The Road to Middle-earth: How J. R. R. Tolkien created a new mythology

The point is not that reviewers make mistakes (something which happens too often to deserve comment).

Words overpower intentions. In any case intentions are not always known to the intenders. This is the sense of ‘doom’ which Tolkien strives to create from oaths and curses and bargains, and from the interweaving of the fates of objects, people and kingdoms

for no one knew how words would change, even if he knew how they had