[Pitchwife]

GRR Martin's ambition to explore 'a more realistic Middle-earth' clearly needs to be taken with not a grain, but a generous pinch of salt. From a writer in a genre where comparisons to Tolkien tend to pop up in jacket blurbs and reviews of every new work of notice, this is nothing but a marketing statement saying that he wants to do something more realistic with the genre, something closer to our own world; to criticise him for neglecting the metaphysical foundations of Middle-earth is to miss the point.

As for The New Shadow, I love it for its glimpses of life in early Fourth Age Gondor, as well as for its dialogue and character interaction between Borlas and Saelon. That's some fine writing, especially in their debate about the rights of trees - which raises questions that Tolkien, both a Christian and an early environmentalist, must himself have pondered on occasion. I wouldn't have minded finding out Saelon's true stance about the conspiracy, or who or what was behind 'Herumor' (not a mere surviving Orc, I think; at the very least a Black Númenórean, but a corrupted Blue Wizard or some other disciple of a dark cult from the East would have fit the job nicely).

It could have worked well as a thriller with occult or horror trappings. As a sequel to LotR I don't think it would have been viable, simply because the reduced stakes would make it rather anticlimactic after the cataclysm of Sauron's fall, but as a side piece to the legendarium at large in the manner of, say, The Mariner's Wife I would have found it enjoyable.