LEGO Icons 10367 The Lord of the Rings: Balrog Book Nook – Shall you pass? [Review]

Earlier this month, we brought you a look at LEGO Icons 10351 Sherlock Holmes: Book Nook, LEGO’s first revealed venture into the Book Nook decor trend. It turns out that that Holmes and a certain boy wizard aren’t the only nooks coming this June, and today we can delve deeper – carefully! – into the just-revealed LEGO Icons 10367 The Lord of the Rings: Balrog Book Nook. This fraught cavern passage contains 1,201 pieces and will be available on June 1 for US $129.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £109.99. Will you be adding Durin’s Bane to your shelves?

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

Unboxing the parts, instructions, and sticker sheet

The black box is pretty standard for Icons sets for adults – the front shows the nook expanded, with the Balrog’s unfolded wings and the dark flames dancing around and from it. The back shows the nook folded on a very curated bookshelf, along with a few other views of the book nook in different configurations. The top of the box has a bonus view of the Balrog on its own, rearing up menacingly.

Like 10351 Sherlock Holmes Book Nook, our review copy of this set came with plastic bags instead of paper. Maybe the Book Nook concept has been in development for longer than it usually takes concepts to come to market? In any case, there are 9 of them. Loose in the box are a flexible piece that will be used in the Balrog’s whip, the Balrog’s wings (identical to the ones in the Fellbeast gift-with-purchase from Barad-dûr), and the instructions. There are again no stickers, which is welcome.

The instructions open with several pages of background on the scene depicted by the set, warnings about Moria, and a brief statement from the Icons Design Team about bringing the Balrog to minifigure scale, as well as highlighting that you can detach it from the book nook.

The build

The build has two main parts, the book nook frame, and the Balrog itself. The frame is built mostly with dark grey, dark orange, and medium nougat, with some light grey and dark tan mixed in, and black finishing the back and top. The very first part of the build represents the Bridge of Khazad-dûm with a narrow, one-minifigure-at-a-time path. The color gradient on the bridge makes nice use of the symmetrical geometry of LEGO wedge plates, and shows the area where the Balrog’s fire is causing the stone of the mines to flicker reddish and orange fading across the bridge to where Gandalf stands on plain stone, perhaps lit by white light from his staff or from Glamdring.

The other end of the bridge uses an interesting clip to bar connection rather than having a plate tie the two pieces together. [Editor Note: This seems to be a trend? I’ve noticed this connection a lot more in recent sets] This lets the end be a detachable display stand for Gandalf. The “You shall not pass!” tile added at the very end of the build makes this look pretty nice, though the wedges extending from the sides – used to help the nook line up when closed – look a bit funny.

Some finishing pieces on the bottom give the bridge a bit of lift and clearance even though it’s quite low to the ground or table.

The pillars throughout the set are finished with pentagonal shield tiles, wedges, and cheese slopes to give them texture as well as some 3-dimensional depth. The effect looks good, but it’s worth saying that there is very little variation. There are four pillars in the build, and the detailing only differs in the colors, and if they are finished on 2 sides or 3.

The back of the build is finished with black tiles to cover up any color and texture inconsistencies. They get applied on both sides as you build up, but here I’ve only applied them on one side to show the full effect covered and uncovered. You can also spy a single metallic silver 1×1 round plate tucked into the back – a reference to Moria’s wealth and temptation, Mithril. There isn’t much for easter eggs in this set, but this is something.

 

Next are the sides, which hinge open and closed. Each side is identical except for being mirrored left-to-right, so we’ll only look at one. The pillars are a little more substantial so that they look fully finished both open and closed, and slightly different in construction from the rear pillars because of a cavity on each for the Balrog’s wing tip to extend into. Otherwise, they’re pretty much the same as the rear pillars.

The tops are finished and black and have some nice geometric texture in dark gray stone to break up the lines.

Finally, a set of flames are added to each side. Again the flames are identical in construction, which feels like a real missed opportunity for variety given the naturally irregular nature of fire. The translucent pieces used are pretty convincing as flames; if there’s a weak area, it’s the reddish-orange curved slopes used to anchor each pair of flames. The color match is reasonable, but it’s a bright, non-translucent color and is a bit distracting. This slope exists in transparent colors now; if it was possible to re-color it in trans-orange, it might have looked better here. Undoubtedly the frames needed for prints, especially unique pieces for the Balrog, were rightly the priority.

The finished frame opened. It’s nice – but this really emphasizes how much it’s just a frame, and how much the background comes through. We’ll come back to that.

The Balrog

As might be expected for a large figure build, the Balrog starts with a dense core mixing Technic pieces, large and small ball joints, and other connections.

These stacked clips and bar handles allow the Balrog’s neck to be attached securely at an angle, lending additional shaping to the creature.

The Balrog’s chest is textured with quarter circle tiles and slopes. Maybe some translucent orange underneath them would have aided the image rather than light blueish gray. The arms are jointed at the shoulder, have a hinge at the elbow, and another joint at the wrist with posable fingers as well. Some CCBS (constructible character building system) shells cover some of the rougher joins.

The legs get rounded out with slopes and finished on the outside as well. Like nearly every LEGO buildable character or mech, Durin’s Bane has no knees. That said, the Balrog is really very posable, even without adding the wings. The angled slopes to finish the feet – perhaps even representing cloven hoofs? – look great.

The wings start with another dense technic assembly, designed to add strength and make sure that the wings fold and unfold gracefully when the nook is opened and closed.

The wings really make the fiend, giving the Balrog an intimidating wingspan. The Fellbeast wings look good re-used here.

Some more flames are added to the Balrog’s neck and shoulders (Neck and Shoulders: the official shampoo of evil?), and the fiery whip, with both of its elements new in orange, including the Wolverine claw piece, finishes the look. The fire glowing within its eyes and nose looks menacing, and the big curved horns are great too.

The minifigure

Gandalf is identical to the figure included in LEGO Icons 10354 The Lord of the Rings: The Shire, except with no cape. It’s a very nice minifigure with printing all around, though a lot of the torso printing is obscured by Gandalf’s hair and beard. Minifig collectors won’t need this set though, assuming they already have 10354 The Shire for its many exclusive figures.

The completed model

The model is finished on all sides and none of the different vantages look very rough – you can see all angles in our gallery below – but front on and fully opened is where the build shines best. The Balrog looms over Gandalf, large enough to seem to block out hope, with flames roaring from it, around it, through it. The columns evoke the halls of Durin, lit in the center by those terrible flames. One quibble… the Balrog at this stage should have a large fiery sword. The whip is crucial to the scene, but the initial clash with Gandalf is with his giant blade.

Closed in nook form, the scene just looks a little squished. The way the wings fold up is technically clever and well done, but their impact is visually lost, and the whip dangles out of the nook awkwardly and kind of bobs up and down. A giant flaming sword option would definitely look better in this configuration, but the scene just looks like an awkward fit for the book nook concept.

Conclusions and recommendations

This is a set with a lot of promise, and it’s going to look fantastic in certain settings. The flames, if backlit a little and with a darker neutral color behind them, look great. The Balrog is very posable and menacing and looks amazing on its own. However, in most shelf situations and most lighting, it can get lost, appearing as a set of columns and a vague shape in the darkness. Maybe that’s what you want, and that’s fine! But the lack of an actual backing, and having nothing on the sides, can make it seem like there isn’t much there there. The Sherlock Holmes book nook uses angled sides both to give a sense of depth and perspective, but also to keep more of the build visible when closed. That technique wouldn’t work here unless the Balrog was moved all the way to the front, and even then, where would you its wings, let alone Gandalf? So we’re not saying there were any easy choices here. But the visible scene that’s visible when the build is closed and on a shelf is dimmer and has less depth and detail than in the Holmes nook.

We felt the Sherlock set was somewhat expensive, and this one feels even more so. There’s no question on the license needed for a Lord of the Rings set, and you do get a large creature build – but the rest of it feels like, well, just a sparse frame. Lots of pieces go into that frame because of the finials – how the columns are ornamented or finished at the tops and bottoms – and because of how all of the surfaces are tiled (if you don’t build your own creations, this is one of the ways that part count just piles up as you start going for more and more detail and more finished looks…). But those same columns are very repetitive and not really interesting to build four of. And $130, for around 150 fewer pieces than the Sherlock Holmes build (at the same price), with only one non-exclusive minifigure, feels like a tough sell. So should you buy it? Well, if you still have that question at this point in the review, our honest answer is that this set probably isn’t for you.

LEGO Icons 10367 The Lord of the Rings: Balrog Book Nook will be available at LEGO.com and LEGO retail stores beginning on June 1st, where it will retail for for US $129.99 | CAN $TBD | UK £109.99.  You may be able to find it from third party retailers on Amazon and eBay.

The LEGO Group provided The Brothers Brick with an early copy of this set for review. Providing TBB with products for review guarantees neither coverage nor positive reviews.

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