I gotta say I'm very surpised no one's brought this up. It's the first full Tolkien books in decades. I don't know a whole lot about it, only that it's set a long time before the events of the Lord of the Rings and that it's much darker, much more violent, and much more eloquently written (closer to the Silmarillion in style I believe). The plot is based upon a smaller portion of the Silmarillion in fact. But it does look great and the first edition has lots of very nice Alan Lee illustrations. Has anyone started/finished this yet? Any thoughts?