The mark of a great story is returning to it at different stages of one’s life and finding it fresh each time, as if seeing a fresh vista on the same image with each reading. That is true for the stories contained in Tales From the Perilous Realm and, in particular, Leaf by Niggle. Anyone working to fashion meaning and story out of the raw material of words, or paint, or sound, could find enough in here to ponder over a lifetime – and I have! If you are a sub-creator, labouring in the fields of Arda, read it and know that your efforts are not in vain, so long as you labour truly for the work itself and not the glory or honour or wealth or renown it might bring you.