A collection of largely unrelated bits and pieces, and while the collection as a whole is interesting, it's because it averages out as so. Working my way through Tolkien's materials, I am frankly beyond sick of horrible Turin, whose story keeps getting repeated over and over - certainly far more than is warranted. Much more riveting is the background material such as the section on the Palantiri, for instance, or the five wizards. Perhaps this is because that material is new to me and hasn't yet been beaten into the ground as Turin has, or perhaps - like Saruman - I'm more interested in mechanism than sympathising with shitty people, but there you go. It balances out.

One change that I wish would be made to improve the reading experience, is to wholly commit to footnotes instead of endnotes. It is so much easier to read a text when you don't have to keep flipping pages to get the context, and the fact that Tolkien Jr. is willing to use footnotes on some pages but not on others is really kind of frustrating. Especially as he's gone a little overboard with the notes in places - there was a lot of flipping to do. And I did it, as the notes are mostly worth it, but I did it grudgingly, aware that it could have been made easier than it was.