I like it, hoping it is similar to the Deluxe Sir Gawain and the Green Knight binding and slipcase.

Ligandil wrote:

Is it just me who thinks that blue+olive green colour scheme is not pretty at all?

Reminds me of the Seattle Seahawks' uniform

Colour-wise it actually looks OK to me (albeit the design is very fussy). BUT, the mockups of the orange Sil looked OK and then the book ended up being dayglo, so I'll hold off any judgement until I see the real book.

If this is meant to be a 480-page book, I can't see the above mockup with the green-dyed fore edges (the shade of which which I find distractingly unappealing) being at all accurate to the dimensions of the book, unless the paper is quite thick—unlikely considering recent editions. A total of 480 pages would result in a book less than half the thickness of the LR Tolkien-illustrated edition, even—if the dimensions given in current listings are correct—with the book roughly 1 cm shorter and narrower than the LR of last year. Time will tell, but I expect the final result must look somewhat different—particularly the layout of the text on the dyed fore edges.

This looks very good, hopefully it translates to the actual pages of the book. Here's hoping HC uses the correct paper this time.

Have those illustrations ever been included elsewhere?

I said I wouldn't buy more copies of books I already have but they might get me with this one if they have illustrations which have never been printed before.

Morinehtar wrote:

Have those illustrations ever been included elsewhere?

I said I wouldn't buy more copies of books I already have but they might get me with this one if they have illustrations which have never been printed before.

'
I doubt very much if anything will be new. And to be frank, I am waiting on reviews for this next volume as The lord of the Rings illustrations are absolute garbage.

onthetrail wrote:

Morinehtar wrote:

Have those illustrations ever been included elsewhere?

I said I wouldn't buy more copies of books I already have but they might get me with this one if they have illustrations which have never been printed before.

'
I doubt very much if anything will be new. And to be frank, I am waiting on reviews for this next volume as The lord of the Rings illustrations are absolute garbage.

That's sad to hear. I was about to start collecting these new "illustrated by the author" hardbacks, but if the illustrations are bad then it makes no sense to do that.

Morinehtar wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

Morinehtar wrote:

Have those illustrations ever been included elsewhere?

I said I wouldn't buy more copies of books I already have but they might get me with this one if they have illustrations which have never been printed before.

'
I doubt very much if anything will be new. And to be frank, I am waiting on reviews for this next volume as The lord of the Rings illustrations are absolute garbage.

That's sad to hear. I was about to start collecting these new "illustrated by the author" hardbacks, but if the illustrations are bad then it makes no sense to do that.

I think the problem with LoTR was twofold; Firstly, the reproduction of the illustrations was very poor, and secondly some of the illustrations were simply not complete enough to honestly be be described as such. I personally found the mix of "illustration quality" images and "rough sketches" to be tonally a mess. The same illustrations and sketches were far better suited to the "Art of" books.

The new author illustrated editions are there because people will buy them, not necessarily because they are actually a good/workable idea.

I have no idea how they are going to scrape up thr number of "illustrations" planned for the Silmarillion, but I expect those HE Riddett colorised ones to be the best of what is on offer (and IIRC there are three pertaining to the Sil).

Morinehtar wrote:

onthetrail wrote:

Morinehtar wrote:

Have those illustrations ever been included elsewhere?

I said I wouldn't buy more copies of books I already have but they might get me with this one if they have illustrations which have never been printed before.

'
I doubt very much if anything will be new. And to be frank, I am waiting on reviews for this next volume as The lord of the Rings illustrations are absolute garbage.

That's sad to hear. I was about to start collecting these new "illustrated by the author" hardbacks, but if the illustrations are bad then it makes no sense to do that.

I am sure others here will argue the other way on this and say the images are fine. Each of us has different ideas about what is good quality after all. But my thinking is that this was the first time that these images were presented with Tolkien's texts, they should have been on photographic paper, instead they are on awful quality paper and in many cases text shows through on the side of images. And for my likes that is very, very poor from HarperCollins. When people ask me for the best image quality of Tolkien's own artwork and my answer is to buy reference books (Art of the Hobbit, Art of Rings etc) over a world first book, the publisher should be ashamed of themselves.