Many fairly obvious and dull points, but a handful of gems.

Similar in depth to Shippey's Author of the Century, Kocher delves into Tolkien's work and delivers a lot of satisfying insight. What is especially impressive is the fact that he wrote it while Tolkien still lived and long before the "Tolkien Renaissance" of the early 2000s. Kocher looks at several topics though, that Shippey does not, including an entire chapter on Aragorn, which I found to be the most intriguing part of the book. He restates some of the common criticisms of contemporary lit critics (philistines all) and explains why they seem to have all missed the point. Plus the chapter on Aragorn went a long way in illuminating just how wrongly the Lord of the Rings movies portrayed him. I highly recommend this for any Tolkien fan and if you aren't much of one, this book will change that.

This is very old - it predates the publication of The Silmarillion - but still very well worth reading. Lots of interesting insights, especially on some of Tolkien's shorter works that are not often much talked about.

A lovely and helpful commentary, which loses nothing in scholarly depth for its accessibility. Kocher clearly loves his subject, and his reflections are clearly those of one whose primary reason for writing is admiration. Moreover, his insights reach a level of strong canonical consistency that is astonishing, considering that he writes prior to the publication of The Silmarillion.

Starts off very dry, but gets better in the middle, then dips again with the last chapter--although the reason is not so much in the analysis than the fact that the short works discussed in the last chapter fail to be as interesting to the LOTR fan. What is interesting is that Kocher is writing in 1972, five years prior to the publication of The Silmarillion and has to speculate about a lot of things brought to light in the posthumous epic. Still, a good read.

I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this analysis of The Hobbit, Lord of the Rings and other Tolkien stories; it brought to mind a lot of interesting connections and ideas and made me interested in reading the series again sooner than expected. The only bummer is that it was published before The Silmarilion and The Unfinished Tales was published so does not pull those stories in. I would be interested in finding something similar that does. This was a quick and easy read.

An interesting read. I really enjoyed some of the essays in this book. There were quite a few things shown in this book that I had never really thought about.

More readable than the Silmarillion. Well done and informative.

Although first published several years before The Silmarillion, in that vasty deep time when so many of our questions remained unanswered, Master of Middle-earth remains one of my favorite critical studies of Tolkien. Kocher's chapter-long character study of Aragorn is particularly brilliant:

"This is the ambitious, weary, and apprehensive prince who impatiently watches the foolish antics of the hobbits under the suspicious eyes of the crowd at the inn. To his mind the hobbits badly need taking in hand, as children who are playing games with the fate of Middle-earth....He does not make the mistake of being ingratiating; on the contrary, he starts out with a shock tactic. Because of the debacle in the common room he treats them like the children they have shown themselves to be, and proposes to give them unspecified valuable information in exchange for the 'reward' of being allowed to accompany them. The proposal is meant to be indignantly refused and when it is, Aragorn applauds." (p. 133)

[First read in February 1973 and several times since.]

Real good insight into the writings of Tolkien. However, writing was more factual than anything else and it quite hard to stay interested.

Algunas de sus reflexiones son muy interesantes y me ha hecho caer en detalles que me habían pasado desapercibidos cuando leí "El señor de los anillos", pero no puedo decir que me haya entusiasmado.

Recomendable para fans de Tolkien.

Probably the best of several books of LotR criticism I have read: Kocher is approachable, admiring of Tolkien, and expansively thoughtful about the larger-scale themes the master of linguistics and storytelling as undertaken.

Always cementing his observations with structure, example, and pattern directly from the texts, Kocher demonstrate and moral and cosmic order to Tolkien's universe, reflecting on the roles of its denizens through their own parturition, fates, and philosophies. Is the storyline pre-ordained? Is chance involved or does a "divine" hand guide? What roles for fealty and friendship? What for mercy and environment? How, exactly, do we understand evil in a universe without religion?

These are just a few of the questions Kocher addresses as he examines each of the realms races, the complexity of Aragorn (a terrific chapter), and the value or lack thereof in presuming simple allegory from Tolkien's lifework. At the work's close, Kocher looks closely at seven other writings of Tolkien to reveal their connections to the central LotR, as well.

There is a ton of Tolkien writing out there, but Kocher's, written way back in 1972, will stay on my shelf.