This is a book for a very specific audience, aka me, and I adored it. It’s various drafts of Beren & Luthien, with a complete early draft, and then interwoven drafts working their way through most of the story, the text from the Silm on the end of it, a different draft of the end of it, and an Appendix with a rewritten beginning. It’s an organizational catastrophe. I love it.

The longest portions are from The Lay of Leithian, which is a 4200 line poem almost entirely in rhyming couplets that covers moooooost of Beren & Luthien up to Beren losing a hand. Unfortunately Chris didn’t include my favorite early bits (Beren just fkcn wandering around shouting nightingale and Luthien trying very hard to introduce her new scruffy boyfriend to her family), which is a damn shame, but he DID include Luthien pulling down the tower around Sauron’s ears and the whole Thangorodrim jewel heist so I’ll forgive him.

Also, Tevildo Prince of Cats is absolutely a name of a future cat. Or several.