Name: The Fall of Gondolin
ISBN: 9780008302764

The Fall of Gondolin

"In the Tale of The Fall of Gondolin are two of the greatest powers in the world. There is Morgoth of the uttermost evil, unseen in this story but ruling over a vast military power from his fortress of Angband. Deeply opposed to Morgoth is Ulmo, second in might only to Manwë, chief of the Valar: he is called the Lord of Waters, of all seas, lakes, and rivers under the sky. But he works in secret in Middle-earth to support the Noldor, the kindred of the Elves among whom were numbered Húrin and Túrin Turambar. Central to this enmity of the gods is the city of Gondolin, beautiful but undiscoverable. It was built and peopled by Noldorin Elves who, when they dwelt in Valinor, the land of the gods, rebelled against their rule and fled to Middle-earth. Turgon King of Gondolin is hated and feared above all his enemies by Morgoth, who seeks in vain to discover the marvellously hidden city, while the gods in Valinor in heated debate largely refuse to intervene in support of Ulmo's desires and designs. Into this world comes Tuor, cousin of Túrin, the instrument of Ulmo's designs. Guided unseen by him Tuor sets out from the land of his birth on the fearful journey to Gondolin, and in one of the most arresting moments in the history of Middle-earth the sea-god himself appears to him, rising out of the ocean in the midst of a storm.

What Hacker News says

VicteriusSep 2022

I enjoy good writing, but the only writing I'm willing to pay for is print books (I just bought a copy of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Fall of Gondolin", the hardcover, illustrated one by HarperCollins). I don't want to pay for newspapers, for investigative journalism, or for long form article magazines like The Atlantic or The New Yorker. Nevermind Medium of all places, because Medium has no barrier of entry. No gatekeeping (and, given how easy it is to merely write a blurb of text, I have rather high standards for what I choose to pay to read). I'd rather consume from the likes of Amazon and have them run these writing platforms (e.g. WaPo) at a loss. Which means I'm paying for writers, in the end, just in a very indirect way. This sits well with me.

But if the choice before me was to pay for writers directly (like Medium), or let non-book writers as a profession disappear, I'd opt for the latter. You may criticize this attitude. I assume the responsibility for that and I'm being honest.

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MaursaultJun 2022

Tolkien wrote and rewrote and rewrote and rewrote drafts. Like The Fall of Gondolin, this is not going to be a cover to cover story. It is going to be up to several attempts by Tolkien to tell the story, edited by and along with Christopher Tolkien's commentary. It is going to reveal few precious morsels about Numenor. Ultimately, the content itself is only going to amount to a short story, but told a few different times in slightly different ways. We already know the story, the outline of it, anyway. So now we'll get some fine detail here and there as well.

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hcrispApr 2018

It appears to be a combination of "The Coming of Tuor to Gondolin" found in "Unfinished Tales" and "The Fall of Gondolin" found in "The Book of Lost Tales 2" [1]. The first covers Tuor's journey from Dor-Lomin to Gondolin in detail but stops there (Christopher Tolkien called it "one of the saddest facts in the whole history of incompletion"). The second covers the fall of the city itself in great detail. I read the two in that order recently and enjoyed the account immensely; it's on the order of Lord of the Rings in terms of a compelling story, grandeur and beauty.

[1] https://www.tolkiensociety.org/2018/04/the-fall-of-gondolin-...

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