The texts are in great good information; is frequently redundant, but hard to avoid in a book that wants encyclopedic and thus cause it to be flipping through research on specific multiple times. You still noted many flaws in their characters. For cons, I have a big problem with the illustrations. For many of them have more, I do not like the style but the problem is not there; it is a matter of taste. No the problem is that they are often aberrant, with completely wacky visions of places and characters. The book is titled "Image Encyclopedia"! So the representation must be close to Tolkien's descriptions, it is a minimum. And it is not the case for at least 60 to 70% of them. For example, the dark tower of Mordor is a simple cylinder headed a cone, Minas Morgul like something out of a German expressionist movie, Minas Tirith boils down to a stack of camembert boxes, Dwalin is a tired old with a cane ( never seen a sword like that), Aragorn is the twin brother of Thor Avengers, an elf warrior could be mistaken for a Mongolian warrior (exit Gil-Galad, hello Genghis Khan), and Nosferatu klaus kinski acts as Morgoth . Really I do not understand the choice of illustrators, while there are much more qualitative multitude. I still enjoyed the illustrations that show the evolution of Arda from its inception to the fourth age of the sun, but the cards (Beleriand, Númenor, Valinor, Middle-earth in the 3rd age of the sun) are minimized. In short, buying only for text and for text
