Customer Reviews

The Complete Tolkien Companion (Illustrated)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Do not waste your money on any version of JE Taylors Tolkien books. He hides his "references" at the back of the book instead of professionally citing them on the page for the entry you are reading. If you are a Tolkien purist you will find many fictional made up details in this book. Instead buy the book that Christopher Tolkien himself cites...

Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle Earth. This book is VERY accurate for your Hobbit,LOTR, Simarillion reference needs.

If you need a cross-reference for the 12 volumes of the History of Middle Earth buy Christopher Tolkiens Index to the History of Middle Earth. You can buy that at Amazon UK.

I have one word which sums up this entire book "dissappointment". Ok, maybe not entirely worthless but to any self-respecting Tolkien fan this companion would have to be the least helpful of those available. Not only did I find information hard to find (characters etc were listed by their most "common name" thus if you were looking for a particular name which was less used, its highly likely that you won't find it which can get very frustrating. Also I couldn't help feeling that the Tyler seems to get his/her wires crossed alot, mixing what is "fact" and what is "fiction" mixed around. Also the major dissappointment I found with this "complete" Tolkien companion, is that its not "complete". Lesser characters, places, events etc seem to have been "lost" or "omitted". At the expensive of this "lesser" characters etc Tyler seems to have spent the energy instead on elaborating more on the "major" characters which I personally found annoying as no doubt many people want to buy a companion to help them understand alittle bit more on "lesser" characters which they come across in books. You wouldn't buy half a dictionary so why settle for half a "companion". I also found it quite shifty of Tyler "hiding" his/her references and sources at the back of the book.
However on a high note I did find the front cover design, I must say the best looking of the companions on the market. If only the inside was as good as the outside.
I suggest if your serious about getting a companion, "The Complete Guide to Middle Earth" by Robert Foster is 1st Rate and easier on the hip pocket too!

Third edition of an encyclopedia whose first two, pre- and post-Silmarillion, versions have been floating around for years. A reliable source but a very poor second choice to Robert Foster's Complete Guide to Middle-earth (less detail, more omissions, few dates, hardly any page references), Tyler's tome now includes entries from Unfinished Tales, 24 years after that book was published. It ignores almost everything else since then, whether it fits into the (illusory) "final" legendarium or not. Tyler claims he's dropped his pretence that Middle-earth is real, but entries like that for Orcs, identifying them as the true origin of mythic goblins, show that he hasn't. This new edition is only worth having if a copy drops into your lap.

This book brings a major bundle of "extra" tidbits about all the major players and places in Middle earth, and is a MUST read for all Tolkien fans! It fills in many of the "holes" you find yourself pondering over after reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. It is the "Perfect" fifth book!
Rick W.

With a universe as complex and nuanced as Tolkien's Middle-Earth, a guide is invaluable. Unfortunately. J.E.A. Taylor's "Complete Tolkien Companion" is far from invaluable. With barely any details and seriously unbalanced data, Taylor's book is all right as a second or third choice, but a flop as a serious guide.

From A ("Accursed Years") to Z ("Zirak-Zigil"), this book covers people, places, battles, objects and events from all throughout Middle-Earth's history. Taylor includes information from Tolkien's famous "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings," as well as the Silmarillion, "Unfinished Tales," and some other books. (Unfortunately, he doesn't include all of the history books)

Is "The Complete Tolkien Companion" worthless as an encyclopedia? No, not at all -- it's useful for some quick glances, and Taylor has a pleasant if clumsy style. But as a serious source, it fails. It doesn't have enough informaton, and what it does have is unbalanced and weirdly conveyed.

One of the most annoying things is that while Tyler will tell some stuff about various characters, events, and items. But in most entries, he doesn't specify which books they appeared in, what pages, or much else. Where is "Khuzdul" revealed to be a secret language? He doesn't tell you. And his handling of the information is clumsy: readers are told that Arwen Evenstar shares the "Doom of Luthien." What does Luthien have to do with her descendent becoming a mortal? Taylor doesn't say.

What's more, Taylor demonstrates a weird tendency to act like the events of Tolkien's books are a 10,000-year-old history. He claims in his preciously-worded foreword that he's going to stop, but he doesn't -- a tendency that crosses the line from fervently geeky to unsettling. What is more, he has a tendency to interject his own opinions into the text: he spends a long time explaining how misunderstood Galadriel is, for example.

To casual fans, "The Complete Tolkien Companion" might have some worth. But for those seeking more information about Tolkien's Middle-Earth, this is an unworthy choice, in the shadow of Robert Foster's accomplished "Complete Guide to Middle-Earth."

Unlike some of the other reviewers of this book, I for one did like it very much in fact. Of course it doesn't have every last tidbit of every last detail for all the entries. It is already over 700 pages for gosh sakes. If the author tried to cram in any more info, we probably could no longer afford the book and it would have to have an incredibly flimsy bind on it in order to accommodate that many pages. The bind would also most likely fall apart.

I recommend this book not for the Tolkien scholar but rather for the vast majority of Tolkien fans out there who just want to have an all-encompassing recourse to refer. I found this book particularly helpful when I was reading the Silmarillion for the first time (which in itself is a daunting task with so many proper names tossed around. I used the Companion book in order to figure out the basics of some of the important people, places and things.

As far as encyclopedias of Tolkien are concerned, this book is probably one of the best compared to others out there. Excellent resource.

When I first saw the rather average to poor ratings that this book has received, I was very surprised. I remember getting the book as part of as part of a set from The Science Fiction Book Club when I graduated from junior high (1980!!). By that time I had read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit several times, but never The Silmarillion, which was also part of the set.

I vividly remember staying up late at night reading the entries of this book, sometimes just to refresh my memory, sometimes for more information, sometimes just to read the same stories over and over again. I never tired of the world Tolkien created, and he left me in awe as a teenager. I'm far from being a teenager, but am still in awe of his creation.

When I finally got around to reading The Silmarillion, I found this book to be indispensable. As a 14-year old - and while I would consider myself an advanced reader for my age back then, I was by no means a prodigy - The Silmarillion was a difficult but incredibly magnificent read. In all honesty, I compared it to the Christian Bible and Bullfinch's Mythology, and found that I enjoyed it far greater than either, and any mythology I had read previously (which was quite a bit). If we can analogize Morgoth's war with the Valar as Satan's with heaven, then I can safely say (IMHO) that Tolkien's interpretation (although it wasn't allegory - we all know that he despised allegory in fiction - but certainly the similarities between Manwe and Melkor/Morgoth are significant and unavoidable) was more interesting than anyone who has ever attempted to re-tell that story. Or tell a similar story of "great evil thrown down by forces of good". Which means, in essence, better than just about every epic fantasy ever written.

Okay, I'm back from my tangent. :-)

Without The New Tolkien Companion, I would have been utterly lost back then. Tolkien's world was so rich and detailed, that I had a certain amount of difficulty following along. Imagine, a reader of fantasy, and mythology, having difficulty keeping up with the "different" names in the books, as well as the numerous story lines. When turning to this book, it always helped give me that extra piece of information that I needed to get a full picture of what I was reading. It never bothered me that there weren't page numbers or references to back anything up, because I found that Tyler far more often than not (in fact, I can't think of a "not" example) got things right. What I appreciated most about this book, and here is where it differs greatly from Foster's The Complete Guide to Middle-earth, is that Tyler's entries told stories. Foster's - an excellent book - also gave the necessary identifying information, but because he "indexed" his text with references to the books, he had built-in limitations on space (not to mention that god-awful cover art that for some reason "we" all loved back then - look at the hat on Aragorn!).

Regardless, this isn't meant to be a comparison between the two books, and a judgment on which is better. They're both excellent, and they take entirely different approaches to cataloging information. Both styles should be able to be appreciated by anyone.

I'm a pretty serious Tolkien fan (though I've never worn elf ears or dressed up like Gandalf), and I have both books. If you want textual references, Foster is for you. If you like the story, then this book is for you.

Once you have read LOR for fun, the next times are for research. I liked this book because it is easy to carry and has everything that you will want to know, or need to know, about LOR. A must for keeping tract of the characters, their names in four languages and the geography. An amazing compilation!

I started Tolkiens adventure from the begining
(The Silmarillion)and had bought The "J.R.R. Tolkien Handbook" (Colin Duriez) which is good, but as I read some people, places or things where not found there. This " Complete Tolkien Companion" has everything! I love it. I will recomend it highly, and always have it handy on this wonderous journey . "The road goes ever on...I must follow if I can".

I have recently become a fan and this is a great reference, especially if you are new to Tolkien. A great companion and reference.