reader are a large part of Amazon's target market too - it's not like they were ever going to be prioritising people who know the difference between LaCE and the Shibboleth!

This is a very sensible move by the Estate, and honestly, if Christopher had lived longer I think "Numenor book" would have been the natural follow-up to the Great Tales for him too.

(Next on my wishlist for illustrated releases: "The Line of Kings", collecting all the Third Age material prior to The Hobbit, and a reader's edition of the Book of Lost Tales. I can dream...!)

hS