This book was a delight for my 10-year-old (and me), even after already having read the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. A clever, enchanting story with lots of fun and unexpected twists. Our thanks to whoever found this "lost" work.

To those who would criticize this lovable little book I say, "Understand a work before you judge it." Maybe you just didn't know, but Tolkien wrote this book to be read aloud to small children. Similarly, The Hobbit was actually written to be read with children. Roverandom is NOT Lord of the Rings, but it is a very good, enthralling little story...

What a treat! The unpublished works of favorite authors nearly always disappoint. I pick them up in hopes of experiencing a fresh taste at an old table, only to find kitchen scraps intended for the garbage heap. This was not so with Roverandom. The story is a delight. The word play is delicious, with lots of rhyme, rhythm and rutabagas. Children love words like Persia and Pershore, Psamathos or Roverandom, for that matter, that they can roll around in their mouths like a handful of jelly beans. These remind me of the word play in the Alice books or a marvelous picture book I once read to my nephew about a woman named Euphonia. (I wish I could find it, or at least remember the title.) This is a children's book. However, it does not talk down to children, and it has lots of literary references most nine-year-olds would miss. These can be enjoyed by the older reader with a wink from Tolkien. I am at the awkward age. My children, in High school and collage, are too big or too busy to have children's books read to them. And I do not yet have grandchildren to regale with the wonder of books. When I grow out of this stage, Roverandom will certainly be on my list. Until then it makes splendid reading for a Summer afternoon.

This is the third full-length biography of Tolkien, after Humphrey Carpenter's and Daniel Grotta's. Carpenter's is accurate, well-written, and insightful. Grotta's is none of these, and White's reminds me much of Grotta's. The writing is abysmally clunky, and the text is riddled with completely amateur factual errors on every level, from confusing Dorothy Sayers with Dorothy Parker to inflating Tolkien's discomfort with Charles Williams's work into a seething personal hatred for which there is no contemporary evidence: rather the opposite. White's task, as the title suggests, was to analyze Tolkien's work as well as to recount his life, but there is no literary criticism as such in this book. White starts off his analysis badly by declaring that "the published letters relate almost nothing of his private life," which could only be thought true by someone disappointed at not finding the "personal demons" and "inner drives" (his words) that he thinks Tolkien ought to have. Accordingly, he supplies them. For instance, White reduces Tolkien's motivation for writing his mythology into a simple Freudian longing for his lost mother, and then adds insult to injury by claiming that this oversimplification takes nothing away from Tolkien's achievement. White shows no understanding of what made Tolkien tick, and replaces him with a textbook psychological construct.
Parts of the book are not this bad. White is less digressive than Grotta, and he shows at least a minimal knowledge of Tolkien's posthumously-published works. He concludes with a rousing defense of the value of Tolkien's work, but doesn't really engage with the criticisms. Against elitists who half-believe that popularity is a sign of worthlessness, it's no reply to emphasize Tolkien's popularity.
At one point White criticizes Tolkien for objecting to errors in a publisher's blurb. Tolkien didn't understand the publisher's publicity needs, White says. But no publisher needs to be factually inaccurate, and neither do Tolkien's biographers. This book is likely to be a source of factual and interpretive error for years to come. It adds nothing useful to Carpenter's biography, the one book all persons curious about Tolkien's life should read.

Michael White's new biography of J.R.R. Tolkien is a competently written book and people who are just now discovering Tolkien and his works will most certainly find his book most useful. BUT everyone who has read e.g. Humphrey Carpenter's landmark biography from the late 70s or the ground-breaking studies of Tom Shippey will find nothing new in it. Unfortunately, White only uses second-hand sources and has no new conclusions to offer. Moreover, his book is flawed by some truly sloppy research mistakes, such as calling Dorothy Sayers an "American" and making the Habsburgs the rulers of the "Prussian Empire" (he is clearly confusing Germany with its neighbor Austria-Hungary).
Carpenter's biography although some 25 years older is the far more substantial biography, and although White introduces more historical background material than Carpenter, his background explanations (e.g. about the First World War) are never above schoolbook level. Recommend only for Tolkien newcomers.

After seeing the movie "Lord of the Rings" I wanted to find out more aboout the man who had authored such an ambitious work of fiction. I remember for years hearing that the writing and the story were so spectacular that it was impossible to translate to the screen. I found Mr. Tolkien to be a very interesting subject and would recommend this book.