This book covers a somewhat small portion or timeline from the main Lord of The Rings narrative. Which in large part is do to the massive scale of the story. The Treason of Isengard starts of with the different manuscripts and drafts in the sequential order of:

• Hobbiton to Bree
• Bree to Rivendell
• Council of Elrond
• The Mines of Moria
• Path to Lothlorien
• The Kingdom of Rohan

One thing that struck me was the removal of characters from the story as well as the removal certain elements of the drafts that didn’t quite fit with the narrative that J.R.R. Tolkien was trying accomplish in the Lord of The Rings. Yes, sadly Tom Bombadil had a tiny portion (the strange nature of his character still intrigues me).

A very interesting thing about reading this book is that at this point, Tolkien had practically all the major plots of the Lord of The Rings already planned and laid out. By reading this book we get to see how the story keeps getting expanded to the epic literary master piece that it is.

To the surprise of many, The Lord of The Rings is a religious (Catholic) novel. Reading both The Return of The Shadow and now the Treason of Isengard, I definitely could see many elements of it. For example in this book, to me it very quite how in the early manuscripts and drafts (and even on the final publish form), Galadriel is written and described as a Virgin Mary figure, similar to Elbereth in The Return of The Shadow.

Finally in this book we get to read in more detail information about major figures in the Lord of The Rings like, Galadriel, Saruman, Treebeard and the Ents, and King Theoden.