In their view, it avoids the trap of simply trying to map each feature of Middle-earth to a place in the real world; instead, Garth explains how Tolkien had skilfully interwoven geographic elements to suit his storytelling.

[G 4] This is followed by 11 unnumbered chapters that group Tolkien's places by theme, and a detailed set of helps including an appendix, notes, and scholarly bibliography.

These concerns are reflected in his many uses of the medieval in Middle-earth, along with earlier elements of the landscape such as long barrows, stone circles, and lake towns, as described in the chapter "Ancient Imprints".

Garth discounts superficial comparisons with modern towers in Birmingham, pointing out multiple origins in landscape and literature, from Faringdon Folly to Dante's Divine Comedy.

Second, he examines Tolkien's much-debated written remark that "Personally I do not think either war (and of course not the atomic bomb) had any influence upon either the plot [of The Lord of the Rings] or the manner of its unfolding.

Other scholars have puzzled over the remark; Garth mentions that Tom Shippey takes it to mean that soldiers in the Great War found Tolkien "more realistic ... than the genteel novels favoured by literary critics".

Its "prodigal detail" includes drawings never previously published, maps, and paintings that exploit the book's large (8"×10") format as well as Garth's well-researched text and informative sidebars.

"[4] Laura Schmidt writes in VII: Journal of the Marion E. Wade Center that Garth is following up on multiple studies of Tolkien's locations, not to mention the tourist industry around some of them in Oxford and elsewhere, but that he separates fact from fiction, listing both his reasoning and his sources.

Schmidt states that the book gave her the "revelation" that Tolkien's use of places is like the way he weaves his languages from many materials until, with philological skill, they fit snugly together.

He notes Garth's description of Tolkien's literary approach as using "a paint-box, in which the author dipped, daubed, and mixed layers of color, depth, hue, form, and drama into his vast legacy of narratives."

[6] Clea Simon, in her review for the arts fuse, called the book beautifully produced and "replete with illustrations" with "evocative landscapes", maps, architectural details, and Tolkien's own paintings, making it in her opinion "a lovely keepsake for fans".

She noted that Garth was "a painstaking scholar", but that in the book he "ignores the poetry and creativity underpinning Tolkien's classic, dissecting it in an over-thought (and, at times, overwrought) search for connections to the author's real-life experiences".

[8] Tom Chivers, reviewing the work for The Times, writes that The Lord of the Rings is not so much an escapist adventure as a tale of heartbreak and the loss of innocence as the world is threatened by overwhelming dark.

In his view, Garth takes the book that way, bringing out Tolkien's "elegiac tone", ostensibly describing landscapes that inspired Middle-earth, but "unavoidably, a history of the man and his ideas".