This book puts together a most of the important paintings on Tolkien's world by artist's like Alan Lee or John Howe. The quality of the reproductions is quite high and the cover is very beautyful. For all Tolkien and fine art lovers.

With over a dozen artists, this book provides a great diversity in the way Tolkien's works are visualized. From the intense detail of Alan Lee and Ted Nasmith to the graceful brush strokes of Cor Blok, this book is a must-have!

I have read The Hobbit and all of The Lord Of The Rings books twice. I did visualize the land masses and characters of Tolkiens Middle-Earth very well. But if you buy Realms Of Tolkien you will find that many artists have had good thoughts upon Middle-Earths orcs , trolls , elves , ents , hobbits , men and land mass. So if you are about to read The Hobbit , The Lord Of The Rings , or even The Silmarillion then I suggest that you buy this book to visualize pictures from this book to Tolkiens world. Among the artists who have painted pictures in this book are Alan Lee , John Howe , and Ted Nasmith who are wonderful artists in this book Realms Of Tolkien.

This is a collection of 50+ paintings based on various works by Tolkien, which fans of Tolkien will no doubt enjoy. It may be of speial interest to those who watched the movies (and who hasn't, who read Tolkien...) as you can clearly see how some of these paintings are replicated in Jackson's movies; it takes but a moment to catch it in the film, but if you see the pictures enough you'll recognize it.

The quality of the paintings are uneven, and each one has its favorite. Like many people, I find Hague lacking, but also Edelfeldt, who isn't bad but whose style is not unique enough in my opinion.

My favorites, on the other hand, are Howe, Garland, Nasmith, Lee and Galuidi. Garland, my favorite, has a unique and glowing, almost 'mystical' style that does the book justice. Howe's pictures are also intriguing and beautiful, and feel true to the book (and thankfully, he seems to dominate the book in terms of the number of contributions). Nasmith has some splendid landscape pictures, though his vision of the characters leave something to be desired (especially of a fat, distorted Boromir!) Galuidi's sci-fi, computerized style may not appeal to some, but I find them interesting. Finally, Lee's soft watercolors are very appealing, and his vision of the characters is near-perfect (especially Galadriel and Gandalf).

There are 60 illustrations, excellent paintings, with the accompanying text that inspired it. The colours are very well down, and each painting is brilliantly done in terms of publication. There are nine artists represented. These are:

Inger Edelfeldt: 7 paintings

Tony Galuidi: 2 paintings

Roger Garland: 10 paintings

Robert Goldsmith: 2 paintings

Michael Hague: 7 paintings

John Howe:10 paintings

Alan Lee: 10 paintings

Ted Nasmith: 10 paintings

Caro Emery Phenix: 2 paintings

My personal favorite is John Howe. He brings out a lot of dark imagery. I don't know why, but Hague's stuff just does not appeal to me. I have seen him do Lewis's Pilgrim's Regress, and some other stuff, and I just don't like his style (also saw his illustrations for WIZARD OF OX). His are of THE HOBBIT. Galuidi has almost a computer generated quality, and his work is especially intriguing, although there are only 2 of his paintings in this collection. Lee is good. All in all, this is a fair book, collecting the paintings of artisits brining about their own vision of Tolkien's classic saga. Over all, a four star book (bumped up one star because of Howe's supreme quality).

"Tolkien's World" is a very handsome book: large, hardcover, sleeve-cover, fine print and paper. It consists on a serie of paintings divided by books (The Hobbit, LOTR, Silmarillion, etc.) printed in the largest scale possible and with great definition. Beside the picture there is the passage of the book which inspired the painting. In the end there are one-page texts about or written by each of the artists, explaining their influences and relation with Tolkien works. My favorite artist is, without a doubt, Ted Nasmith, that draws very realistic pictures. Second place is John Howe, with his dark and intriguin style. All in all, a pretty nice book. I was very satisfied with it and it helped me to figure the places and events of LOTR. Be aware that there's a book that is kind of a sequel to this one: "Realms of Tolkien: Images of Middle-Earth", which I'm planning to get. It is written on its purchasing info that the author is Ted Nasmith, so is the cover authory. Lucky me.