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

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 o Middle-earth as a ‘dark age, and not very much o its history is (or need be) told'. And for many years readers had to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its Appendices, which included the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron, and the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

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 and the history of the Rings of Power. Raised out of the Great Sen 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, Númenor became a seat of influence and wealth; but as the Númenóreans’ power increased, the seed of their downfall would inevitably be sown.

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 in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien from the various published texts, with new illustrations in watercolour and pencil by the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee. View Less