• by Philip W. Helms and David L. Dettman
• Illustrated by Sarah Graves
• American Tolkien Society
• 1 May 1995
• 38 pages
• 8.5" x 11"

From the American Tolkien Society catalog: "In this sequel to The New Hobbit, Trotter, the slightly paranoid Bounder, embarks on his own quest and adventures during the War of the Ring. Trotter leaves hobbit-lands alone, headed South, to find the distant and mysterious “Mr. Underhill.” Before he concludes the quest, the Bounder will find himself hiding from Nazgul, battling the Uruk-hai, tortured and imprisoned in the dungeons of Isengard, making polite conversation with a huge and starving warg, and helpless in the mazy depths of Fangorn Forest."

A continuation of an earlier work, The New Hobbit, which took many of Tolkien's rejected elements and characters and created a cohesive story from them. In this story, Trotter, a dagger-carrying adventurous hobbit is on his way to find out more about a "Mr. Underhill" who lives away to the south. Trotter finds him and, by the time Mr. Underhill is done with him, I'm sure that Trotter wished he hadn't. Towards the end of the story, Helms and Dettman beat their moralistic message into you--you might have to ask Lars-Terje for some of that liniment--not that I disagree with what they are saying but they do it in a very heavy-handed way. They also tie in an idea for a character based on an early work published by the ATS: Wargs! Trotter's story is one that will keep you involved and the authors throw a few new ideas to boot that you might find interesting.

Review by Sumner Hunnewell