Atlas of MiddleEarth

Rating: Rings

January 11, 2003

By Karen Wynn Fonstad

List Price: $24.00

Paper Back

Mariner Books

---Description (from front cover): "An updated and authentic guide to the geography of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and The Silmarillion"

---About the Author: "Karen Wynn Fonstad is a noted cartographer who has her master's degree in geography from the University of Oklahoma and has taught geography at the University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh. As a master of fantast worlds, she is the author of The Atlas of Pern, The Atlas of the Dragonlance World, The Atlas of the Land, and The Forgotten Realms Atlas. She lives in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, and is a member of the City Council.

Review by emplynx:

J.R.R. Tolkien created some pretty impressive maps of his Middle-Earth. Maps of Valinor, maps of the Shire, maps of Mordor, etc. The list goes on. Karen Fonstad took those maps and combined it with the text in Tolkien's books to create The Atlas of the Middle-Earth.

This book includes seven sections: The First Age, The Second Age, The Third Age, Regional Maps, The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and Thematic Maps. All are extremely detailed with maps relating to their title. The book includes hundreds of maps over all. I found the Lord of the Rings maps extremely helpful when reading to see the general location of the Fellowship in relationship to other places and things.

According to Michael Martinez, Tolkien researcher and author of Visualizing Middle-earth, this book has several errors including an "error concerning Eriador's width" which "affects all her calculations, including the lengths of journeys for Frodo and Bilbo." These errors keep this book from being a source for accurate information.

Despite the errors that this book includes, it is an excellent source for a quick look up. If you want to see where on Mount Doom Frodo met up with Gollum or where the Wolves came from in the Battle of Five Armies, this book is wonderful. You probably shouldn't use this book to prove you friend wrong or to show measurements for an essay, but none the less, it is an excellent book, and the only Tolkien atlas available.

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