Customer Reviews

The Adventures of Tom Bombadil

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It is crazy that this book should be out of print. What are publishers thinking of? The verses are a delight, though they become increasingly tragic as the book progresses - "The Sea Bell" is a devastating account of something like clinical depression, yet like many of the rest it has a strange beauty. On the surface much is easy-to-read verse, but often has subtle allusions to deep matters. Many links with "The Lord of the Rings" for those who know where to look, and, I think, an unusually personal account of Tolkien's own struggles to find beauty, wonder and enchantment in the bleak modern world - it is only coincidence that "The Sea Bell" is the only one of his major works for publication written in the first person?

While "The Adventures of Tom Bombadil" is a very short book at only 75 pages, the 16 included verses (some only one page long) make this very much worth seeking out. These are mostly fun little stories, some mainly about Tom Bombadil, but others about other events, characters, and creatures in Tolkien's world. A few of them are somewhat silly and others are surprisingly deep. I especially enjoyed "The Hoard" which, predictably, tells the tale of the origin and ultimate fate of a Dragon's hoard.

If you enjoy J. R. R. Tolkien's poems, you will likely enjoy this book as well.

Highly Recommended!