So delicious, you could gain weight just reading it.  Lush, lovely, and classic.  Something this magnificient brings me into absolute awe of the human mind and its power of imagination and creation.

while that title may not make a whole lot of sense to those who haven’t read Tolkien’s On Fairy Stories it does make quite a bit of sense to me and generally speaking that’s good enough.

but since I’m on the path to change my ways I’ll tell you this: eucatastrophe is a term I believe Tolkien either invented or pulled out of a very old book that describes a device in literature where you lead your reader, over a long period of time, to believe that the ending could go any way… in other words you lead the reader to think it may, indeed, end poorly for all the characters you’ve come to resonate with.

Because there will be more of you on here lauding LOTR I’ll leave my review at that and let someone else talk about a different aspect of it (the invented cultures/languages, the exquisite adventure, the irreplacable TASTE of reading the fellowship of the ring, etc..)