You may remember that back in May 2022, the last time I posted here with any sort of regularity (ouch), I had embarked on a not-so-minor Tolkien binge. At some point shortly thereafter, it occurred to me that I might as well create a project page for the whole venture, the way I do for some of my other reading projects and recurring reads … you know, like my Halloween Bingo and Festive Tasks master posts, and this sort of thing:
Around the World in 80 Books, Mostly by Female Authors — Freedom and Future Library — Ongoing Series — The Detection Club — 221B Baker Street — Appointment With Agatha: The Agatha Christie Centenary Celebration — As My Wimsey Takes Me — Narrativium: Where the Falling Angel Meets the Rising Ape — By a Lady — Measure for Measure — Beyond the 100th Meridian … etc.
Well, I guess should have known better. In the words of Sean Bean’s most frequently-memified line from the movie adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring:
… at least one does not if one is me.
So, what started fairly standard for the way I’m doing these things, with a project master page appropriately named Middle-earth, over the course of three months blossomed into a series of (to date) seven sub-project pages, each containing a detailed look at one particular aspect of the world created by J.R.R. Tolkien:
(For those who don’t know, Arda is the physical ensemble of the world to which Middle-earth belongs; notably including, during the First and Second Ages of its existence, Valinor — the Undying Lands to which the Elves, Gandalf, and the Ring-bearers return at the end of The Lord of the Rings, and where the Valar, the immortal Powers reigning over all of Arda, reside — as well as, during the Second Age, Númenor, Arda’s version of Atlantis, from which Aragorn’s ancestors, the Dúnedain, escaped just prior to its drowning. According to Tolkien’s legendarium, at the end of the Second Age the creator god, Eru Illúvatar, caused Arda to bend, turning it into the ball we know today instead of the flat surface it had been before; in the process drowning Númenor as a punishment for the corruption of its rulers and most of its people at the hands of (you guessed it) Sauron, and removing Valinor from the physical confines of Arda, thus making it inaccessible to anybody who doesn’t know the “straight way” there — read: everybody but the Elven mariners ferrying their kin there at the end of the Third Age / after the end of the War of the Ring / after Sauron’s destruction.)
My return visit to Tolkien’s world included material both familiar and new to me; notably at last also this beauty:
As before, what bowled me over was not merely the richness of Tolkien’s creation in both imagination and detail but also its verisimilitude, down to the most minute element: It’s mind-blowing to begin with (to me, anyway) for an entire universe, and one as complex, diverse and enchanting as this one, to have sprung from a series of experiments in the creation of languages and of proto-Saxon/Germanic/Nordic legends, first undertaken by way of distraction from the very real horrors of WWI. But what really distinguishes Tolkien’s legendarium from every single other fantasy world is that it is the only one actually coming close to creating a canvas as vast as that of our real world. (OK, at some point he purposely decided to go that route and create a fictional “prehistory” for our world, but it was an undertaking of immense proportions, and it’s one thing to set out that way and another thing entirely to actually make it happen.)
Whereas most fantasy worlds consist of a territory covering only a fraction of that of our Earth, and even to the extent that they include such a thing as an internal history or prehistory, they tend to account for the details of only a select few past events relevant to the books’ actual “present-day” narrative, the prehistory / “creation of the world” phase of Tolkien’s legendarium alone (referred to within the legendarium as “the Deeps of Time”) comes down to an unmeasured amount of time that just may have lasted several millions, or possibly even billions of years; and when Arda finally gets populated by creatures other than the Valar and their subordinate immortals, the Maiar (to which latter incidentally belong the guys we will meet as the Wizards in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, as do — or once did — Sauron and the Balrog(s)), what we’re looking at are three Ages, each lasting several thousands of years* (plus the beginning of a Fourth Age), all of them bestowed with an amount of detailed information that, all told, does not fall dramatically short of the historic detail we know about our world’s real past; especially going much further back than, say, the past two or three millennia … which would account for only one of the three first / main Ages of Middle-earth. (For pure flavor, just have a look at the timelines for the individual Ages, but especially the Third Age, as rendered on the Tolkien Gateway wiki.)
Similarly, while the territory called Middle-earth, where most of the action of Tolkien’s books is set, is “only” roughly equivalent in size to Western and Central Europe (without the Iberian Peninsula), Arda as a whole — at least in its incarnation throughout the majority of its three main Ages — approximates the size and continental outlay of Europe, Asia and Africa, i.e. the land mass constituting the pre-Age-of-Discovery “old world” part of our world:
From Middle-earth to Our World (sources: here and here)
(Note: Tolkien said that the Shire was to be found in the area of today’s Oxfordshire.)
… again, perhaps not coincidentally so, as Tolkien had decided to set out and create a fictional prehistory for our world as such, but again, too, in such mind-blowing detail as to enable cartographers such as Pauline Baynes, Karen Wynn Fonstad and the folks at The Encyclopedia of Arda, not to mention the creators of online roleplaying websites, to create minutely-detailed maps — to scale — of everything from the various parts (countries, regions, plains, mountains, and other lands) of Middle-earth to city maps, building floor plans and elevation sketches, maps showing troop movements in major battles, the movements of individual characters, etc. … all based straight on Tolkien’s own words. In fact, in creating my Middle-earth project’s topical sub-pages, especially the page dealing with the various wars and battles fought in and for Arda and Middle-earth, I found that even for the First and Second Ages, notwithstanding the supernatural nature of most of the characters (essentially, everybody besides Men), you can write up the whole thing pretty much exactly the way you would write up events from, or a chronology of, the history of our own world. Moreover, even taking account the legendarium’s occasionally shifting ground — resulting from shifts in Tolkien’s view and the continuing development of the legendarium — there is an inherent consistency and an inconceivably deep scholarly understanding to his universe, which after all was the creation of his entire lifetime, that in and of itself lifts it sky-high above every other fantasy world: it is not surprising that Tolkien’s work not only inspired readers by the millions all over the world but also his own fellow scholars of literature and linguistics, as well as countless gifted artists who have made the creation of illustrations of his works their main creative focus.
Tolkien originally wanted The Lord of the Rings to be published with a work giving the public access to the full panoply and history of Arda and Middle-earth, of which the War of the Rings, such as described in LOTR, consists merely the absolute tail end: When Bilbo, during the Council of Elrond, refers to Elrond’s father Eärendil (him of the light captured in Galadriel’s phial), this is no mere throwaway line hinting at a history yet to be developed if and when needed, nor is the Lay of Beren and Lúthien recounted in part by Aragorn such a fragmented creation; and similarly, Treebeard’s reference to the woods of Dorthonion in which he was able to wander long ago is a very specific reference of both time and place. To me personally, the most dazzling glimpse into things beyond the surface of The Lord of the Rings is Gandalf’s apparently casual remark to Faramir that he used to be called Olórin “in the West”, “when he was young”, later repeated equally carelessely by Faramir when speaking to Frodo and Sam and giving me goosebumps every single time: because Olórin is Gandalf’s real name, the name by which he is known only in Valinor, in his true incarnation as a Maia / immortal — i.e., it’s a revelation of Gandalf’s true identity, the single most closely-guarded piece of information about him (while he has solely been known as Gandalf the Wizard — “Wizard” as in “wise old man”, not “sorcerer” — in Middle-earth for no less than two thousand years at this point); arguably as great a secret as the fact that he is also a bearer of one of the Elven Rings of Power, Narya, the Ring of Fire. Yet, Gandalf trusts Faramir with this bit of knowledge to which, besides him, only Elrond, Galadriel and Celeborn, Saruman, and Círdan the Shipwright (Lord of the Grey Havens) are privy. That is some showing of confidence … and Faramir himself doesn’t even realize what Gandalf has told him — after all, how could he possibly?!
Due to a misunderstanding with the publisher’s reader and editing team, a comprehensive publication such as envisioned by Tolkien never became a reality during his lifetime; as a result, it would later fall to his son Christopher to sift the vast amounts of material left by his father and determine which parts of these to make available to the reading public. Even though, until copyright limitations are lifted, that reading public will not be able to make up their own minds about the incisiveness of his editorial work, I am immensely glad that he essentially dedicated his entire remaining life to this doubtlessly Gargantuan undertaking, without which at least our generation of readers would likely never have discovered the vast, luxurious tapestry — occasionally frayed edges and all — against which the events in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set. So, my Tolkien project, while in no way, shape or form intended to mimic or even compete with the plethora of outstanding resources already out there, is by way of a bit of personal hommage to the creator of Arda and Middle-earth, as well as in gratitude to his son for removing at least a sizeable part of the veil from the material threatening to remain hidden from the public eye as a result of a sorely regrettable misunderstanding between the author and his publisher.
As yet, the project includes two cop-outs that must be obvious to anybody even remotely familiar with Tolkien’s works: For one thing, I just can’t bring myself to try and summarize the splendid opening chapters of The Lord of the Rings (“Concerning Hobbits” and “On Pipe-weed“), so I’m afraid for the moment the write-up is more detailed for pretty much everybody else than it is for Bilbo, Frodo, and their fellow Halflings. Secondly, the one sub-project page conspiciously still absent from the ensemble is a page dedicated to the languages of Arda and Middle-earth. That page is due to come (as it necessarily must, for a legendarium that began with the creation of its languages in the first place); I just didn’t want to start working on it before I had laid my hands on Jim Allen’s Introduction to Elvish — which is OOP, prohibitively rare and almost impossible to acquire for prices in ranges of less than triple-digit figures, and which I’ve therefore only acquired fairly recently. (By way of a side note, the page on Wars and Battles of Middle-earth has not yet been proofread; it was the last one that I finished and I wanted to get it out there before moving on to other things, so forgive any obvious snafus on that page). — I might also, in due time, create a sub-page for the “in-legendarium” chronicles and chroniclers of Middle-earth: there were, after all, many more of them than Bilbo and Frodo Baggins and the Red Book of West-march (i.e., The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings); and just as without the Tolkiens we would never have learned about the alternative prehistory of our planet in the first place, later denizens of Middle-earth would never have learned about the history of the First Age without Rúmil of Valinor, Pengolodh of Gondolin, and Dírhaval of the Havens, either — to name just a few of them.
One final thought that kept cropping up in my mind as I was going back and forth between the worlds of Arda and my own daily work reality, and which I’d encapsulate in brief like this:
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* To the initiates: I know, I know — many timelines for the First Age begin with the Rising of the Moon and the Sun, which would seem to make the First Age last only a bit longer than half a millennium, but Tolkien expressly said that it began with the Awakening of the Elves, i.e. over four thousand solar years earlier, and he also expressly said that the First Age was the longest.
Book by J.R.R. Tolkien
Supplemental Material
]]>The Riyria Revelations are the fantasy series that brought Michael J. Sullivan instant recognition back in the late 2000s. Originally published as a series of six installments, they are now available as a set of three books, with each of the three books comprising two volumes of the original format. As he did with almost all of his series, Sullivan only proceeded to publish the first installment, The Crown Conspiracy (now part 1 of the first double-dip repackaging, Theft of Swords) after he had finished writing the entire series, as a result of which the series hangs together extremely well; in fact, despite some awkward bits here and there, the writing even in The Crown Conspiracy is accomplished enough that if I didn’t know this was the first book he ever published, I would never have guessed as much — and in terms of writing proficiency, it’s been all uphill from there, to the point that the final installment of the Riyria Revelations — Heir of Novron, comprising the books originally published as Wintertide and Percepliquis — is among the closest things to the gold standard set by J.R.R. Tolkien that I’ve seen in quite a while. While it’s still a bit short of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, that’s certainly not so by a very wide margin; and in terms of its overall structure — despite one major digression in the original book 4, The Emerald Storm (now the second part of double-bill book 2, Rise of Empire) — it’s also quite a bit more successful than the Legends cycle, both taken by itself and as compared to the Tolkien “prehistory of Arda and Middle-earth” books, particularly so the Silmarillion … and yes, I’m saying that knowing full well that the Silmarillion started out as a collection of fractured material that J.R.R. Tolkien himself never got to edit in its final version and which, instead, was left to his son Christopher to sort out. (As I said in my review of the Legends cycle, the comparative shortfalls in the narrative structure of Sullivan’s Legends cycle chiefly pertain to the way in which the interaction between mortals and immortals is presented, and that — in Tolkien’s case — is a matter of J.R.R.’s actual writing, not of the organization of the Silmarillion material later provided by Christopher.)
Sullivan excels equally at plot construction, dialogue and, in particular, in the creation of fully-rounded, deeply flawed but engaging characters and in the rendition of emotions and human interactions, both on a grand scale (as in the workings of society, politics, government, and the pursuit of power and strategic goals) and on a person-to-person and individual level; in the latter respect, perhaps nowhere more impressively in his insightful and sensitive portrayal of a very young woman’s protracted PTSD after going through a truly harrowing experience. And speaking of which, although Riyria itself is a partnership of two male characters, the Riyria books — like the Legends cycle — also feature a number of strong female characters, all of whom in their own ways overcome personal hardships and go through various forms of trial by fire to become unlikely leaders in a male-dominated society — and all of whom, therefore, are definitely among my favorite characters … and would easily qualify as main characters if the series were not specifically named for the (male-only) Riyria partnership.
When Sullivan was met with reader demands for more books featuring the two members of Riyria, Royce Melborn and Hadrian Blackwater, he decided to publish a series of prequels called the Riyria Chronicles, explaining that because of the way the Riyria Revelations are structured, there will be no sequels set after the ending of that series. Instead, the Riyria Chronicles narrate some of the pair’s earlier adventures, including some that are referenced in the course of the Riyria Revelations series; most notably the mission that first brought them together and turned instant bitter enemies into reluctant friends and companions (The Crown Tower, book 1 of the Riyria Chronicles).
As Sullivan has since gone even further back in time and created a “prehistory” prequel series set in the distant past of the present-day world in which the Riyria cycle is set — Legends of the First Empire –, you now have the option to either approach all of his books and series chronologically or in publication order. I frequently go for “publication order”, but in this instance I wanted to read the Legends cycle first; as indicated in my post on that cycle, in no small part because one of the major points that Sullivan makes both in the Riyria books and in Legends — and even more so, in the combination of the past and present-day narratives — is that the past is subject to misinterpretation and outright falsification, particularly if / to the extent that no reliable documents and records exist that are beyond such tampering and can set the historic record straight beyond the reach of cavil: I wanted to see how this plays out as both series are set side by side, knowing the “real” story (the Legends cycle’s “prehistory” narrative) while observing how that historic truth has since been changed and perverted.
And I’m really glad that I chose this approach: knowing the true events of the 3000-year-old past as narrated in the Legends cycle, the “big lie” at the heart of the Riyria cycle was evident almost from the very beginning. Obviously this operated as a spoiler with regard to part of the ending of the Riyria Revelations (namely, the exposure of the falsification for what it is), but I didn’t mind, because (1) it was a spoiler that I had deliberately invited and taken into account, and (2) even more importantly, it in no way interfered with the suspense built into the “present-day” narrative; much to the contrary, it even heightened that narrative’s built-in tension, because it served to highlight the extent, poisonously pervasive nature and monumental, far-reaching consequences of the deliberate falsification — while still leaving enough of a surprise element for a key aspect of the final reveal. All of that is true even if yet another part of the final reveal — the one foreshadowed on the very last pages of the final Legends book, Age of Empyre — also turned out to be exactly what I had suspected; but I probably would have clued into that particular aspect even if I hadn’t read the Legends cycle first: for one thing, it’s the kind of ending that is simply most consistent with the traditional structure of epic sword and sorcery fantasy series (so I’d have at least half expected it going in anyway), and in addition, there is yet another, almost blatant hint to this ending at the end of part 2 of Theft of Swords — originally book 2 of the Riyria Revelations –, Avempartha, which would almost certainly have made me sit up and take notice, especially taken together with several further hints sprinkled throughout the narrative.
I don’t know when I’ll be getting around to Sullivan’s remaining books set in various historic moments of the same fictional world (a place called Elan) — the remaining Riyria Chronicles, as well as a three-book series called The Rise and Fall, which is set in the time period between the Legends and Riyria cycles –; but I see a distinct possibility for at least one, and possibly even more of them to feature as part of my Halloween Bingo reads.
[As in the case of the Legends cycle, a detailed review of the Riyria books that I read, as well as the associated maps, will follow after the page break below; and blurbs, ratings, and “100 books of summer” prompt assignments are to follow on page 3 of this post. — NB: as a result of the prompt assignments for the Riyria books, I’ve also changed some of the original prompt assignments for the Legends books.]
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Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria books have been on my TBR for a while, but until I’d read two short stories from the cycle — The Jester and Professional Integrity — I hadn’t been sure whether his writing would be for me. Then I found out that (much like Tolkien’s Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and The History of Middle-earth) he had created a cycle of books set 3,000 years prior to the Riyria narratives and providing a background to those in a similar way as Tolkien’s narratives of the prehistory / First, Second and early Third Ages of Arda and Middle-earth provide a background to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Even better, from an author’s note to Age of Myth (the first of these six books) I learned that, again much like Tolkien, Sullivan approached this cycle as a cohesive whole and was not ready to publish even book 1 before he had completed his drafts of all (initially five, ultimately six) books. And while I knew that these books were only published after the two Riyria series (Riyria Revelations and Riyria Chronicles), I also knew that more than just providing the backstory and setting the scene for the Riyria worldbuilding, the six Legends books were set to reveal the true story behind “the big lie” at the heart of the Riyria tales, so I figured it made sense to start with these — and I certainly didn’t regret it; even though once again I found that J.R.R. Tolkien, to me, still remains the undisputed master of the genre that he himself created in the first place.
[Detailed review and maps after the page break. Blurbs and ratings of the six individual books and “100 books of summer” prompt assignments to follow on page 3 of this post.]
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General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
Children’s and young adult literature was an era where German women writers were represented even before there were such things as “children’s”, “middle grade”, and “young adult” genres. In the early 20th century, there were the books of Else Ury, which are still hugely popular today, a century later; after WWII, there were the books by Marie-Louise Fischer (Germany’s answer to Enid Blyton, though she didn’t write children’s / middle grade / YA literature exclusively, therefore she’s included in the main run-down of Post-WWII authors) … and in addition, there are these ladies:
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
Crime fiction is arguably the most lively genre in the contemporary German literary scene; yet, only a fraction ever makes it to the translation into English (or, for that matter, French or any other languages). This is true for both male and female authors, and it’s at least partly due to the fact that “regional crime” is the name of the game in Germany at the moment; i.e., books set in one particular region and explicitly using its geography and culture as the books’ setting: regardless how well-written, apparently, this is not considered worth anybody’s but German readers’ interest. Add to that many German publishers’ reluctance to seek the international publication of anything but literary fiction, and it’s easy to see why not even most German mystery bestsellers ever make it to an audience outside their authors’ own country.
And just to convey an impression of how lively the literary scene really is in Germany, unbeknownst to anybody who doesn’t happen to speak the language, I’m going to list some of the other female representatives of the crime fiction genre, even though I know that, alas, you won’t be able to read their books if you don’t speak German — and I’ll also note that (1) I could as easily have created the same sort of additional list for historical fiction and general / literary fiction, too, and (2) you can well and truly double or triple the number of writers mentioned if you add in the male German writers whose works you’ll never be able to read, either, if you don’t happen to speak German:
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
When Germany — divided into two unequally-sized halves — picked itself up after the catastrophe that had been the Nazi era and WWII, writers played an increasingly big role in the country’s search for its collective soul and its path to a better future; and finally, in the two states that had emerged from the ashes as well as after the German reunification almost half a century later, women writers had a huge part to play in the effort. There’s a certain transition from the literature of the immediate postwar years (which is largely concerned with WWII and its effects) to books and authors chiefly interested in contemporary society and events; as, however, many of the authors who had been active in the earlier decades were still writing and publishing books at the time of the German reunification and the subsequent years — or are still doing so now — I’ve decided not to subdivide this page but to list them all here, even if that makes for a somewhat longer page.
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
Women writers had made great strides in the 19th century, but it still had taken them almost a millennium to really claim a place of their own in public awareness. A fair number of the works of early 20th century German women writers exist in English language incarnations, too; particularly those dealing with the Nazi era and WWII. The cruel undercurrent to this fact, however, is that women writers were (alas and of course) not exempted from the Nazis’ persecution of Jews, intellectuals, and otherwise undesirables: a common denominator of these women’s lives is that many of them were either murdered in a concentration camp or subjected to another one of the Nazis’ manifold ways of eradicating anyone not fitting into their notion of an “Aryan” nation — or they escaped Nazi persecution, often by the skin of their teeth, and became naturalized citizens of other countries. (Note: Some of the writers listed below only published their books in the second half of the 20th century, but topically those belong into the context of the early decades of the century, so for purposes of consistency I’m listing them here.)
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
Historical fiction is obviously an important way to visit the past; alas, while I’m happy to report that the genre is alive and extremely well in Germany, only a tiny fraction of the books published — and an even tinier fraction of those written by women — have been translated into English … and this is true even for the unofficial doyennes of the current generation of historical fiction writing hereabouts, Rebecca Gablé and Tanja Kinkel. The latter doesn’t even have an English Wikipedia page; and the same also applies to many of the other successful German representatives of the genre, even those whose works have at least partially been translated. Rather than not being able to provide any information at all, I decided to link their German Wikipedia pages anyway; just be aware that you’re going to have to resort to your online translation service of choice to learn more about them. — In recent years, some of Germany’s historical fiction writers have taken to programs such as Amazon Crossing and ebook publishing to be able to bring their books to an international / English-speaking audience, translated by bona fide, native-speaker translators, or they have even found English language publishers.
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
The below collection of 19th century writers incorporates the initial response to the question about women writing in German that inspired this series of blog posts; beginning with my personal late 18th / early 19th century heroine and with the ladies most closely associated with the circle of writers portrayed in Andrea Wulf’s Magnificent Rebels, then moving on to others in more or less but not strictly chronological order, though it seems fair to say that almost all of these ladies and their families and friends were interconnected to some extent or other.
The ladies mentioned below are only a few representatives of the community of 19th century women writers: what looks like a fairly exhaustive list of the lot can be found on Wikipedia.
Contemporary depictions of the leaders of Germany’s suffragette movement:
Left image (1883): Marie Calm, Henriette Goldschmidt, Louise Otto-Peters, Lina Morgenstern, Auguste Schmidt, Jenny Hirsch and Anna Schepeler-Lette;
Right image (1894): Louise Otto-Peters, Mathilde Weber, Henriette Goldschmidt, Lina Morgenstern, Marie Loeper-Housselle, Auguste Schmidt, Helene Lange, Luise Büchner, Bertha von Marenholtz-Bülow, and Marie Calm.
General introduction to this series of blog posts HERE.
The Age of Enlightenment introduced new schools of philosophical and political thought and brought huge advances in scholarship and scientific knowledge — what it still didn’t bring, however, was universal education, including and in particular for women. So writing (and reading) still remained a pursuit of those whose families had the means to provide their daughters with private schooling; essentially, the aristocracy and the well-to-do middle class and merchant families. Accordingly, the number of women writers from the 17th and 18th centuries — generally, and even more so, women writers of note — is still extremely limited. All the more remarkably, however, several of the female authors from the period were highly distinguished, significant scientists and scholars, some of whom went to enormous lengths in the pursuit of their course of study. The writings of others shed a light on the effects of the Thirty Years’ War of 1618-1648; the territorial and religious conflict that ended up radically redrawing the map not only of Germany / The Holy Roman Empire, but also that of Continental Europe as a whole and cemented the effects of the Reformation in Germany once and for all. Even after the end of the Thirty Years’ War, religion continued to control many aspects of life in Germany; not least the lives of women, who (if they were commoners) were routinely prohibited from marrying men of a different faith of their own, while noblewomen, however piously rains in one particular faith, were as routinely required to convert to another faith in order to facilitate politically desirable marriages. — While all of the below women writers stand out for their contributions to Germany’s literary and intellectual history, the first three are far and away the most important representatives of the group.