Having put the finishing touches on The Lord of the Rings, Professor Tolkien closed the door to the world he created of elves and dwarves, orcs and goblins, hobbits and people, and threw away the magic key. Only one writer - Nick Perumov - managed to find a guiding thread into the mysterious and fragile world of Middle-earth. The task turned out to be difficult, because every wrong step threatened to lose the path, every inaccurate word could ruin the magic. But talent won. Tolkien's world came to life, transformed, sparkled with new, previously unknown colors and... turned into the world of Nik Perumov. And the work, conceived as a free continuation of “The Lord of the Rings,” grew into a bright, fascinating epic, one of the most notable in Russian and world science fiction.