By its very nature, this is an unsatisfactory and even frustrating book, being a highly fragmented series of incomplete texts, really of interest only to those willing to wade through a lot of academic contextualisation to understand the nature of the pieces and the editorial process by which they were selected. Once past that, though, it's gold. The further one goes the more one appreciates the unique genius of Tolkien, the driven obsessive who recounts the stories he invents as though they were myth or history external to himself, discovered largely through the examination of language and linguistic properties, revealing peoples, landscapes, histories. There are terrific things in here, enriching the mythos, providing glimpses into the larger stories and of the limits of those stories and the potentially unlimited stories beyond. The least chapter is the horribly messy tale of Galadirel and Celeborn, the most complete is the Children of Hurin, but completists will be already well familiar with this. More obscure, and surprising, are the stories of Numenor - where was that one going, I wonder? And the history of the Druedain. The Quest of Erebor, the various battles and the friendship between Rohan and Gondor are crowd-pleasers. Lot of comments and footnotes that can be studied or skimmed depending on your bent. Not a good read, but a supplemental volume full of little good reads.