Asking the Wrong Questions

"The Council of Elrond" by Cor Blok , 1960 'Then,' said Erestor, 'there are but two courses, as Glorfindel has already declared: to hide the Ring for ever; or to unmake it. But both are beyond our power. Who will read this riddle for us?' 'None here can do so,' said Elrond gravely. 'At least none can foretell what will come to pass, if we take this road or that. But it seems to me now clear which is the road that we must take. The westward road seems easiest. Therefore it must be shunned. It will be watched. Too often the Elves have fled that way. Now at this last we must take a hard road, a road unforeseen. There lies our hope, if hope it be. To walk into peril—to Mordor. We must send the Ring to the Fire.' In the first part of "The Council of Elrond", we learned about the Ring's history and Sauron's efforts to recover it (and also, that science is bad ). Now comes the time to decide what to do about it—to reach the conclusio...

I had three reviews in the April 2026 issue of Locus , and they are now all online. First up, I reviewed Samantha Mills's collection Rabbit Test and Other Stories . The title story was one of the most talked-about pieces of SFF short fiction of the last few years, racking up multiple award wins due both to its topicality—it is a story about America backsliding on reproductive health published just as this happened in reality—and the excellence of its execution. In my review I try to detect how a collection built around a single, attention-grabbing story manages to buttress it with other readings, and what those other stories tell us about Mills as a writer. One of the earliest pieces, "Strange Waters", feels almost like a first attempt at the framework that would eventually become "Rabbit Test", relying, like it, on a sense of the ebb and flow of history. Mika, a fisherwoman, has been swept out to sea, away from the city she calls home. But the currents she...

Publicity still for Lego Rivendell 'You have done well to come,' said Elrond. 'You will hear today all that you need in order to understand the purposes of the Enemy. There is naught that you can do, other than to resist, with hope or without it. But you do not stand alone. You will learn that your trouble is but part of the trouble of all the western world. The Ring! What shall we do with the Ring, the least of rings, the trifle that Sauron fancies? That is the doom that we must deem.' In today's chapter, we encounter perhaps the most fantastical turn of plot in the whole of The Lord of the Rings : a group of powerful people gather together for a meeting on an important topic; speak for hours without pause for rest or refreshment; give long, detailed presentations with only minimal interruption; and come to a mostly unanimous conclusion about the scope of the problem and the steps they will undertake to solve it. And all before breaking for lunch. It's a long c...

"Rivendell" by J.R.R. Tolkien 'I hear all kinds of news, from over the Mountains, and out of the South, but hardly anything from the Shire. I heard about the Ring, of course. Gandalf has been here often. Not that he has told me a great deal, he has become closer than ever these last few years. The Dúnadan has told me more. Fancy that ring of mine causing such a disturbance! It is a pity that Gandalf did not find out more sooner. I could have brought the thing here myself long ago without so much trouble. I have thought several times of going back to Hobbiton for it; but I am getting old, and they would not let me: Gandalf and Elrond, I mean. They seemed to think that the Enemy was looking high and low for me, and would make mincemeat of me, if he caught me tottering about in the Wild.' The second book of The Fellowship of the Ring opens with Frodo waking up in Rivendell and reuniting with Gandalf and his friends. Though some plot-relevant conversation occurs—Gandalf ...

Illustration from the Swedish translation of The Hobbit , by Tove Jansson , 1962 [A previous version of this essay appeared on Asking the Wrong Questions in October 2010] The most that can be said for the dwarves is this: they intended to pay Bilbo really handsomely for his services; they had brought him to do a nasty job for them, and they did not mind the poor fellow doing it if he would; but they would have done their best to get him out of trouble, if he got into it, as they did in the case of the trolls at the beginning of their adventures before they had any particular reasons for being grateful to him. There it is: dwarves are not heroes, but calculating folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent people like Thorin and Company, if you don't expect too much. Last week's news that the long-beleaguered production of The Hobbit is finally getting on its way sent me back to the book itself ...

I've made no secret of my admiration for Ancillary Review of Books 's podcast A Meal of Thorns . In every episodes, host Jake Cassella Brookins invites a guest—an author, critic, or academic—to discuss a single book. Selections range across genres (a recent episode focused on Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep ), discussing books new and old, famous and obscure. I guested on A Meal of Thorns last year with a discussion of Iain M. Banks's Excession , and Cassella was kind enough to invite me back in 2026. This time our topic was David Mitchell's 2004 breakout success Cloud Atlas , a novel in which six nested narratives, set in different time periods and written in different styles and genres, reveal unexpected connections, as well as a meditation on humanity's tendency towards cruelty and exploitation. As I say at the beginning of the episode, it is by no means an exaggeration to say that Cloud Atlas was one of the novels that made me. It's a book I discovere...