In related news...

New Tolkien book: Beren and Lúthien May 2017 edited by Christopher Tolkien and illustrated by Alan Lee

http://www.tolkiensociety.org/2016/10 ... n-book-beren-and-luthien/

Trotter wrote:
My Deluxe Kullervo has just been delivered, looks nice, though some people may be unhappy as it is printed and bound in China. It also states that this printing is available for a limited time only, so at the moment I expect HarperCollins do not expect to reprint.

That's unfortunate about the printing and binding, though I guess it's cheaper these days to mass produce stuff in China :-/

As for being "available for a limited time", don't they always say these editions are limited, and then keep reprinting them?

By the way, would you be able to share a few pics if possible?

I'll second the request for pics on the Deluxe version of Kullervo -- got my alert of an international charge on the card I use on Amazon.co.uk, and got excited that Kullervo was shipping. So went to see if Amazon finally had an image up, the single image they have looks nice. I think the red will look great in person.


Also, excited about the potential with that Illustrated Beren and Lúthien. Having to only open one book would be nice, just hoping that it can be successfully executed. Assuming it is, and it does well it opens the door for HC to duplicate the format on other partial stories that saw many revisions and were never finalized.

Absolutely! The Fall of Gondolin is one of my favourite stories, and it is unfortunate the Tolkien never really completed it. The UT version is so full of detail (and I love reading about anything to do with the sea) that it left me mesmerized.

Looks like Amazon.co.uk has a listing up for the Deluxe Edition and a Kindle Edition

Whoa, this is huge news. I did not expect this at all. It's great to hear that Christopher is still working away at all this. Really looking forward to this next year. Wonder if they'll do a Super Deluxe...

BH

Khamûl wrote:
Whoa, this is huge news. I did not expect this at all. It's great to hear that Christopher is still working away at all this. Really looking forward to this next year. Wonder if they'll do a Super Deluxe...

BH

Good news regrading Beren and Luthien, although there seems to be a bit of debate about exactly what this constitutes at this stage. Maybe we need another thread for Beren & Luthien?

Shame about the Deluxe Kullervo being Chinese. Be interested in learning whether it is good quality or not so good. The pictures I have seen of the other Chinese deluxes have been pretty unimpressive (The Hobbit and TftpR are both pretty bad from what I have seen).

With regards to "Limited Time Only", every deluxe has had that tag line. Has been true of The Hobbit and LOTR Deluxes for 11 years and counting.

That's very disappointing news about Deluxe Kullervo being made in China. I expected the 1st print would be made in Italy or UK like all others. There's just something off about Deluxe editions made in China. I just hope it is of decent quality unlike the abysmal Chinese Deluxe Hobbit. At this point I'm not even sure its worth getting since I already have the Hardback version (made in the UK, excellent quality).

On the other hand I am very happy about the Beren and Lúthien book and support the idea of doing something similar with the Fall of Gondolin. Hats off to the great Christopher Tolkien and I'm happy Alan Lee is illustrating it. So far Amazon.co.uk has pre-order listings for a Deluxe ("Special Edition"), Hardback, and Kindle.

Stu wrote:
With regards to "Limited Time Only", every deluxe has had that tag line. Has been true of The Hobbit and LOTR Deluxes for 11 years and counting.

Even if purposely misleading, the only requirement to make the"Limited Time Only" statement true is that they stop printing it at some point.

I suspect the Chinese printing allows for fairly small print runs -- not quite POD, but maybe only low hundreds. I think the limited print run for these could easily go another decade!

Received my Hobbit First, imported to Canada from the UK. Arrived safely!

I do like that it has a slipcase to protect it, but the dustjacket is a little bit too large (though folded as well as one can expect - I've seen much worse), and the slipcase is a bit tight, which inevitably means that the edges of the dustjacket are going to be damaged - in fact, they already are. Maybe I'll store the book in the slipcase, and store the dustjacket, along with the ISBN sheet... somewhere else.

I really like the cloth cover. A lot.

It's too bad, but understandably quite necessary, that they had to put the non-original (modified?) page with the printing information and ISBN into the book.

I'll have to re-read this thread to go back and see what people were saying about the mistakes with this edition, such as something about the page numbering?

On my front endpaper, the Lonely Mountain has left a faint but noticeable impression on the right side of the page. The same with the treeline that's closest to the spine on the right page of the back endpaper.

The printing seems a little bit light on some pages, in particular a few of the illustrations. Again, I'd consider it really a slight issue, but still enough for me to wish it was darker.

The cut of some of the pages isn't smooth along the edge of the book, it's hard to describe, but if you've seen it before you probably know what I mean, it's as if there is "sawdust" from the cut still on the pages, but it doesn't come off.

Someone was mentioning the letters at the bottom of the pages, for the signatures. I understood the concept of signatures but I didn't know about them being lettered in old books, so that was cool to learn. There's no "A" which is understandable, but... they skipped J, going from I on page 129 to K on page 145?

Final thoughts - I wish the paper/print quality was slightly higher and there are some improvements that could be made (as always), but overall I am very happy this was published and it's great to have this in my library. After I ordered it from the UK, the Canadian printing became available for pre-order - although even after exchange rate and shipping, I think the UK import ended up being a couple dollars cheaper. I'm definitely happy to have this first and original printing from the UK - or, I should say, from Italy :) I wonder where the Canadian release - which Amazon lists as being expected on November 8th - will be printed.