The Fall of Gondolin is coming out this summer.

It’s the funny thing about J.R.R. Tolkien; he wrote an awful lot about Middle-earth. And even now, his son, Christopher Tolkien, continues to work on his father’s unfinished or partially missing stories. And the latest, The Fall of Gondolin comes out this August.

According to Tolkien and the Great War author John Garth, Tolkien wrote the story while in the hospital after the Battle of the Somme.

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It’s a quest story with a reluctant hero who turns into a genuine hero – it’s a template for everything Tolkien wrote afterwards. It has a dark lord, our first encounter with orcs and balrogs – it’s really Tolkien limbering up for what he would be doing later.[/perfectpullquote]

It also seems to have an odd distinction to it; a form of bookends. It was essentially Tolkien’s first story set in Middle-earth. And for Christopher Tolkien, now 93, it may be the last time he works with his father’s writing. He had, after all, described Beren and Lúthien as “(presumptively) my last book in the long series of editions of my father’s writings,” in the book’s preface.

You can get a full look at what The Fall of Gondolin has to offer over on The Guardian.

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