“Frodo gave a cry, and there was, fallen upon his knees at the chasm’s edge. But Gollum, dancing like a mad thing, held aloft the ring, a finger still thrust within its circle.
“Precious, precious, precious!” Gollum cried. “My Precious! O my Precious!” And with that, even as his eyes were lifted up to gloat on his prize, he stepped too far, toppled, wavered for a moment on the brink, and then with a shriek he fell. Out of the depths came his last wail precious, and he was gone.”

― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

The Mount Doom Moleskine limited edition is the most dramatic of the Lord of the Rings themed notebooks to come out this year, and justifiably so. The red and black provide eye catching high contrast that are in complete opposition to the grey on grey Moria notebook.

This notebook will pop out the moment you see it on the store shelf.

Sauron’s eye gazes upon you. Notice the use of the LotR typeface, and Elven script, on the paper band.

The front cover shows Mount Doom in all its Tolkien illustrated glory, with Frodo and Samwise as little golden dots against its grey and red horror.

The design continues on the spine, with Tolkien’s sign on embossed in red at the top.

The back cover, with the edge of mount doom and Sauron’s all seeing eye in red.

The choice of red elastic closure and a black cover is perfect for this notebook, and the gold embossing of the date, the scene and Frodo and Samwise really pops.

The front end page with Tolkien’s pencil drawings of an aerial view of Mordor. The drawing is very nice, but it does make the “In case of loss” pretty obscure. You can either go extra bold here, or try to blend in and hope that someone will notice.

The aerial map of Mordor continues on the back end page. As usual, but still worth noting, the map is completely aligned with the back pocket.

The extra with this edition is the Cirith alphabet booklet.

The red and black theme continues here.

A closeup on the back pocket, with its red sides and the map that continues into the back pocket.

This is a ruled notebook, and it comes with a red ribbon bookmark. Unless you use inks like Noodler’s bulletproof black, it isn’t fountain pen friendly. Then again, it isn’t marketed as such (Moleskine has other notebooks for that).

The B-side of the paper band details Frodo and Sam’s journey.

I love these Lord of the Rings limited editions (I’m using the Moria one as my daily journal). The mount Doom edition is befitting of the dramatic climax of The Lord of Rings trilogy. If you’re a LotR fan this is definitely a must buy, and probably the best designed notebook of this edition.