The Fall of Númenor: And Other Tales from the Second Age of Middle-earth

4.8 4.8 out of 5 stars | 2,626 ratings

Price: 1.99

Last update: 02-13-2025


About this item

J. R. R. Tolkien’s writings on the Second Age of Middle-earth, collected for the first time in one volume complete with new illustrations in watercolor and pencil by renowned artist Alan Lee.

J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a "dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told." And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron.

It was not until Christopher Tolkien published The Silmarillion after his father’s death that a fuller story could be told. Although much of the book’s content concerned the First Age of Middle-earth, there were at its close two key works that revealed the tumultuous events concerning the rise and fall of the island of Númenor. Raised out of the Great Sea and gifted to the Men of Middle-earth as a reward for aiding the angelic Valar and the Elves in the defeat and capture of the Dark Lord Morgoth, the kingdom became a seat of influence and wealth; but as the Númenóreans’ power increased, the seed of their downfall would inevitably be sown, culminating in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

Even greater insight into the Second Age would be revealed in subsequent publications, first in Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth, then expanded upon in Christopher Tolkien’s magisterial twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth, in which he presented and discussed a wealth of further tales written by his father, many in draft form.

Now, adhering to the timeline of "The Tale of Years" in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, editor Brian Sibley has assembled into one comprehensive volume a new chronicle of the Second Age of Middle-earth, told substantially in the words of Tolkien from the various published texts, with new illustrations in watercolor and pencil by the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Septimus MacGhilleglas
    5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the time and difficulty of perusal
    Reviewed in the United States on January 11, 2025
    To someone who has emphatically refused to read any novel of fantasy, this book will not make even a modicum of sense. However, to a person who has read Tolkien and found his writings like layers of rich tapestry, to be peeled back one after the other, each richer than the one before it, this book is best taken as an aperitif or possibly a dessert to reading the LOTR adventure that began with The Hobbit. It will offer a lot of insights and back story into the greatest series of high fantasy ever written. A Game of Thrones is exquisite and The Witcher is sublime and both, on the telly, are visually appealing but neither of them would have ever been conceived had it not been for the colour of myth and magic that Professor Tolkien gifted to the world.
  • John D. Cofield
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Work Of High Scholarship And High Beauty
    Reviewed in the United States on November 16, 2022
    J.R.R. Tolkien was a prolific writer and scholar who worked on his legendarium throughout his life. Most of his readers will be best familiar with The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings which were published in his lifetime. After his death in 1973 his son Christopher was responsible for the editing and publishing of many other works, especially The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and the 12 volume History of Middle-earth. Since Christopher's own passing other scholars have taken on the task of editing and publishing more of Tolkien's work. The Fall of Numenor, edited by well known Tolkien scholar Brian Sibley, is the latest and one of the most interesting of these.

    The Fall of Numenor is primarily a history of the Second Age, referred to by Tolkien himself as "a dark age." Primarily it deals with the rise and fall of the great kingdom of Men called Numenor or Westernesse, located on a large island raised for that purpose by the Valar and situated between Middle-earth itself in the East and the Blessed Realms in the Distant West. The Men who had fought alongside the Elves in the great wars against Morgoth in the First Age were granted Numenor in thanks and as a refuge from the troubles of Middle-earth. The Men, now known as the Dunedain, were given great gifts and blessings, but forbidden to sail westward out of sight of their own land. At first the Dunedain obeyed this limitation, but as the centuries wore on and their wealth and power increased many began to long for the immortality of the Elves. Eventually this led to a shadow falling over Numenor, abetted by the growing power of Morgoth's chief servant Sauron in Middle-earth, and finally to its complete destruction.

    Tolkien was haunted throughout his life by dreams of a great wave falling upon the lands and drowning them. These Atlantaean visions found outlets in many of his stories which have been collected here for the first time. The Fall of Numenor contains material from The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, the abandoned time travel tale The Lost Road, and The Nature of Middle-earth. In this collected form the tales of the Second Age gain new power and interest, enhanced by the many beautiful illustrations from one of the greatest Tolkien illustrators at work today, Alan Lee.

    The Fall of Numenor is not only a work of great scholarship but of beauty as well. Alan Lee's color plates and smaller black and white illustrations help Tolkien's words gain greater life, and Sibley's impeccable editing and thorough annotations add inestimable value as well. The book is a delight to hold and look through, with every page demonstrating the care taken to make it a work of quality. This is a book worthy of the libraries of Rivendell, Lothlorien, Minas Tirith, or even Bag End. All Tolkien scholars and other lovers of Middle-earth will find it indispensable and an utter delight.
  • Nathan R
    5.0 out of 5 stars A Refocusing That Accentuates the Drama and Tragedy of Numenor
    Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2023
    As the list of Tolkien's still unpublished works relating to Middle-earth has been steadily reduced to the scantiest of scraps, it increasingly requires creativity and boldness to release a "new" book with J.R.R. Tolkien listed as its author. One option is to take a few lines of jotted down poetry and center an entire book around it, supplemented by other published-but-lesser-known material. The other option is to take already released material and present it in a more readable form, perhaps for the first time for those Tolkien fans only interested in his most completed narratives. The Fall of Númenor belongs to the second category.

    All the above is to say that I was initially skeptical of the value of this release, outside the always welcome illustrations by Alan Lee. If the First Age has three "great tales," tales that Christopher Tolkien himself edited for standalone release, the tragedy of Númenor would surely qualify as the great tale of the Second Age. It is also a story quite central to Tolkien's mythopoeic thought, and one of personal significance to him that he returned to very often in varying modes. Unlike The Children of Hurin, for example, which needed editing and synthesizing in order to be fully appreciated as a narrative in its own right, it seemed to me that the story of Númenor as it existed could already be read in its most complete form in a small handful of works that Tolkien fans already owned. And unfortunately, it does not exist in a more extensive narrative form as the great tales of the First Age do.

    I am very happy to have been mistaken. Editor Brian Sibley does indeed draw from readily available sources, but he takes bits and pieces from about the Second Age from so many places (from the text of The Lord of the Rings itself to Tolkien's Letters), it would be completely impractical for a reader to do the same. All these small snippets of information, arranged chronologically, have a curious cumulative effect as if you were reading a single narrative. Information about how the Númenoreans lived and acted drives home their similarities to elves, the heights to which they reached and the foibles that ultimately led to their downfall. Their fall reads as the climax of a great story, and the alliance between men and elves to overthrow Sauron a redemption rather than merely a prelude to The Lord of the Rings. Even Aldarion and Erendis, the longest single narrative of the Second Age and a unique and moving domestic drama within Tolkien's legendarium, feels as if it "fits" the overarching thrust of Númenor and the Second Age as a whole.

    In total, this arrangement of texts will be an aid in recontextualizing the Second Age, and will be of great value to Tolkien fans.
  • Verity Brown
    5.0 out of 5 stars Very helpful
    Reviewed in the United States on January 12, 2025
    This book is actually a compilation, arranged in chronological order, of Tolkien's writings about the Second Age. While it contains a lot of familiar material, it also contains some things I was unfamiliar with, including an early scene from Tolkien's once-planned story about the fall of Atlantis (Numenor).

    The most useful aspect of this book is the chronological arrangement, which gives a much clearer sense of events that were going on simultaneously (or roughly so) in Numenor and Middle-earth. Very helpful.

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