Roverandom from Tales From The Perilous Realm

This illustration depicts very well what kind of story Roverandom is. that tiny winy dog is Rover the main character, and the bird is Mew one of the character that he encouters during the journey. No I'm not gonna spoil everything here, so this is not going to be a true review, but rather my personal impression of this book plus some background information about this book.

Roverandom is one of J.R.R. Tolkien's work that has no connection to the Middle-Earth Saga, and lately it is republished in "Tales From the Perilous realm" along with four other Tolkien's works. No it is not some book about searching for eternal meaning of your life, nor cracking the mystery of God or Love or whatever that is, nor that it is an encouraging brave adventure story that gives you a boost of adrenalin and motivates you. it is a children bedtime story about fantasy and adventure, in a creative and fun way, reading it will gives you the impressions very much like "Alice in Wonderland", but in a less cartoon way, and more like a delicacy of the british old legends. And to my surprise, I like it.

It reminds me the simplest joy of reading a fantasy book. It never stops to stimulate my imagination, along with its detail but with a little bit of poetic touch descriptions about the scenery. as I continue to read it, as long as nothing from the "outside" comes to bother me, it actually feels like watching a movie. you can actually imagine in your own way how does the environment looks and feels like. And now, with some addition of Alan Lee's illustrations, it gives more value to the book, because i just simply love it. That picture above is just one example of his works.

Aha, I remembered now why I like to read The LOTR trilogy at the first place, it is not because of great plot, or deep psychology, or the bravery of the soldiers. It is because this (imagination stimulating) reason and the vast unbounded fantasies that doesn't fall into a foolish nor ridiculous cheap creative way. Even in the translated edition (My first Tolkien's book is Indonesian translation of "The Fellowship of the Ring"), Tolkien's works always excel on stimulating your imagination. Of course not all readers fancy it, because some of my friends are not.

"Along the way, the pine trees stands firm like the soldier of the white tower at the right side and the river flows steadily along the left side and end to the water-fall that as deep as the abbys. Far beyond, the hills with its arrogant look upon us crwal its way to the unkown boundry of the dark clouds"

Well that isn't originated from the book, it is just my own recreation of how the book usually describe the scenery, and far from good i must say. Yet for some, this kind of detail is just to much and confusing. But for me, to be able to visualize it, is a very enjoyable experience.

And here is some more fun fact about this story. It is writen in the first place for his son, who losts his toy-dog one day while playing at the sea shore. So Tolkien wrote the story to calm his son and gives some relieve about the fate of that lost toy-dog of his.

Here is some phrase that is simple but attract me to share it here along with some picture that I hope best accompanied it.



"The moon rose up out of the sea, and laid a silver path across the waters that is a way to places at the edge of the world and beyond, for those that can walk on it."





"The sun jumping out of the sea, all fiery-red with clouds about his head, as if he had had a cold bathe, and was drying himself with towels."




Other illustrations of Roverandom. I can't find any on the net, so I just take a picture of it directly from the book.

Roverandom with the sea-wizard.

The White Dragon of the Moon.

Here are some other illustrations that I found from internet, but they are not Alan Lee's works. I got them from here : http://jemimahunt.blogspot.com/

Roverandom with the Moon-Rover

Both Rover are chased by the White Dragon.