For decades after finishing The Lord of the Rings, J.R.R.
Tolkien wrestled with an unfinished sequel novel called The New Shadow.
Why didn’t it happen?
In the early 1950s,J.R.R.
He tinkered with this potential continuation of the story of Middle-earth until just months before his death in 1973.
Tolkien talked about the potential new story in a couple of letters.
For Tolkien, this meant an inevitable decline.
Tolkien explained that the people of Gondor would inevitably become discontented and restless during a time of prosperity.
The story was going to explore an outcrop of revolutionary plots, about a center of secret Satanistic religion.
Unlike his friend C.S.
InThe New Shadow, however, the religious themes would have been impossible to ignore.
The opening is rather more preachy than anything inTolkiens most popular works.
Saelon, of course, does not agree.
Religiosity aside, Tolkiens writing in the manuscript is as readable as ever.
Thats where we find his younger son Borlas inThe New Shadow.
To those of us who enjoy thrillers, the idea of a thriller set in Middle-earth is rather appealing!
There are gray areas within these broad characterizations.
It is, perhaps, no wonder that he was pessimistic about the future of humankind.
