The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: Pre- and Reviews

[Bêthberry]

I suspect that Mark Sanderson of The Telegraph was simply doing his darnedest to work up to a line he couldn't resist.

Originally Posted by Sanderson review

there is no disguising the fact that everyone involved is simply flogging a dead Norse.

That's a line that would make some Downers proud. However, his premise is rather wrong. Christopher Tolkien was editing and publishing his father's works long before Jackson's film came out, so I doubt that the popularity of the film is what solely motivated this publication. Chances are it would have come out anyway, just likely in a different form, published in a scholarly journal perhaps or a festschrift to the arcane things medieval scholars do (did) rather than in a HarperCollins book.

John Garth's review in The Times is the one for those who know the most about Tolkien the writer and the one which most persuades me that the reviewer knows a bit about what he writes--there's actually a point of view in there that one could have a decent discussion over. But then, I'm not movie-inspired, and Sanderson and Harrison are writing to that crowd.