Manuel
Not sure why but I loved this a lot, it mixes a lot of things and it does it elusively well
Hadn't read this much pain since berserk, I loved this but you can notice this was supposed to be a first half of a book, if that was the case it would probably be the best sun eater book yet
No one writes battle sequences like Abercrombie and I'm the millionth one to say it.
But this book oh god it's oh so more than just that.
From the center of it all, the building of a church, from that, the spiral of this whole picture of the mid ages, the harshness and cruelty of it, the politics and scheming of the people in power and the day to day life problems of citizens, the relationship between the church and the crown, the exploration of Christianity and it's effect on people, it even has some epic, and beautiful romance stuff in between.
And it's all intertwined in this wondrous story that spans so many years, hardships and revelations, every moving part influences the other, every character with its own motivations and distinct roles and personalities, and it all comes constantly full circle in so many different ways in such a perfect manner that makes so much sense.
Even the moments of explaining how the church is built never felt like a chore and never went longer than they needed to be.
It's just a masterpiece, 10/10.
There are some good stories here, but I don't think Tolkien would've published this as it is in a million years, and I couldnt've got throught it if it wasn't for the amazing performance by Andy Serkis in the audio version.
The introduction chapters by Christopher and the letter by Tolkien himself were super interesting.
The first two chapters add a lot to the middle-earth lore while also being well written and not super dense like the rest of this book and I to my knowledge you can't get the stories they tell anywhere else which is a problem with later chapters.
After those, the book becomes this ultra dense without much editing text of history, that it's that, a history book that you have to study to get the “value” out of it and I don't think you are meant to study fantasy as we do our history, since we don't live in the middle-earth world as much as we would like to XD.
Then come the good chapters, but they have their own standalones fleshing way more their stories out, so really there's no need to read this and I would've love to know this before reading the book.
Overall I still see value in this book as a curiosity thing and I'm not against the idea of it being published, but hey those are my thoughts.