Nearly every parent, at one time or another, has had the experience of seeing a son or daughter eagerly unwrap a new toy, only to find that the child greatly prefers the box to the gift itself. This new poetry collection by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien . . . is a lot like the disappointing toy in the great box. To put it simply: The poetry is pretty bad, but the explanatory material that surrounds it--written by Ronald himself and his son Christopher--is good.

Unlike the low-rent fiction published under the names of such long-dead authors as Ian Fleming and V.C. Andrews, there's no doubt about the provenance of the poems in the collection. But by Christopher Tolkien's own account, there's no evidence that the elder Tolkien ever intended to have this work published, either. . . .

I've read substantially all of Tolkien's source material--some of it in the original languages--and still had to reread several times just to follow the plot. At more than one point, Christopher Tolkien's notes have to clarify who is taking a particular action and what is going on. Without them, the poems are almost impossible to decode. And sometimes it's pretty clear that the elder Tolkien simply left certain parts to finish later. . . .

Tolkien scholars and ardent Lord of the Rings fans may gain some insights into his fiction from reading these poems. The notes provide a very good introduction to the tradition that the elder Tolkien wrote in and, in any case, they're long enough to probably justify a look at the book. But the poems, while somewhat promising, are still in rough draft.

although Tolkien's meditations on Eddaic and heroic poetry are interesting, and although reading this book will certainly bring you closer to a number of interesting topics (the Volsung saga and the transmission of Old English and Old Norse poetry in particular)—it isn't in its own right a very effective piece of writing.