The Lost Road and other writings (Re-read)

The 5th book in the History of Middle Earth deals with a lot of the same. More Silmarillain drafts and a few notes on the peoples of middle earth.

One interesting thing is at the beginning where it talk about Tolkien's attempt to write a "space travel" novel. Being influenced by CS Lewis when he was writing his Space Trilogy, Tolkien attempted to do the same.

The result was....different.

With only a few chapters ever written the story follows a boy named Albion who, from what I understand, studies the languages of ancient Middle Earth. The story is set in the modern day however.

It's weird. Tolkien is truly a fish out of water, writing in a genre outside his expertise. The story really doesn't know what it wants to be. Fantasy? Sci-Fiction? Both? It's an odd mesh where nothing feels particularly fleshed out.

Of course it's easy to pick the story apart due to Tolkien only writing a short draft of the idea and nothing more but I don't see where that novel would've ended well. Good thing he dropped the idea and went back to middle earth instead.

Overall, the book's ok but so far the underwhelming in the whole scope of things.