The Children of Hurin

stoolpigeon writes "Throughout much of his life, J.R.R. Tolkien worked on a series of stories set in his well known middle earth. A few he considered his "Great Tales" and he would return to them often, writing them multiple times and in multiple forms. One story that he worked on often over many years was the tale of Hurin and his children Turin and Nienor. Following his death, Tolkien's youngest son Christopher has worked to collect, edit and publish much of what his father wrote but never published. The tale of Hurin's children has been told in part already in some of those works. But it is in this book that for the first time the complete tale is told from start to finish of The Children of Hurin." Read below for the rest of JR's review. The Children of Hurin author J.R.R. Tolkien pages 313 publisher Houghton Mifflin rating 7/10 reviewer JR Peck ISBN 0-618-89464-0 summary The complete tale of the children of Hurin Some insight from what I think of this book is revealed in the fact that I preordered a copy before it was published last year. I was very excited when it arrived, made it about a third of the way through and then set it aside for quite a while. It was just recently that I saw my copy sitting on a book shelf and decided that I would finish it. It really didn't take too much time. The story is not very long. The reason I had trouble was because I had been hoping for something along the lines of "The Hobbit" or "The Lord of the Rings", Tolkien's most widely read efforts. They read like most modern novels, whereas much of the material published since Tolkien's death is written in a more classical and frankly, difficult to read style. Christopher acknowledges that those works are perceived in this manner in his preface by stating, "It is undeniable that there are a very great many readers of 'The Lord of the Rings' for whom the legends of the Elder Days (as previously published in varying forms in 'The Silmarillion', 'Unfinished Tales', and 'The History of Middle-earth') are altogether unknown, unless by their repute as strange and inaccessible in mode and manner." I have read the first two from that list of three and would say that yes, they are in many ways work to read.

Unfortunately I didn't find "The Children of Hurin" to be much more approachable or easy to enjoy. I think that Christopher's motivation is to bring these tales to a wider audience, but I doubt very much he succeeded. There are a few problems that plague the book. The first is that there is a constant use of proper names, for places and people, that for most readers will be unfamiliar. Not only that, they will be difficult to pronounce. The book does have a small pronunciation guide in the beginning, but the bottom line is that often I felt like I was reading a book written in another language. To some extent it is, Tolkien's own elvish tongue. But without some familiarity or explanation much of it just slides past and makes reading the story difficult. Main characters change names throughout the story and keeping track of it all can be difficult. Here is a short paragraph about Hurin's wife Morwen.

"Hurin wedded Morwen, the daught of Baradund son of Gregolas of the House of Beor, and she was thus of close kin to Beren One-hand. Morwen was dark-haired and tall, and for the light of her glance and the beauty of her face men called her Eledhwen, the elfen-fair; but she was somewhat stern of mood and proud. The sorrows of the house of Beor saddened her heart; for she came as an exile to Dorlomin from Dorthonion after the ruin of the Bragollach."

That isn't an unusual passage. That is the style and much like most of the entire book. Antiquated english with an immense amount of proper names and relationships constantly spread throughout.

The setting is Beleriand, some 6500 years before the events of "The Lord of the Rings". This land would eventually be mostly destroyed in a war that would end the First Age. So the places do not correspond to the landscape of middle-earth in "The Hobbit" or "The Lord of the Rings." The main evil in the land is Morgoth. He has come to middle-earth and set up shop in Angband. Hurin, a man, dares to defy Morgoth. Morgoth captures him and binds him to watch what befalls his wife and children that Morgoth has cursed.

This curse and how it works itself out is the redeeming quality of the story. The vast majority of the book focuses on Turin. He is an amazing warrior and leader of men. At the same time he is incredibly proud and rarely listens to anyone else. This failure of character on his part is pushed along by the malevolence of Morgoth and so a flawed man is also trapped in the machinations of an evil power. The working of the story brought to mind the great Greek tragedies. The reader confronts issues of fate and free will. It is a beautiful story, it is just not written in a manner that is going to connect well with a modern audience. And I doubt J.R.R. Tolkien would have ever released it in the present state. This may sound presumptuous on my part. In fact I know it is, but in the first appendix Christopher gives a history of how this tale developed as well as snippets from the other versions that existed.

J.R.R. had begun to tell the story in verse. The small sections of that poetry that are given in the appendix to this work, and that go beyond what was published in "The Lost Tales" is much more descriptive and beautiful than what is given in "The Children of Hurin". Often Children reads more like a history book than a novel. The facts are all there, and at times the life is too. But too often it just feels like a listing of facts about events, people and places.

So how can I rate the book as a 7 out of 10 with all these issues? Well for some people, nothing that gives them more information about middle-earth and its history can be bad. They are probably cursing my name in the tongue of Mordor at this very moment. They loved "The Silmarillion" and they probably adored this work too. I share some of their passion, and despite its weakness, I did enjoy this story, especially once I had moved fully through the telling and could look at the arc of the entire story. It is a work of great skill and though I don't think it is Tolkien's best, it is still much better than many others.

For someone who is a casual fan or answers "I've seen the movies" when you ask them about "The Lord of the Rings", this is not something they would probably enjoy. Getting them "The Hobbit" to read would probably be a more pleasant experience for everyone involved. Or just wait and see if New Line can ever get done with the legal barriers and make a film of that was well.

The edition that I bought and matches the ISBN I've given is a hard-cover with beautiful art by Alan Lee. The cover dust jacket is gorgeous and there are full color illustrations throughout. The appendixes include the history of the tales as I've mentioned, genealogies, a list of names and a map of Beleriand. There is also a preface, slightly longer introduction and pronunciation guide. The preface, introduction and appendixes were all written by Christopher Tolkien.

You can purchase The Children of Hurin from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[CRCulver]

Christopher Tolkien thanked Guy Kay in the acknowledgements to The Silmarillion , but it's never been clear to be what Christopher Tolkien was forced to fill in on his own in this posthumous works. What about The Silmarillion or this work is from the hand of another fantasy writer?

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[MightyMartian]

Christopher Tolkien thanked Guy Kay in the acknowledgements to The Silmarillion [amazon.com] , but it's never been clear to be what Christopher Tolkien was forced to fill in on his own in this posthumous works. What about The Silmarillion or this work is from the hand of another fantasy writer?

He does make it clear in the History of Middle Earth series that the chapter that had to be pretty much written from the ground up was the Fall of Doriath. The only complete narrative of that event dated back to the Book of Lost Tales, and there were serious problems with JRRT's own later envisionment of this key event. To get the Silmarillion to a point where it was publishable, CJRT was forced to write a new version, which he did with Kay's assistance.

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[bkaul01]

In this work, Christopher Tolkien is very clear about what his role was: choosing which version of his father's words to use. All of the words are J.R.R. Tolkien's. The Silmarillion does not deviate far from that standard, either. It's the Histories of Middle Earth where you'll find much of Christopher's own writing ... and then, it's typically a recounting of the history of the writing of the epics by his father, more often than it is actual "Middle Earth mythology" in a direct fashion.

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[STrinity]

He does make it clear in the History of Middle Earth series that the chapter that had to be pretty much written from the ground up was the Fall of Doriath.

Not only that, but HoME contains the manuscripts they used to construct the book, so if you want, you can verify that every word is from JRRT's pen.

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[MightyMartian]

It's long been my opinion that the entire HoME series was released for one purpose; and that is as an apologia for the published Silmarillion, and in particular for the Doriath chapter, which CJRT and Kay did write due to the lack of any suitable text by JRRT.

To be more clear on the problems with the Doriath chapter:
1. The only complete narrative of this chapter is found in the Book of Lost Tales, which is the earliest phase of the mythos, and would have been completely unsuitable for inclusion in the Silmarillion.
2. There were serious plotting problems with the outlines that JRRT came up with, in particular how precisely the Dwarves managed to get past the Girdle of Melian to attack and kill Thingol. In all the extant texts, the Dwarves leave after Thingol refuses to surrender the remade Nauglamir (with Beren and Luthien's Silmaril set within it), and then get some pals from the other major Dwarven cities of Beleriand and then get back into Menegroth and murder Thingol. Since everything else ever written about the Girdle of Melian suggests that it was impenetrable to those who Melian or Thingol didn't want in (including Morgoth and his servants), why in the devil could a pack of angry Dwarves get past it.

In fact, the entire Nauglamir subplot of the Silmarillion is fraught with these problems. It was Hurin (Turin's father) who, after Turin's death, finds the Nauglamir in the ruins of Nargothrond and then himself manages to get through the Girdle of Melian and into Doriath, not just alone, but with a bunch of guys with him!

This seems to have been a major stumbling block for JRRT's completion of the Silmarillion. The Nauglamir is key to the final episodes in the Silmarillion because it is this "necklace of the Dwarves" in which the Dwarves of Nogrod set Beren and Luthien's Silmaril. It is after Thingol's murder that Beren and Luthien recover the Silmaril and after their death, it is passed on to their son Dior and from him to his daughter Elwing, and ultimately to Earendil, a major figure in the mythos who, in the published work, ultimately gets only a couple of small chapters because, ultimately, JRRT could never make it work.

CJRT and Kay's solution to the Fall of Doriath solves a number of the problems (though not all of them), and without it, there really could not have been a published Silmarillion. There's a sideways admission of it in the Foreward of the Silmarillion ("as much the son's work as the father's"), and there is an ultimate admission in the release of the final versions of the Silmarillion that JRRT worked on in (as I recall) Volumes 10 and 11 of HoME of the fact that the Fall of Doriath was entirely CJRT's and Kay's writing. It did take him until almost the end of HoME to finally admit it openly, so I think there was some shame there, in that he didn't try to work with some of the possible solutions that Tolkien was rolling around in the late 1950s and early 1960s before the interruptions caused by the 2nd editions of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, and JRRT's total reworking of the cosmography of the mythos ultimately made it impossible for the old man to finish it himself.

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[voice_of_all_reason]

The Girdle of Melian, though powerful, was never intended to stand against a great force assailing it. Lost Tales mentions as such that the orcs would eventually grow powerful enough to take Doriath, now that they had conquered everything else North of it.

As for Huor slipping past, she also specifically noted that the Girdle could not block those with a destiny greater than her own (like Beren). And obviously Hurin bringing the Nauglamir was an important enough event to grant him passage.

Re:Non-Tolkien material in these completions

[MightyMartian]

It rather cheapens Beren's accomplishment by making the Girdle so damned porous. I think that was CJRT's point, and clearly JRRT's problem and why he never meaningfully revisited the story after Lost Tales.

WTF?

[MightyMartian]

It's been out for a year.

Re:WTF?

[andawyr]

He's the first one to finish it.....

I agree with much of what he said in the review - I tried to read The Silmarillion, but just couldn't get into it. I too was expecting a LOtR experience, was was very much disappointed by what I found.

I'm certainly not alone.

Re:WTF?

[MightyMartian]

I read it within a couple of days of getting it (I got it Father's Day). Of course, I'm a bit of a JRRT buff, and I've the HoME series from start to finish twice. My problem is that it's simply a merging of the two major versions of the story, and nothing particularly new. It's rather like a Who's greatest hits compilation, one song different, but other than that all the same.

Re:WTF?

[abigor]

The Silmarillion was far and away my favourite Tolkien work - well, the Ainulindale was a bit of a slog, but the rest of it is sublime.

Re:WTF?

[andawyr]

Well, you're certainly ahead of me :-) I doubt if I'll ever read it, let alone buy it.

I remember quite clearly the huge excitement when it was announced that 'Children' was going to be published - I also remember thinking that a lot of people were going to be disappointed when the book was released, since I *knew* that it was going to be 'unreadable' for most people.

I haven't heard much about the book since it was released, so I think my assumption about the popularity of the book was correct. To 'true' fans, 'Children', and all other books by JRR will always be popular; to the general populace, The Hobbit and LoTR are pretty much it.

It's somewhat sad, since JRR created a huge amount of content. However, when it's written in a style that's as difficult to read as his 'other' books are, they'll remain, for the most part, obscure.

Re:WTF?

[alta]

I'm about half way through HoME which I got this christmas. Very enjoyable, although I often find myself thumbing to the index to find the 'other' names for people or places. Yes, a lot of folks, Turin especially, have 3-6 names throughout the tale.

Re:WTF?

[lpangelrob]

I as well. It reminded me of reading the Old Testament, only made up. (As Tolkien was described as a devout Roman Catholic, that really doesn't surprise me.)

Yet, placed in the proper context, I found that the particular tone found in the Silmarillion makes for a nice change-of-pace in the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit, usually found when Elrond goes off into one of his stories, or Tolkien himself uses that tone as an aside to the reader.

I could see myself reading The Hobbit to my kids someday when I have kids, though.

Re:WTF?

[voice_of_all_reason]

Try it again in a few years. Worked for me.

I guess you need to let it settle in for a bit, to get a grip on the massive amount of story, before you can read it through. Pretend you already know the story and just reading a summary. After all, that's really what it is.

Re:WTF?

[hey!]

I read The Hobbit to my seven year old son, which he liked tremendously. As soon as we finished, he immediately asked, "Is there a Hobbit II?"

Questions like that just make you want to sigh. It is sad that Tolkien finished so few books.

They say Tolkien was the kind of writer who never let go of a manuscript until it was ripped from his unwilling hands. "Hobbit II" was exactly what LotR started out to be; it ended up being the final episode of the Silmarillion, bringing to an end the Elvish presence in Middle Earth.

Think about that. Practically every chapter in the Silmarillion would be an entire LotR sized work, if it were expanded to the scale it had in Tolkien's head. The story of the Children of Hurin is not exception. It wants to be over a thousand pages of lush mythopoetic prose. What it is, as published, is a couple of hundred pages of story sketches reworked into reasonably acceptable narrative consistency.

Furthermore, it is not finshed by a writer with J.R.R. Tolkien's gift for language. It's not that there aren't occasional bad pieces of prose in LotR, which in a work that size is not surprising. But there is so much that is so elegantly written and perceptively detailed in it. Reading the Silmarillion, and The Children of Hurin, is like reading a plot synopsis of a great opera. Some operas have better plots than others, but it's never the plot that makes them great.

Some day, when the works have gone into the public domain, there may be writers who successfully turn their hand into finishing the pieces from Tolkien's mythology. Sadly, most of us will not live to see that day.

Re:WTF?

[rucs_hack]

The one incarnation of his work that I enjoy is the bbc radio adaption of Lord of the Rings. All bar the singing, which is hideous.

Aside from that I find his work laborious to read, and not sufficiently entertaining to warrant the effort. Most of it seems like a required reading exercise, and the extreme attention to detail, which I am sure some enjoy, comes across as an extended history lesson, not entertainment.

I suspect it takes a real passion for his work to read everything he wrote. I appreciate his talent in creating his fantasy world, one that underpins all modern fantasy to some extent, but I much prefer reading some of the lighter weight variants on his general theme.

Re:WTF?

[CannonballHead]

I read it between that evening and the next day after I got it (and I pre-ordered it, as well). I've read The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, and many other books as well. I found The Children of Hurin to be more of an expanded version of what it was in The Silmarillion/Unfinished Tales, and I loved it. No, it's nothing particularly new - what do you expect, it's not like Christopher is actually rewriting the story. His dad already wrote it; Christopher can't add to the story. I'd much rather read something compiled or edited by Christopher, not co-written by Christopher.

Re:WTF?

[voice_of_all_reason]

That's why it's a huge pile of fail.

There's a ton of new stuff in HoME that's separate from Silmarilion (and Unfinished Tales) that could be threaded into the story without contradicting what we already know. Just off the top of my head from the beginning of Lost Tales:

-the magical alloy "tilkal" invented by Aule, used in the chain to bind Melkor
-expansion of the last fruit/leaf of the two trees and how they were crafted into the Sun and Moon
-I'm sure there was something about foretelling the moon/sun chase being responsible for letting Melkor back into the world through the Gates of Morning

"Editors" will say not everything that the author comes up with should be put in the end product, but Chris Tolkien seemed determined to give us everything. So why not spend the time to weave it all into the story, work in what you can, and where versions conflict, just pick the best aspects?

Re:WTF?

[MightyMartian]

My point is that I already own all the material via the History of Middle Earth for which this version is cobbled. Most of it, in fact, is pretty much from the Unfinished Tales version.

Re:WTF?

[ozbird]

It's rather like a Who's greatest hits compilation, one song different, but other than that all the same.

Ah, a Led Zeppelin greatest hits: "The Song Remains The Same". (Ironically on the second CD of "Remasters", which is mostly forgettable - the first CD rocks, though.)

Re:WTF?

[Nqdiddles]

Children is not as daunting as you seem to think. I'm the sort of person who gets a little bored with some of the more encyclopedic works, but this is NOT one of them.
A friend loaned me his copy and I finished it in an afternoon.
It's dark, depressing and in my opinion an excellent "tragedy".
After reading it I went and bought the book, because unlike the Book of Lost Tales I actually enjoyed reading this through to the end and will no doubt do so again. ymmv though.

Re:WTF?

[tcolberg]

It sounds like we, the readers, need to seek out the Prothean Cipher to fully understand... what? Oh sorry, wrong epic!

Re:WTF?

[Belial6]

"It's somewhat sad, since JRR created a huge amount of content. However, when it's written in a style that's as difficult to read as his 'other' books are, they'll remain, for the most part, obscure."

I have always felt that Tolken, while great at making up interesting people, places and events, was a rather crappy writer. His books were unnecessarily difficult to read, often long winded, and the stories seemed fractured. I understand that he had very detailed ideas about what his stories looked like, but I think he tended to let the details get in the way of the story.

This is why I've always thought that he would have been much better working in modern film than he was at writing books. Of course if he had been born at a time that allowed him to work in modern film, who knows what else would have been different.

Re:WTF?

[tubs]

The Silmarillion is a story that spans thousand of year with casts of hundreds - some of which are mentioned only a couple of times though they crop up at major times. There's also the problem (that I find) of many names being similar - Finrod, Fingon, Fingolfin, Finarfin.

But, I would say two things - get a Middle Earth Glossary and persevere.

The Silmarillion is a magnificent collection of legands of middle earth - full of love, honour, betrayal, greed, power, sadness, despair and hope.

It will take you 10 readings to see it all.

Re:WTF?

[diegocgteleline.es]

It's not hard to read. It's just not possible to understand it if you start reading The Children of Hurin. You need to read the Silmarillion before.

Re:WTF?

[rehtonAesoohC]

Some of my favorite memories were that of my Mom reading The Hobbit (and to a lesser extend, The Fellowship of the Ring, The Two Towers, and The Return of the King) to us as bedtime stories.

I'll never forget this one time - she would read the character voices high pitched if it was a hobbit speaking, and low pitched for Gimli. She got them backwards once and ended up making Frodo sound all gruff and low pitched... we still laugh about that today.

Re:WTF?

[Evil Pete]

I always wish he had shifted focus after LOTR and turned the Tale of Luthien and Beren into a full novel. But he probably wouldn't have anyway, too personal I guess ... since he regarded his wife as Luthien. Luthien and Beren could have been even better the LoTR: after all how does a couple of small humans throwing a ring into a volcano compare against two lovers, one immortal single handedly recovering a Silmaril from incredibly powerful Morgoth (Sauron was just one of his stooges) and defying death itself. Ahh, yeah, always wish Christopher Tolkien could let the Silmarillion go to be made into a series by a decent director. But very unlikely.

Re:WTF?

[Licky Lindsay]

I haven't heard much about the book since it was released, so I think my assumption about the popularity of the book was correct. To 'true' fans, 'Children', and all other books by JRR will always be popular; to the general populace, The Hobbit and LoTR are pretty much it.
I have not read the Children of Hurin, but I will say that I liked the Silmarillion. I would never, ever, have read it if I hadn't already read LOTR and liked the mythos enough to want to learn more about it. However, I don't see that you have to be some kind of hardcore fan to have that kind of experience, because I would not consider myself a hardcore fan. Then again, I actually like reading the Old Testament for non-religious reasons, so maybe I have unusual tastes anyway.

Re:WTF?

[2.7182]

Actually, if you look at the SIlmarillion, the Lord of the Rings is described in about 2 pages.

Re:WTF?

[myowntrueself]

It's just not possible to understand it if you start reading The Children of Hurin. You need to read the Silmarillion before.

Reading between the lines I see that you appear to imply that its possible to understand the Silmarillion?

Or are you saying that reading the Silmarillion, even though it cannot be understood either, you are more likely to understand this?

If so, is there something one can read in order to be able to understand the Silmarillion?

Because I've 'read' the Silmarillion (if it can properly be called 'reading').

Its incomprehensible to me as is much of LoTR.

And I never *ever* figured out how to tell when Tolkien intended 'ere' to mean 'before', 'after', 'where', 'when', 'here', 'there' or various other possibilities...

Re:WTF?

[syousef]

I've never understood the fascination with LOTR. I got about half way through the second book and realized I really wasn't enjoying it so I stopped. I WANTED to like it. I like a lot of sci fi and fantasy, but to me LOTR was just boring drivel. I hate not finishing things. The only other "classic" works that I've read that I have not finished Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The repetition seriously got on my nerves. LOTR reminded me of them, but not so much due to repetition as endless descriptive text. I have an image in my head by the end of the first or second page of description for any piece and further description is really difficult to incorporate into that vision. When I start having to revise what I've imagined so extensively that I have to throw that vision away and start again 3 times to make it match what's being described, I generally don't bother and the rest just doesn't sink in. For me LOTR was so bad I'd honestly use it as an example of how not to write.

Even the movies put me to sleep. I've never sat through them. Don't get me wrong a difficult piece I can stomach. I hate to admit it but I enjoyed the Shakespeare I did in highschool. However I'm afraid I'll never enjoy Tolkien. Don't get me wrong I don't begrudge anyone who can, but I do wonder how many people say they love Tolkien because it's trendy. (That isn't directed at your post - its clear from your enthusiasm you genuinely do like it).

Re:WTF?

[Anonymous Coward]

I had another kind of experience. I always felt that Silmarillion is even better than LOtR.

Re:WTF?

[Spy der Mann]

I too was expecting a LOtR experience, was was very much disappointed by what I found.

When will you learn not to dig too deep?

Re:WTF?

[SteveyP66]

I finished it the day after I got it. Silmarillion IS a difficult read, but the description of the battles and the engagement with the reader within them is far superior to any of Tolkien's other works. I only got bored with all the God stuff, regarding the Creation etc. But it's all useful stuff when trying to put the tales into perspective.

Re:WTF?

[red star hardkore]

I read the LoTR and the Hobbit and loved them both. They are some of the greatest stories ever told in my opinion. After reading them I was addicted and wanted more. I rushed out and bought the Silmarillion. I was so excited before I started reading. As I read, I kept thinking "ok, the real story will start soon..." About a half of the way through the book I just gave up. Terribly dissapointed at having wasted as much time as I did reading the crap. It was like reading the bible, and just as badly written.

Re:WTF?

[Simon Brooke]

He's the first one to finish it.....

I agree with much of what he said in the review - I tried to read The Silmarillion, but just couldn't get into it. I too was expecting a LOtR experience, was was very much disappointed by what I found.

I'm certainly not alone.

I know you're not alone, but can I put the opposite point of view? I was brought up on the works of Snorre Sturlasson, in particular the Hiemskringla (which I love - you can't get an anti-hero to beat Olaf Tryggvason). You have to see the Silmarillion against that sort of background. You can't assess it as a modern novel, because it isn't a modern novel. It's a synthetic mythos, and consequently it can only be compared against real mythic texts. And it compares very well.

In my opinion, both Lord of the Rings and Silmarillion are seriously flawed - but they're seriously flawed masterpieces; among the great cultural creations of the twentieth century. And for my money, Silmarillion is better than Lord of the Rings.

Re:WTF?

[Gr8Apes]

It's somewhat sad, since JRR created a huge amount of content. However, when it's written in a style that's as difficult to read as his 'other' books are, they'll remain, for the most part, obscure. Reading the Children of Hurin was cake compared to the Silmarillion, and I know in part that the stilted language of the passages was affected on purpose to give a certain impression. I think someone going through it with readability in mind wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing, but might reduce the whole to a much smaller work if care were not taken to keep the character of the works.

Re:WTF?

[hey!]

Well, my theory of criticism is that it's pointless to tell somebody they ought to like something. But it should be possible to explain why some people do.

There are a number of books of Tolkien criticsm, by Tom Shippey and others, that should be possible to get at your local library. These, I think can show some of the reason for his continued fascination of readers.

The important thing for a Tolkien fan is not to be too much of a fan. LotR is not perfect. Tolkien struggled early on with giving the book direction; one of the thing popular guides to writing popular fiction say is to get your hero into action as soon as possible. If you're familiar with the Star Trek NG series, they always started off with a teaser segment before the credits where they'd do something like (apparently) blow up the ship. Tolkien dithers quite a bit and goes down a few blind alleys (almost everybody detests Tom Bombadil) before he gets the story into gear, then suddenly the story gets so complicated that you can easily go from bored to lost, if you started out bored.

The thing about LotR is that it is an extremely serious work, loaded with meditations about death and purpose. Tolkien's early life was marred by death and violence, and experiences that would channel others into nihilism or existential philosophy moved Tolkien into the world of fantasy. But LotR is a very serious work, perhaps the first or only serious literary work many people ever read voluntarily; it's intellectually disreputable fantasy setting only makes it more palatable.

For me, the fascination of the work is the beauty of its writing; few writers have Tolkien's understanding of language. Consider the name "Bilbo Baggins", which is a revealing one for somebody living the life of a country squire. His cousins are the detestable "Sackville-Bagginses", who not only affect the pretense of a hyphenated name, but a frenchified one. The explicit poetry in the work is an acquired taste, but the real poetry is in the prose. If you have a copy of LotR handy, flip through to the chapter where Frodo is leaving Bag End for what he thinks is the final time.

Finally, there's the landscape. Tolkien loved nature. The characters in LotR may be archetypal, but the landscape is extremely specific and realistic. When a character looks up and notices the moon and the stars, they are the right ones for the season and place, and by the way give the (very) attentive reader a way to coordinate actions taking place hundreds of miles apart. Somebody once said a poet ought to the a professor of the five senses. You can often tell how a place would smell, from the alkaline tang of dust choked Mordor to the set, loamy and herb scented forest of Ithilien, and of course the Shire itself which would smell of summer in the country, of hay, with hints of hearth fires and barnyards.

This is not to say you should like Tolkien. Liking is something nobody should presume to dictate to anybody else. But hopefully, you can see the appeal he has, and you won't assume a fan is necessarily so because he's following a fad.

Re:WTF?

[alexgieg]

The Silmarillion was far and away my favourite Tolkien work

Same here. I love how it barely glances over centuries and millennia of history highlighting only the really relevant events. On the other hand, contrary to the majority of Tolkien fans, I never managed to finish Lord of the Rings. I feel it's filled with an excess of irrelevant details.

In fact, I think the final pages of the Silmarillion shows perfectly well what I mean. There, the 1200 pages of LOTR become a whooping... three pages. The Hobbit, if I remember correctly, went for a single paragraph, if that much. And that's because they were worked in more details than was typical for the remaining tales in the book. Had they received the same treatment, and I guess LOTR would have been given a single page.

The Silmarillion is really for those who like synthesis. Where it written in the hyper-detailed LOTR style and the thing would become a 140,000 pages monstrosity spread over 350 volumes. It would most probably be a fun read for many, but not really my thing. :-)

Re:WTF?

[LDoggg_]

>>The one incarnation of his work that I enjoy is the bbc radio adaption of Lord of the Rings. All bar the singing, which is hideous.

The bar singing wasn't half as bad as Aragorn's lisp. Seriously, the rest was fantastic, but that part sort of ruined it for me.

Re:WTF?

[alexgieg]

The only other "classic" works that I've read that I have not finished Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. The repetition seriously got on my nerves. LOTR reminded me of them, but not so much due to repetition as endless descriptive text.

I also didn't finish LOTR, mostly for the same reason, but regarding Homer's works, there's a trick you can use to make the reading much more enjoyable.

It basically comes down to recognizing and taking to hearth that, contrary to current days, works like the Odyssey, the Iliad, and pretty much everything written before 400 BC, weren't meant to exist in written form. Writing down anything on papyrus or parchment was very, very expensive. So, authors designed they works in a way that caused them to be easy to remembered after a few concentrated listening sessions. This is the source of the repetitions: few things are more mnemonic than a sequence of repetitive sounds in poetic form.

So, for you to really enjoy such a work (among which you can include the Old Testament and the Koran, even though this last one is recent), the best way is to first acquire a good rhythmic poetic translation then read it aloud.

It might feel odd at first, but in short time you get used to it, begin to like those repetitions, and start seeing the text shine. It's really worth the effort.

Re:WTF?

[Bloodoflethe]

And I never *ever* figured out how to tell when Tolkien intended 'ere' to mean 'before', 'after', 'where', 'when', 'here', 'there' or various other possibilities...

It's fairly simple. " ere " simply means " before " or " sooner than " (some say that it can also be used for " rather than " but it sounds stilted and I still replace it with " before " in those instances). With apostrophe - " 'ere " - you are seeing the use of slang and therefore you kind of have to pronounce it for yourself to ensure that you are reading correctly. Example:

" 'ere now, 'oo are you? " has an apostrophe and, therefore, is easily distinguishable from

" I shall return, ere the sun rise. "

"Ere" is used improperly if you ever see it used for "after" or "when".

Re:WTF?

[shokk]

I saw the Hobbit animated film and Bakshi's Lord of the Rings as a child.
I read the Hobbit a very long time ago in High School after picking up a 50th anniversary edition on a trip to the UK. A year before the LotR films first came out I flew through the three books and loved them. Then I hit the Silmarillion and came to a screeching halt. Every chapter read like "someone begat someone else" and "someone, brother of , was once known as and became known as ." I couldn't believe I was reading works by the same author.

I suspect that JRRT's work was actually much farther away from publication than that. That at some point LotR actually looked like that and was lovingly crafted into a novel. The Silmarillion is nothing more than a Middle Earth history text, so for those that like bland flavorless text, have at it. I would have preferred it was also lovingly crafted rather than rushed out to capitalize on the father's memory. Think of the horrors Christopher's Tolkien's kid is going to wreak on the grandfather's memory.

Re:WTF?

[shutdown -p now]

Some day, when the works have gone into the public domain, there may be writers who successfully turn their hand into finishing the pieces from Tolkien's mythology. Sadly, most of us will not live to see that day.

This sort of thing has been going for quite a while now in countries with less strict copyright laws, though practice has shown that writers rather prefer to extend the setting than to fill in the blanks, and furthermore, to challenge even the very foundations of the Tolkien's mythos. I would refer anyone curious to the "Black Book of Arda" series by Vasilyeva and Nekrasova, and "The Last Ringbearer" by Yeskov, as two prime examples, but I don't think you can get those in anything but the original Russian...

Re:WTF?

[Bloodoflethe]

zomgsh -1: DisagreeAndWishToCensor! Seriously, I respect your opinion, but I always found the immense detail to be that much more fun as an exercise in how precisely I could match his view of things in his world - and he did a damned fine job of bringing *his* world to you. I also enjoy reading works that are designed for the reader to fill in the gaps, but Tolkienn wanted control of his world.

When I was a child, my brother, cousins and I would all sit around my grandparents' family room and our grandfather would act as a storyteller. He'd do the seemingly impossible and incorporate largely disparate items or people that each of the grandchildren wanted in the story. The way he narrated in those tales felt very much like Tolkienn's narrative voice in The Hobbit (and to a lesser extent, the LoTR) although he'd never read the works of Tolkienn. Later, my mother bought me the Hobbit, and that was when my love affair with the Tolkienn world began. /reminiscence

Beren and Luthien

[sam_paris]

I always loved the story of Beren and Luthien as told in the Simarilion and if any new book was compiled by Christopher I would prefer it to be a fuller and more expansive telling of this story. Although I can't complain about hearing more about Hurin and Turin..

Re:Beren and Luthien

[MightyMartian]

The problem with this (and The Fall of Doriath chapter is the exception) is that CJRT does not write or expand stories within his father's creation. The Beren/Luthien story was never really fully told beyond the earliest version from somewhere around 1916-1918. The later versions are rather short and to the point, which is pretty much why the published version is cobbled together from.

Quite frankly, probably the greatest loss, to my mind, are the planned large expansions that JRRT was going to make to the Tuor saga (which is a much more hopeful one than the bleak tale of Turor). By the time JRRT got around to having sufficient free time to work on an expanded Silmarillion, he was too old to complete it.

yes

[sdedeo]

I've just gotten finished burning all the books of mine published in 2007. Can't have any of those clogging up the house! Tomorrow I go for a memory erasure to make sure I don't think about them very much (or, hopefully, recall them at all.)

Kevin J Anderson is a talentless hack

[Malevolent Tester]

So is Children of Hurin a rare example of posthumous works not sucking?

Re:Kevin J Anderson is a talentless hack

[Sean Riordan]

Can't comment on Children of Hurin as I haven't read my copy yet, but I am wondering why so harsh in regards to Kevin J Anderson.
Sure, none of the prequels are on a level with Dune but what is. Even Frank couldn't maintain that level of writing. Messiah IMHO was not awful and not great. Most of God Emperor was a yawn fest. To each their own. I was just wondering what specifically you despised about Anderson's work. And is it only the stuff he has done alone, only the stuff he did with Brian Herbert, or both.

Re:Kevin J Anderson is a talentless hack

[MightyMartian]

I think the difference is that Herbert, even in his worst moments, was at least trying to communicate certain philosophical and political points. These prequels are just badly written, badly plotted crap jobs. They're not very good on their own, and don't stand up well to even the last of Herbert's Dune books (which weren't all that good either).

I would have much preferred Brian Herbert to have done what Christopher Tolkien did, which is to release the notes, plot lines and unfinished narratives, to give us directly Herbert's plans and musings on the Dune universe. But that wouldn't fill up volumes of just terrible writing that, other than sharing a few names and historical points, has about as much to do with Herbert's writings and views as a Britney Spear's music video.

Re:Kevin J Anderson is a talentless hack

[bigstrat2003]

Well, I haven't read his Dune books, but if they're anything like his Star Wars books, they're probably pretty laughable, if enjoyable. Kevin J Anderson's Star Wars books have one plot, and exactly one plot, across all the books: $bad_guy has developed/found $superweapon which can totally rape the universe, go and destroy it!

They're not bad books... but not particularly creative or varied, either.

Hard to read....

[Kazrath]

The review indicates it was a hard book to get through because of the dialog used. I found that all of Tolkien's books were very difficult to read. I used to pick up the Hobbit if I was having difficulty sleeping and would be out cold after 10-15 pages. I find his over descriptive style very boring to read yet, I recognize that his accomplishments have enabled many of my favorite writers in creating some of my favorite stories/books. If it were not for Tolkien, the Fantasy/Adventure genre may have never taken.

Re:Hard to read....

[Dzimas]

The Hobbit is as close as Tolkien got to writing a children's book, replete with witty asides throughout. My father was an English teacher, and he read it to me while we lived not far from the Bird and Baby, where he and the other members of the Inklings gathered for years. I was seven years old at the time, and it enthralled me. I recently read it to my son, and he enjoyed all save the most tedious passages. That said, English is not my wife's first language and she refused to read a word of it.

Re:Hard to read....

[jizziknight]

Over descriptive? Seriously? Have you ever read The Tale of Two Cites? The Hobbit is a children's book compared to that. The Lord of the Rings is a harder read (especially The Fellowship of the Ring), but is still relatively simple compared to some of Dickens' books, and some of the other so-called "classics."

As a side note... has it ever occurred to anyone else that maybe the reason certain books are "classics" is because of school teachers requiring all their students to purchase and read those books year after year? I mean, if it weren't for being forced to read them in school, I would never have read The Tale of Two Cities, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Scarlet Letter, etc. How many people would really go to a bookstore, pick up one of those and think, "Wow, this looks like a really interesting, enjoyable read. I think I'll buy it"? I doubt not nearly enough for them to be considered "classics."

Re:Hard to read....

[mpiktas]

I will answer with the words of JRRT: I totaly agree with people, who say that LOTR is a boring and not interesting, I read their works and have the same opinion about them :) Not the exact words, but you should get the gist. It is taken from foreword to LOTR.

Re:Hard to read....

[Dutch Gun]

Or Moby Dick. A single chapter describes Ishmael's room. Another chapter? Walking down the street to the ship. For ~560 pages of difficult text, very little in the way of action actually happens in that story.

I actually hadn't read The Lord of the Rings trilogy until a few years ago. I was surprised at how light a read it was, especially compared to some of the classic I remembered from my school days.

Re:Hard to read....

[Abcd1234]

What? I picked up Frankenstein on a whim, and it's a fantastic book. As is Nicholas Nicholby, The Scarlet Letter, Bram Stoker's Dracula, and a number of other so-called "classics" that I've read. And my English training ended at the close of my mandatory courses in University.

Just because *you* don't like them doesn't mean they aren't great pieces of literature. Many require knowledge of their context to truly appreciate, and many certainly require an appreciation of writing as a form, as well as a medium for telling stories. But a classic is a classic for a reason, not just because some snooty writing professor deemed it so.

Re:Hard to read....

[oldwindways]

You may have a point in that the appeal of many "classic" works of literature is simply not there for grade school students. Personally I was never a fan of Dickens, something I attribute to the fact he was paid by the word and so tended to go on interminably. That being said, some classic stories have timeless themes which appeal to young minds. I take exception to your categorizing Frankenstein with the work of Dickens and Hawthorne; to a young man with an interest in science, the idea of creating a superhuman, and the dangers of toying with such forces presented a truly seductive theme.

Is our definition of "classic" literature skewed towards somewhat inaccessible titles, written in a style that is not entirely painless for Americans to endure? Absolutely.
Is this choice with out reason? Not at all. If you think struggling through Dickens today is a challenge, be glad that you don't have to learn Greek to read the works of Plato and Aristotle in their original form, not to mention adventures such as The Iliad, or The Odyssey.
Value does not come from simply being difficult, but in the case of many classic works of literature, the barriers to entry are more than outweighed by the knowledge to be harvested within.

Whether The Children of Hurin is such a classic is a question I can not answer, but do not discount it simply because it is not easy.

Re:Hard to read....

[gEvil (beta)]

The important thing to remember about Dickens' work is that the stories were originally serialized. They were meant to be read in short bursts over the course of many many months. If you read them that way, they're wonderfully entertaining stories.

How many people would really go to a bookstore, pick up one of those and think, "Wow, this looks like a really interesting, enjoyable read. I think I'll buy it"? I doubt not nearly enough for them to be considered "classics."

Funny, because that's exactly what I do from time to time. And I've only been disappointed a few times, and I know that those times are purely due to personal taste. Many of the "classics" out there are such because they are great tellings of stories dealing with timeless themes.

Re:Hard to read....

[mcmonkey]

How many people would really go to a bookstore, pick up one of those and think, "Wow, this looks like a really interesting, enjoyable read. I think I'll buy it"? I doubt not nearly enough for them to be considered "classics."

*raises hand*

Moby Dick, Tale of Two Cities, Juneteenth, Bridge over San Luis Rey,... Some people like to read. More over some of those books you were forced to read in school are (*shock and awe*) actually good books.

Has it ever occurred to anyone that some books are assigned year after after because they are classics, not the way 'round?

How many people would really go to a bookstore, pick up one of those and think, "Wow, this looks like a really interesting, enjoyable read. I think I'll buy it"? I doubt not nearly enough for them to be considered "classics."

Would you consider Britney's works to be "classics"? Certainly a large number of people walk into a Walmart or Piggly Wiggly and think, "I think I'll buy it"?

Re:Hard to read....

[Sir.Cracked]

So, by that measure, Neal Stephenson should be an Instant Classic!!

An entire chaper describing the proper process of eating Capt. Crunch, a significant (10 pages or so) fragment of erotic fiction. Cryptonomicon should be required reading in schools!!!

Re:Hard to read....

[jizziknight]

Replying to myself instead of each one individually...

I agree with most of your points, the classics do generally contain intriguing story lines, are thought provoking, etc. I was commenting mostly on the style in which they are written. I love to read, and enjoy many different genres. But a lot of the books that are labeled as classics are very difficult reads. Most of them, if I were not forced in some way to read them from beginning to end, I would have put them down after the first few chapters and never picked them up again. Dickens in particular has wonderful multi-leveled plots, but the style in which it he writes is simply intolerable to me.

As for the one who compared classic novels to Britney Spears... please. We all know she is the crowning singer of our time. /sarcasm

That whole bit was just something I've been toying with in my mind lately. Classics are supposed to be those books that withstand the test of time, those whose themes and ideas are still valid and intriguing decades after they had been written. Granted, that's true of most of the books I mention (no matter how painful to read). However, I simply wonder what percentage of total sales of those books are because students are required to read them for their schooling. Would they still be considered classics without those sales? Clearly, /. is not the place to ask these sorts of questions since most of us are the types who enjoy a good read, and many of us would pick those up and read them simply for the sake of having done so. But the general populace? Especially the general USA populace? I doubt many would pick up Moby Dick to read one rainy evening. I just wonder how the landscape of classics would change if students were allowed to choose the books they read for their schooling (of course only allowing books on the same reading level, of suitable subject matter, etc) instead of being forced to read the same classics year after year.

Re:Hard to read....

[Angostura]

The style is something that you get used to, that you have to give yourself time to adapt to. Rather like trying to read Ian Bank's Scottish dialogue. It's not too tough once you get into the rhythm of the text.

Re:Hard to read....

[MGROOP]

I know you are probably referring to his stories on Middle-Earth. However, he did write other things, and one can only be described as a children's story:
Roverandom
You may want to check wiki on this as well. It mentions several other children's books. However, I have only read the one.

Re:Hard to read....

[tcolberg]

I have to admit that I've read to one extent or another many classics as a part of my schooling, and many I didn't like. But there are a few that I LOVE, despite their reputation for being obtuse or obscenely long. Two of my classical favorites are Les Miserables and A Tale of Two Cities, specifically because like jizziknight mentions, because the themes in those novels are still appealing to this modern American.

As for the tales of Middle Earth, I've actually only read The Hobbit to completion. I started LotR: FotR, but fell asleep and eventually put it down somewhere in the Tom Bombadil chapter. I hate that goat-riding fucker with a passion. I'll pick it up again at some point.

Re:Hard to read....

[Kismet]

I felt the same way when I was a first-time Tolkien reader.

May I suggest that literacy does not merely consist of "knowing how to read words?" Children are inexperienced with literacy even when they know the mechanics of reading, because the language often fails to convey the intended ideas and sentiments. What good are prose and eloquence when these devices result in confusion and boredom?

Some people do not understand visual art. They have not developed a sense for it. Others can't fathom fine cuisine, having never experienced the range of possibilities. Most of us can't enjoy fine prose, rhetoric, and other types of literature, because we are essentially illiterate with regard to those particular devices. We read the news and the blogs, and then we seem to think that "advanced" literature has to do with content: usually controversial content. We believe that, when our writing becomes more licentious in tone, we have made some sort of advancement in literacy. But this is not true.

In fact, when one becomes immersed in the literature of ages, literacy is the result. Neither the sentiments of entertainment, lust, titillation, nor the simple acquisition of trivia, are new or novel in any way. But the connoisseur of literature, like the linguist, often discovers completely new sentiments or ideas that he never suspected were possible before. His mind is expanded; he has a greater context, new senses for quantifying reality. He begins to read prose that can move him with compassion, or words that can paint the Forms of dignity or of poverty or of the infinite tapestry of good and ill that constitutes humanity. His peers call it over-descriptive, boring tripe. Oh yes, they can read the words too; but not the Forms that those words were meant to convey. It requires much experience just to become literate, let alone a master wordsmith like Tolkien.

Many will argue that language has changed, and that some classics have become archaic or outdated (hence boring). It is true that our language is changing, but it is important to understand that the root of all language evolution is a culturally driven illiteracy of the full scope of the language. The language has expanded, but we now only comprehend a fraction of it. We have begun to forget even the ideas and sentiments of past ages because we are no longer literate in their mode of expression.

When you become fluent in another language, you will know I mean. You will find yourself saying things that have absolutely no translation into your native tongue. You will find that you develop additional character and personality, having now the ability to feel and think feelings and thoughts that were previously incomprehensible to you.

Tolkien's stories are more than just stories. They are loaded with human passion and human understanding, and it's too bad when we spend our effort trying to get past all of that in order to get a kick out of a fine fantasy novel. Tolkien didn't write in his unique style in order to be arcane, obscure, authentic, or for any other artificial reason that modern authors sometimes use to write in a voice that isn't their own. Tolkien was completely in-character, using the only language that could capably convey the true Form of Middle Earth to his audience -- those who have the eyes to see it. No other retelling has captured the same essence.

I have yet to read another fantasy author, with the exception of T.H. White (and possibly, occasionally, Robin McKinley), whose works could qualify as true literature. All of the rest of them have entertainment value, certainly; even brilliance and mastery of many story-telling techniques. In the distant future, maybe even some of these will become literature, if those who still have eyes to read can discover the ideas and sentiments conveyed by our modern written word.

Re:Hard to read....

[Speare]

I find it kind of irritating that so many people today find books like the Silmarillion to be so difficult they won't finish it. While I'm not accusing you of being a lightweight, I do see more and more "literature" catering to the simpler tastes instead of challenging the reader.

Few students bother reading Shakespeare in high school anymore. I did, and I enjoyed it, and I am glad I tried it. I got the jokes, I saw the ways that various scenes were metaphors for the human condition, I felt like I was in another time and it wasn't strange. That led me to read the Silmarillion. And re-read those legends from other points of view through the Lost Tales. Tale of Two Cities wasn't a problem. Moby Dick was light reading. E A Poe and H P Lovecraft and Lord Dunsany were all macabre buddies. Imagine the world of Beowulf before Hollywood does it for you. I haven't read War and Peace but this year I picked up an English translation of the 900 AD story, the Tale of Genji, considered by some to be the oldest novel in the world. The Epic of Gilgamesh is older still, and any Humanities course will compare and contrast Gilgamesh with similar parts of Genesis.

If you enjoy reading, even if it's Harry Potter or something from Dean Koontz, keep trying deeper and deeper works, stretching your vocabulary and attention span. Your mind will thank you for it.

Re:Hard to read....

[initialE]

Also check out Roverandom

Re:Hard to read....

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think Banks is hard to read, try some Irvine Welsh. You'll wish you had a Scottish-English dictionary handy, ye ken.

Re:Hard to read....

[anagama]

I really like Melville. He was way ahead of his times on a social level. For example, in the last book I read "Typee" (semi-autobiographical), he seriously trash talked the Missionaries and such who came to the South Pacific in an effort to "civilize" the natives, turning a relatively stable and easy existence into one of disease, hardship, and death. This isn't to say he failed to recognize that peoples of the S. Pacific could also be cruel, just all those who came to civilize the place were much much worse. This isn't exactly what one would expect some guy from the middle of the 1800s to say. And of course, he traveled all over the world at a time when doing that was pretty hard. Anyway, not saying you are wrong to dislike his work -- you are totally entitled to your opinion. But I bet there are plenty of people who would find his writings quite interesting. Try not to use your opinion to put them off.

Re:Hard to read....

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, you wanker.

Re:Hard to read....

[EnderWiggnz]

i like some of melville's work, too, specifically "Bartleby the Scrivener". And yes, you are right that the social commentary was ahead of his time.

but, and maybe it was the style of the time, he did have a obsession with REALLY LONG descriptions of the most mundane things... pages and pages of the description of brass buttons and whatnot. seemed pointless to me.

Re:Hard to read....

[EnderWiggnz]

you let the tom bombadil chapter stop you? sheesh...

honestly, its one of the most confusing chapters in the book, and quie frankly is quite out of place. you wouldnt be missing anything if you skipped it.

Who is Tom Bombadil?

Re:Hard to read....

[pxc]

Eh... For some reason, I loved _Tale of Two Cities_, but I got bored with LoTR. Maybe it was just the age difference (it was a couple of years ago that I got LoTR), but LoTR was unexciting when I picked it up as a kid.

Re:Hard to read....

[lloyd_powell]

ah... the unwashed masses... how quaint.

Re:Hard to read....

[macdo]

I would.... :-)

Re:Hard to read....

[weg]

The Hobbit is a children's book compared to that.

The Hobbit is a children's book. Tolkien wrote it for his son Christopher.

Re:Hard to read....

[meringuoid]

Personally I was never a fan of Dickens, something I attribute to the fact he was paid by the word and so tended to go on interminably.

He wrote serials published in magazines. Sitting down to read Oliver Twist at once is like sitting down to go through all of The Sandman. Only more so because there are fewer pictures and a lot more text. Try reading a chapter a week, the way the original audience would have done it.

Re:Hard to read....

[jgrahn]

As a side note... has it ever occurred to anyone else that maybe the reason certain books are "classics" is because of school teachers requiring all their students to purchase and read those books year after year? I mean, if it weren't for being forced to read them in school, I would never have read The Tale of Two Cities, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, The Scarlet Letter, etc. How many people would really go to a bookstore, pick up one of those and think, "Wow, this looks like a really interesting, enjoyable read. I think I'll buy it"? I doubt not nearly enough for them to be considered "classics."

They're not classics because they are action-packed and fast-paced (although as I recall it, both Two Cities and Frankenstein are). They are classics because they are ground-breaking and have influenced later literature. And I guess because they are still worth reading.

Re:Hard to read....

[tcolberg]

I have been told that I should have skipped it. I expect I will when I get around to picking the series back up.

Re:Hard to read....

[Dutch Gun]

BTW, you're inferring dislike where none exists. I simply indicated Moby Dick was a fairly tough read compared to Tolkien's work, nothing more. And even if I disliked Melville, I would never dissuade someone from reading classical literature.

In other words...

[cgrayson]

No hobbits. Fewer pages than the Lord of the Rings. Lame.

Re:In other words...

[meringuoid]

No hobbits. Fewer pages than the Lord of the Rings. Lame.

There's a mod somewhere doesn't know his history. This is a reference to a classic /. review, in which the editor summed up a new mp3 player thus:

No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame.

It was the first iPod :-)

The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[instantkarma1]

I hear he uses an antiquated writing style and BIG words, too.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[geekoid]

Shakespear was a hack.

There I said it and I'm glad.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[DoctorSVD]

Dude! Same thing with Charles Dickens and all those old guys.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the Bible. Now there's a huge compendium of obscure places and strange names! If the quoted passage on Morwen is typical, then the Children of Hurin must sound a lot like the Old Testament.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[KillerCow]

Shakespear was a hack.

This is slashdot. "Hack" means good here.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[Lucidus]

OK, I laughed - but your comment ignores this crucial distinction: where Shakespeare's writing is (mostly) brilliant, The Children of Hurin is frankly dull, even pedantic. I recognize that not everyone enjoys Tolkien's prose, and he is arguably not a great stylist, but a great many of us have found much to enjoy in his language, expecially his descriptions and his dialog. The Children of Hurin reads as if it was written by an editor rather than a talented writer - because, of course, it was.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[stoolpigeon]

This was not on the level of Shakespeare.
I very much enjoy Shakespeare's poetry.
Much of the Shakespeare that people read was never intended to be read. It is meant to be seen, and I do enjoy that as well.

That was funny - but just thought I'd make the distinctions.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[MightyMartian]

No it was not written by an editor. For fuck's sake, before you making idiotic and false claims, know what the fuck you're talking about. It's Tolkien's writing, most of it from the 1950s variant of the Turin saga.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[thejynxed]

It's to be argued if most of the writing attributed to Shakespeare was actually even written by him.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[MightyMartian]

Yes, there's something of a conspiracy theory to Shakespeare's authorship of several of his plays, but the conspiracy theory ultimately seems to boil down to "Shakespeare would have been to provincial an individual to have written these wonderful plays, so it must have been somebody real smart who attributed it to ol Willy boy".

As conspiracy theories go, the "Shakespeare didn't wrote those plays" one is one of the most convoluted of them all.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[dbIII]

Chaucer is just about easier than the bit quoted above. Fake antiquated english would take a little bit of getting used to.

Re:The reviewer had best not read Shakespeare

[dwye]

> It's to be argued if most of the writing attributed
> to Shakespeare was actually even written by him.

Utterly unimportant to the point being made. If you prefer substituting any of the supposed "real" authors the point is unchanged.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

stfp

[rice_burners_suck]

It's really great that he worked so hard to write the stories so many times over but sometimes as a writer you have to just STFP (ship the product (the F is silent)). Otherwise it'll be like TAOCP. It's a seven volume work, of which four will never, ever be published. All that work ain't worth Jack Schitt if you don't never ship the damn thing so people can do something useful with it.

Re:stfp

[netsavior]

after a writer is sufficiently comfortable with the amount of money he has, he is only writing for himself (and maybe his fans). There is no need to ship product. I think the truely great writers don't typically focus on shipping, they write because they want to, because they need to, not because it pays the bills.

Re:stfp

[Scholasticus]

Tolkien didn't really write these stories for an audience. He wrote them for his own enjoyment, out of his love for languages, for the mythical world he had created, and for the characters who populated that world. The Hobbit he wrote for his children, and The Lord of the Rings he wrote for all of the readers who wanted to know more about Hobbits.

Re:stfp

[MightyMartian]

There's a rather long history to all of this. JRRT had every intention of publishing, and his original plan was to ship it with The Lord of the Rings (which was in his mind a sequel to the Silmarillion, which he'd already been working on in one form or another since World War I). Allen & Unwin were interested, but wanted to get what they viewed as the more marketable LotR out. Getting LotR finished and into publishable form was a huge undertaking, and Tolkien was still, during this period, an Oxford professor, and had other duties as well.

There's no doubt that Tolkien had a major problem with the Silmarillion, in that he never completed a variant before being called away to something else, or being his own worst enemy in changing the structure of it. But there were key events that did get in the way. He had to produce a second edition of the Hobbit to bring it more in line with LotR, and then there was the Ace Books debacle (they claimed LotR was in the public domain and printed an unauthorized American edition) which required that Tolkien turn his attention away from his work on the Silmarillion to produce a 2nd edition that would clarify any American copyright concerns.

By the time he truly had time to work on the Silmarillion, he was in his late 70s and really no longer had the stamina to produce the work he wanted, spending the last years, by all accounts, tinkering with his invented languages and giving his son, Christopher, who he planned to be his literary executor, as much information as he could.

Not the best title for the German speaking...

[LiquidMind]

For those versed with the more colorful aspects of the German language, Huren is the plural of Hure, meaning whore....

So, Children of Whores? I know, unintentional, but entertaining nonetheless.... even with it being HurIn, not HurEn....

Re:Not the best title for the German speaking...

[rpresser]

Considering that Turin ends up shtupping and impregnating his sister Nienor, almost apropos.

Re:Not the best title for the German speaking...

[Ubergrendle]

There's a nice long history of incestuous couplings in German history and literature. Siegelinde and Sigmund of Die Valkure for one, which is of course based on earlier germanic legends...

And sorry Star Wars fans, Luke and Leia are borrowed right out of this tradition. Fortunately Lucas had the common sense to put in Han Solo to foil their germanic destiny...

PS Even John Williams 'leitmotifs', musical themese for characters, in the soundtracks borrows heavily from Wagner's approach in The Ring Cycle.

But Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago

[wiredog]

And not in the last century.

I read the Silmarillion twice in a row...

[slashbart]

and the second time it was enjoyable.

That was 28 years ago though, when I once read the Lord of the Rings in one go, between 21:00 and 04:30. That was nice (I skipped the poems though).

Re:I read the Silmarillion twice in a row...

[Scholasticus]

Page 48 " ... and the elves began to sing" flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip flip, page 234 ..

Re:I read the Silmarillion twice in a row...

[shutdown -p now]

They must've been singing in Valarin.

Re:I read the Silmarillion twice in a row...

[adavies42]

I've been all the way through the Silmarillion twice, and when I started a third time a couple years ago, it wasn't the language that stopped me as much as the philosophy--Tolkien's depressing! It's such a medieval Christian worldview, with all the glories in the past (and the distant apocalyptic future), and the present and near future holding nothing but decline.

There's much less of that in The Lord of the Rings; it's mostly confined to Galadriel in Lothlorien, and a few of the other elves. There's basically none in The Hobbit, which makes a fair amount of sense as the hobbits really have very little idea of the large-scale history going on around them.

I have to say, I'm very glad that Tolkien's worldview didn't catch on in fantasy as a genre--the vast majority of stuff out there presents either a static or an improving world, not a decaying one, or at least not one where decay is a theological necessity.

The only thing I can think of that's similar is deliberately so--Jacqueline Carey's The Sundering books, which as to The Silmarillion as His Dark Materials is to Narnia--they're essentially the first and second ages from the point of view of Melkor, who considers himself horribly oppressed by Manwe. Very interesting stuff, if you can handle the archaic style and the slow-motion tragedy.

tolkien makes me want to smoke crack

[Anonymous Coward]

"Hurin wedded Morwen, the daught of Baradund son of Gregolas of the House of Beor, and she was thus of close kin to Beren One-hand. Morwen was dark-haired and tall, and for the light of her glance and the beauty of her face men called her Eledhwen, the elfen-fair; but she was somewhat stern of mood and proud. The sorrows of the house of Beor saddened her heart; for she came ans an exile to Dorlomin from Dorthonion after the ruin of the Bragollach."

This is how the LoTR read to me. Every single character encountered had to have their name expressed in at least four languages and a genealogical history of their families previous seven generations explored. Then the hobbits would hold an impromptu poetry slam to transfer the names and family history into fifteen verses of iambic pentameter. Tolkien blows the Horn of Gondor.

Re:tolkien makes me want to smoke crack

[mpiktas]

Hurin wedded Morwen, the daught of Baradund son of Gregolas of the House of Beor, and she was thus of close kin to Beren One-hand. Morwen was dark-haired and tall, and for the light of her glance and the beauty of her face men called her Eledhwen, the elfen-fair; but she was somewhat stern of mood and proud. The sorrows of the house of Beor saddened her heart; for she came ans an exile to Dorlomin from Dorthonion after the ruin of the Bragollach. Once you know all the names and stories it is not so bad, and actually very good, since it gives a lot of information and context. If you do not know it, you just can skip it. When I read the book I am always interested in story, the descriptions can always be omitted. If you are reading these lines having read the story of Beren and Luthien, the first thought is hurrah more cool stuf :)

Re:tolkien makes me want to smoke crack

[voice_of_all_reason]

This is how the LoTR read to me. Every single character encountered had to have their name expressed in at least four languages and a genealogical history of their families previous seven generations explored.

Which you'll find is even more important in Sil, since the story takes place over 500 years and mostly through the line of a few people. Knowing that Beren is from Beor's house of men tells you alot about him without needing go into each character's history as they're introduced.

Re:tolkien makes me want to smoke crack

[MightyMartian]

This is a major emulation of Medieval chroniclers, and in particular those of the Germanic tradition (Anglo-Saxon, Norse and German). Kinship was a BIG deal to these guys, so it was always important, when talking about any major figure to talk about him being the "son of so-and-so who was the son of so-and-so". Tolkien was very explicitely emulating that type of annal writing. That's the chief difference between the works in the Silmarillion style and the Hobbit style. The Hobbit and LotR are, really, more typical modern kinds of story telling, plot-driven, and thus much easier, all in all, for a reader to get his hooks into.

The reviewer is too nice:

[ThousandStars]

The problem is that Children of Hurin has little plot, coherence, or structure. I wrote about it here, which sums my (negative) feelings about the book.

Re:The reviewer is too nice:

[MightyMartian]

Considering that it's pretty much yanked out of the Silmarillion and put on its own, it's little wonder. Still, one must remember that JRRT was, to some degree, emulating the Classical and Medieval chroniclers like the Venerable Bede, in that they were reporting history, rather than laying out stories. There is a key difference, and unless one is used to the style that he invoked in the Silmarillion, it's not going to make much sense.

I happen to like that style, but I still feel the book was somewhat pointless. It's going to be a major disappointment for those whose interest lies mainly with the movies or LotR and the Hobbit, and for those whose bent is for the Silmarillion in all its forms, it's just an editorially cobbled together version including elements from the 1930s Silmarillion, the Grey Annals and the 1950s rewrite.

When he means hard...

[Canosoup]

I'v read the Hobbit and Lord of the RIngs, and greatly enjoyed both them. While they were difficult reading, Children of Hurin is substantially more difficult to read, let alone comprehend. I had to reread a section several times to understand what was trying to be said. Good book otherwise.

Re:When he means hard...

[msheekhah]

Dad read to us The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, and about half of The Simaralion back in 3rd grade. And Steven Hawking's A Brief History of Time in 5th grade... I guess that's why people think I'm such a nerd...

Great book, lousy review

[Dave21212]

Sorry Mr. Peck, but that was the most schizophrenic review I have ever read :) I can't decide if you love it or hated it. Perhaps you should stick to reviewing the latest Walkman or Digital Photo Frames :)

"it is just not written in a manner that is going to connect well with a modern audience"
- Shall I suggest the comic book, or the new blog version perhaps ? (just kidding)

I've read nearly everything in the series, and this book matches up well to the style and stories that you'll find in The Similrillion or Lost Tales. If you enjoyed those, especially Lost Tales, you may enjoy Children of Hurin. Yes, it's not a style that mimics the latest J.D. Robb, but then it isn't supposed to, that's one of the things that appeal to me about the text.

Re:Great book, lousy review

[ThousandStars]

I beg to differ, as I stated here.

The individual sections of The Silmarillion at least had some narrative cohesion behind them and some development, however minor, of the characters, and it was also designed more a history than a story. This made it different from LOTR and also showed enough narrative to demonstrate how Tolkien could have made it into a real novel; Letter 347 shows that Tolkien continued to work on The Silmarillion or on similar material to the end of his life.

Children of Hurin is closer to the weakest sections of The Lost Tales. If you actually liked Children of Hurin, I'm glad for you: but even Tolkien thought of its material as sketches/background rather than being fit for publication, and there was a very good reason he did.

Re:Great book, lousy review

[MightyMartian]

I'm not sure how you can justify this, considering this book is largely taken from the 1950s version of the Turin saga (to be found in the Book of Lost Tales), which is simply an expanded rewrite of the 1930s version. To make this clear, the version of the Turin saga found in the published Silmarillion is also largely the 1930s version (with, as I recall, a bit of the Grey Annals tossed in). I mean, you could pretty much take the BoLT/Children of Hurin version and drop it into the published Silmarillion with little or noticeable difference other than that the Mim the Dwarf and Nargothrond sections are longer, and (I'm going from memory here), there is more detail on Turin's childhood and time in Doriath (in particular expanded Saeros scenes).

Re:Great book, lousy review

[stoolpigeon]

I loved it and hated it. It is a beautiful story - locked in a format that makes the reader work too hard to get the beauty out. If I had not grown up a huge fan of J.R.R. Tolkien I'd have probably not cared for it at all. And I'm getting a few jabs about "Oh noes, it's too hard!" but the truth is I'm not stupid. I'm no genius but I do love good literature and can work through stuff that is not considered lower shelf. Probably one of my favorite books of all time is Anna Karenina. But I enjoy fluff novels on occasion as well.

My wife loves the picture frame and I really like the walkman. It's better than my last nano and cheaper too.

I read a lot and I thought - hey if I'm gonna read, I might as well review. So I set up a blog to store them and submit them to slashdot for fun. I'm not a professional critic, I don't have a literature degree or anything, but it's fun. I have to say I really enjoy the feedback negative and positive.

Re:Great book, lousy review

[daffmeister]

That's exactly what the review said.

Re:Great book, lousy review

[dfgumby]

I would have to agree. This book is certainly not for all tastes, but Tolkien didn't aim for the widest possible audience. He aimed for what he found interesting. Would he have released the book in its present state? Probably not, but for completely different reasons than the reviewer would imply. Tolkien was a perfectionist. He had an absolutely incredible attention to detail and consistency. He went through massive rewrites of sections of Lord of the Rings to makes sure things like the phase of the moon was correct when the story takes place in different areas, but at the same time. Perhaps that level of attention is why he appeals so much to software types. Tolkien's style reflects his original motivation. He wanted to create for England an ancient mythology similar to the Greeks. The fact that he wrote in an arachaic style is one of the strengths of his works, not a weakness.

Re:Tolkien themes

[MightyMartian]

It's typical of those who repeat something to which they have no knowledge that they make these sorts of moronic and shallow "observations".

Yes, he was Christian, and more specifically Catholic, and while there is a deep level of Catholicism in his works, he never intended to write an allegorical variant of Christianity (unlike his good friend CS Lewis). You can safely read his works without being a Christian, and even get it. He was never preachy, unlike Lewis, who, particularly in the Narnia series, could get positively annoying.

I got this book as a gift last year.

[fialar]

I really enjoyed it. There's not a whole lot of material out there about the First Age aside from the Silmarillion. Though it does overwhelm the reader with proper names and places, I found myself flipping back to the map to remember where places were.

But all in all, I enjoyed it.

It's Tolkein so it must be OK

[Guppy06]

Inheritors of perpetual intellectual property created by long-dead author continue to milk the cash cow, proudly joining the ranks of such luminaries as Brian Herbert.

If it's Mickey Mouse, it's evil, but if it vaguely resembles geek fare it gets a pass?

Re:It's Tolkein so it must be OK

[Ubergrendle]

HUGE Farking difference in thise case.

#1. Tolkien assigned Christopher -- a fully fledged professor in his own right -- as his literary successor. It was JRR's DESIRE to have his son continue this work.

#2. Christopher is extremely dilligent to point out where he has supplemented material, and what he has changed from his notes. His openess about the process is to be lauded; he also presents it as 'here's the best i can do with what was available to me'. He's not writing original work e.g. The Hobbit 2: The Quickening.

#3. The problem the slashdot community has with Disney is that they built their empire on public domain materials -- Snow White, Cinderella, Peter Pan, etc -- and then became copyright litigous bastards.

Re:It's Tolkein so it must be OK

[MightyMartian]

Other than one single chapter in the published silmarillion, CJRT has not written a single word within the stories of his father's that he has published. He does add a considerable amount of editorial material to these books, but that is clearly marked out from JRRT's own writing.

Or, in other words, you're a complete uninofmred retard if you think that what Brian Herbert is doing is somehow analogous to what CJRT has done.

This book is great for the geek

[IndustrialComplex]

If you can follow it, or take the time to read it very carefully (like you need to do with most of Tolkein's works) it isn't a half bad book.

The point tha talways drove me nuts though was Turin. Was it just me, or did it seem like whenever the narrator wasn't looking Turin was jacking up on HGH and steroids. His mannerisms put roid-rage to shame.

So many miss the point

[WeirdJohn]

What many fail to notice is that the language used in the Silmarillion and The Children of Hurin is very similar to that in The Tale of Arwen and Aragorn (found in the Appendices to The Return of the King).

Tolkien was not an author of fantasy stories most of the time - he was a Professor of Languages at one of the oldest Universities in the world. He was one of the authorities on Dark Age Germanic, Scandinavian and Celtic Languages and History. He was also one of the main contributors to The Oxford Dictionary, which will probably turn out to be his greatest literary accomplishment in a hundred years or two.

The fact is that people will either enjoy the archaic language forms used by Tolkien, or they will hate it. It is a great story (if somewhat depressing), but is not, nor is it intended to be, a story about Hobbits, nor is it a gentle read like Farmer Giles of Ham. Personally I enjoy fiction that forces me to slow down and 'enjoy the scenery', rather than race through to the conclusion, but then I enjoy Russion Science Fiction for the same reasons.

Re:So many miss the point

[Shadowmist]

As I understand it, The saga of the family of Hurin was inspired by the Greek tales of the House of Atreus, a set of Greek tragedies. (something that Frank Herbet would eventually attach to be the root of his Atreides family in Dune)

Re:So many miss the point

[laejoh]

Well, in that case, sir, I hope you will not object if I also offer the Professor my most enthusiastic contrafibularities!

Re:So many miss the point

[WeirdJohn]

Meriadoc and Rohan were both names from Breton history - Conan Meriadog was the founder of Celtic Brittany (previously Armorica) and was the ancestor of the House of Rohan. This is incredibly obscure Celtic history, dating from the 4th century AD, before the Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain.

Re:So many miss the point

[MightyMartian]

It seems to me that JRRT was knowledgeable in even the most obscure elements of English, British and Northern European history and myth. The figure of Eriol/Aelfwine, which was retained in one form or another from the first to last stage of the mythos, has some incredibly bizarre linkages to actual Northern European myth.

Mine as well

[Weaselmancer]

I loved The Silmarillion as well. My favorite work by the good prof. Only part that was difficult for me was "Beleriand and its Realms". Now *that* was a slog - a 20 or so page geography lesson.

As for the book review I have a problem with this:

Well for some people, nothing that gives them more information about middle-earth and its history can be bad. They are probably cursing my name in the tongue of Mordor at this very moment. They loved "The Silmarillion" and they probably adored this work too. I share some of their passion, and despite its weakness, I did enjoy this story

If you don't like The Silmarillion, it's probably best that you don't review Tolkien's even more obscure work. The farther you wander from The Hobbit, the deeper the water gets.

It was a good book

[a3I300I)y]

I read this in a few hours, and I thought it was good. I was hoping for something new, and didn't really get it, but it was a good read. I think the joy of books like the Silmarillion, Lost Tales, ect is in finding stuff out. After reading LOTR for the first time in 5th grade I had a lot of questions about plot events and backstory and I have found it very satisfying to read all the other books and figure everything about. So if you don't really care about what happened in Tolkein's universe, this book probably isn't for you, but if you don't care, how can you go around calling yourself a geek?

Pronounce?

[fitten]

The first is that there is a constant use of proper names, for places and people, that for most readers will be unfamiliar. Not only that, they will be difficult to pronounce.

When I read a book and encounter a name that I can't "pronounce", I substitute. Supposed the main character has a name Tmaegedornrea or something.... I substitute "T-guy", "the main character", "the main character's sidekick", "bob's friend", "the evil wizard", "the bad guy", "the king of dragons", or some other made up pronunciation "Tee-meg-dorna", or something else when I see that name written and move on, understanding that character's role in the story. There are *lots* of names in JRRT's work, but hanging yourself up on pronunciation is not a reason to get emo about the book. This is a simple trick that most people learn early on, I'd have thought.

Re:Pronounce?

[Digi-John]

I've actually been fine with Tolkien's names because they somehow feel less like he pulled a bunch of syllables out of his ass--because he didn't, unlike a lot of fantasy authors seem to do. Reading biographies and commentaries on his work, it looks like he took a lot of names from English/Germanic/Norse literature and adapted them a bit to fit with his languages... he was a philologist (sp?) and thus should have been able to put together names that evoke a certain "feel". It's hard to explain but hopefully some of my intent comes across.

Re:Pronounce?

[Bucky340]

I agree. His books are a delight for a language dork. Every time I reread something of his, I always find something new that I hadn't caught in previous readings. Finding works of word-nerdness like Tolkien's are magical moments--rare treasures.

I have serious issues with some modern fantasy stuff that seems written by decent enough imaginations but clearly shows a lack for a true love and curiosity for language. Not to mention the hypersexuality of that crap--but that's a different cigarette butt for another drought-stricken forest floor.

Re:Pronounce?

[Digi-John]

I have serious issues with some modern fantasy stuff that seems written by decent enough imaginations but clearly shows a lack for a true love and curiosity for language. Not to mention the hypersexuality of that crap--but that's a different cigarette butt for another drought-stricken forest floor.

Couldn't agree more. I've basically stopped reading fantasy because I couldn't take it anymore. I read LotR about every year or so, the Silmarillion every once in a while, and that's it--oh, ok, I break out Zelazny's "Amber" books once in a while because despite being lighter on background than Tolkien's works, they're a pretty quick yet satisfying read. Your comment on sexuality in fantasy... well, I find it in S.F. too. It wouldn't bother me at all if the author managed to give it some importance to the story, but usually it's just "Well, I felt like tossing in a few pages of sex, who cares if it actually furthers the plot". Extra points if it's a male author writing about sex from a woman's perspective. Urgh.

Re:Pronounce?

[meringuoid]

When I read a book and encounter a name that I can't "pronounce", I substitute. Supposed the main character has a name Tmaegedornrea or something.... I substitute "T-guy", "the main character", "the main character's sidekick", "bob's friend", "the evil wizard", "the bad guy", "the king of dragons", or some other made up pronunciation "Tee-meg-dorna", or something else when I see that name written and move on, understanding that character's role in the story. There are *lots* of names in JRRT's work, but hanging yourself up on pronunciation is not a reason to get emo about the book.

Do that with Tolkien and you're missing the point, and half of the creative richness of the work. Remember - Tolkien was a linguist. He'd sketched out a synthetic language, and needed to create a people who would speak that language and a world in which they would live. The whole history of Middle-earth is the result of this.

Thus unlike the lesser authors who came after, and who named their characters by grabbing a Scrabble bag and taking pot luck, Tolkien's strange names mean something. Take the chief villain of the Silmarillion, Morgoth, the Black Foe - one of the first names we meet. Keep that name in mind as you read the rest of the books. Mormegil. Morwen. Morannon. Moria. Morgul. Mordor. Suddenly these aren't just random syllables dreamed up on the spot by a hack author; they're meaningful names drawing on an ancient language and history, drawing on the background of Tolkien's Elf-latin to make the world feel rich, and deep, and old.

Re:Pronounce?

[Anonymous Coward]

...Huh why am I oddly reminded of those people bitching about the iPhone not have some trivial niche feature?

Farmer Giles

[domatic]

Farmer Giles of Ham would work passably well as a children's book. Tolkien wrote that and a few other short stories in a conventional narrative style rather than the Old-Testament-like style of the Silmarillion.

http://www.amazon.com/Farmer-Giles-Ham-Adventures-Worminghall/dp/0618009361

Relationships

[devinoni]

"Hurin wedded Morwen, the daught of Baradund son of Gregolas of the House of Beor, and she was thus of close kin to Beren One-hand. Morwen was dark-haired and tall, and for the light of her glance and the beauty of her face men called her Eledhwen, the elfen-fair; but she was somewhat stern of mood and proud. The sorrows of the house of Beor saddened her heart; for she came as an exile to Dorlomin from Dorthonion after the ruin of the Bragollach."

First it should be Bregolas of the House of Beor, and not Gregolas. Morwen is the granddaughter of Bregolas, a Lord of the House of Beor. Beren is Bregolas' nephew, thus making Morwen and Beren first-cousins once-removed. Because of her beauty she is also called Edhelwen.

Dor-lómin is the land that she was exiled to. She was originally from Dorthonion, a region that overrun by Morgoth during the Dagor Bragollach (Battle of the Southern Flame).

Interestingly her relationship with Beren makes her Elrond's second cousins twice removed and also first cousin three times removed.

Same here.

[FatSean]

I loved Tale of Two Cities and I usually re-read it every 2 years or so and I never had to read it in school. The very descriptive style really puts me into the time about which Dickens was writing. Action is great, but sometimes you just want to really 'be there'.

Read many of the variants

[zhrike]

The story that provides the backdrop for The Children of Hurin has always been one of my all-times favorite tales. The style is different, but more epic in scope, and more heroic in nature than his earlier published works, which, ironically, take place thousands of years (and two ages) later in the same world as does this one. That said, I also got this when it was first released, and read it quickly, and was unable to identify any significant changes or additions to what had been published in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales. Turin is an incredibly tragic hero, a great character, and the themes here are more adult than in LoTR and The Hobbit, and I am here referring to the larger works that like behind this particular story.

Re:Not his only childrens book

[MightyMartian]

I think Farmer Giles is pretty much a children's story as well.

Re:Why not read the original?

[MightyMartian]

Many scholars have noticed? Wow! Considering Tolkien himself frequently gave credit to the Finnish language and Finnish myths as major inspirations, I'm so impressed with their keen eyes for similarities.

Not for this time

[Dracos]

Tolkien deliberately wrote in an "antiquated" manner in order to make the stories seem authentically old, as he was inventing an ancient history. He also had no intention of publishing his works, as far as I can recall. The Hobbit was a sidebar in the Great Story, and LOTR was requested by Allen & Unwin as "more about Hobbits" (obviously only the first and last few chapters fulfill this).

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The only problem I had was identifying Turin through his numerous name changes. I also thought there could have been more about Nienor, but Tolkien was never adept at, nor probably as interested in, female characters.

For the record, I've read the Silmarillion cover to cover three times, and have never had any issues with Tolkien's archaic style.

This could not interest me less...

[reidconti]

I know I'm going to get modded down for this...

and I'm not complaining about this item being posted, because I don't expect all articles to interest me (and it clearly is news for nerds)...

But seriously, why are nerds so caught up in weird fantasy stories? Whenever religion comes up, Slashdotters decry the made up fairy tales of the bible (or whatever holy book), calling all followers ignorant morons. Yet they fall all over themselves to hear about some elf boy's magical adventures in Neverland Ranch.. er, wait, Middle Earth. My bad.

Double standard? Is it because readers of fantasy books understand that it's fantasy, where readers of holy books take them too literally?

Re:This could not interest me less...

[MightyMartian]

How is enjoying a fantasy story a double standard as compared to not believing in a religion. Are you that logically challenged?

Re:This could not interest me less...

[MRe_nl]

Double standard? Is it because readers of fantasy books understand that it's fantasy, where readers of holy books take them (too)literally?

Well that and the lack of major wars over the one ring recently.
What with the "hobbits" in Palau (sp?) and the "ogres" in Spain
found recently one has to wonder, which is more fantastic ?

Re:This could not interest me less...

[entropiccanuck]

Slashdot is News for Nerds, as you say. JRRT was an alpha nerd, focusing of languages. He was an expert in several historical languages and developed several of his own languages. One of the primary purposes of his writings is to give those invented languages a context. Tolkien gets a lot of respect around here because we, as nerds, appreciate his skill and talent. As for the fantasy/nerd link, I think that's because nerds typically have active imaginations. Reality can be rather mundane but stories can stimulate our imagination. This isn't necessarily escapism, though that can be a component, it's more that there's an excess of mental energy. Fantasy/sci-fi stories provide a decent dump for that energy. Holy books are different and in my experience, often misread. The story of Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish isn't about Jesus feeding 5000+ people with a few loaves of bread and a couple fish. I'm not getting into that now though.

Re:This could not interest me less...

[shutdown -p now]

I can't tell for the rest, obviously, but personally, for me the main interest in Tolkien works today is a very rich and detailed foundation for a role-playing setting. Therefore, any new material that can be used for the same purpose, or clarifies previous works, is interesting.

It's exactly what I expected - no more, no less.

[tygt]

I'm a long-time fan of Tolkein's - JRRT to be precise, but I have a great appreciation for what Christopher has accomplished for the rest of us.

I first read as many did, "The Hobbit", as a.... young teen perhaps, and though it was actually a tougher read than LOTR, it was definitely enjoyable. LOTR of course got me through high school, much to the consternation of my teachers who regularly tried to catch me up when they knew I'd been reading in class, only to fail when I was able to replay their question in my mind and give them an answer, only to return to my reading immediately. When I found "The Silmarillion" at a yard sale shortly thereafter, I jumped for joy and bought it...... and then was somewhat bewildered once reading it.

I did persevere and got used to the writing style and came to enjoy it greatly. I knew I was reading the history of creation and an accounting of the great events of the past (note parallels with the Bible and other creation myths, and consider that middle-earth just dates from a time in our past before magic was lost and the world apparently remade again), and so not only did it make sense that the writing may be a bit archaic, it in fact added greatly to the telling. After the first read, as is my wont, I reread it, and then sections over and over. A great work it is, and though it doesn't flow as well to today's reader as LOTR (which was actually written to be published to the public), it tells a great tale.

I find "Hurin" to be similar to "The Silmarillion" in style, though I don't think that as a work it stands alone very well - it belongs inside "The Silmarillion" similar to some of the other stories told inside.

Given the blurb of what the book is about, that's what I expected. I also expected the style to be similar to "The Silmarillion"; I didn't expect a trivially easy read of a NYTimes top-10 Best Seller. Christopher Tolkein didn't bring this out to make bank, he did it because he is completing another work of his father's (a little cash probably won't hurt future efforts), and thankfully he didn't Disneyfy the story to make it more reachable to the masses... it's pretty much a dark tale, told about dark times.

Best seller? Never. Does it fit in the compendium? Definitely.

But what happened to the Ent Wives?!?!?

[Lord of the Fries]

That was always the biggest unknown mystery for me. My son just finished reading Two Towers thus qualifying him to sit down and watch the movie with me. And again, I recalled that what I really always wanted was not more elven/men lore of Numenor and all, but I wanted a tangential tale that talked about someone going somewhere and finding out what happened to those elusive ent wives.

Re:But what happened to the Ent Wives?!?!?

[voice_of_all_reason]

"however eventually [Tolkien] stated in Letters #144: "I think that in fact the Entwives have disappeared for good, being destroyed with their gardens in the War of the Last Alliance..."

Sad endings are usually the case in his books.

Children of Hurin

[dredson]

I couldn't finish this book. It was horribly written. The story line was patchy and had a feeling of being cobbled together by someone that doesn't know how to edit.

You have to be a language and/or history geek...

[Sir_Eptishous]

I know I'm in the minority in general, maybe not so much here. I absolutely adore the "olde aenglish" style that Tolkien writes in. One of my favorite books is Gibbons "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire". If you can get through that with enjoyment, then Silmarillion, et al, aren't a problem.

I think some of this comes down to whether the reader is a history and/or language geek or not. History geeks love the "backstory" of Tolkiens world, they want to know who is related to who, what happened when, etc;. I just finished Ancient Iraq by Georges Roux. What a fantastic book. To learn the history of the birtplace of civilization, from around 4000 b.c. to around the birth of Christ has given me an entirely new viewpoint of the middle east.

One of Tolkien's many gifts was his ability to use different writing styles for different cultural groups and/or races in LOTR and his other books. He would use different "English" for the Rohirrim, for the Numenoreans, etc;. It's incredible. A good discussion of this is covered in the Tom Shippey book, "Author of the Century".

Re:Tolkien themes

[bigstrat2003]

I can't really agree about the Narnia series. While the allegory is there, it's something which I find very easy to ignore in favor of the fantasy story. The Space Trilogy, on the other hand... that's the real in-your-face preaching (although they're still wonderful books).

The Children of Hurin is dark and depressing

[wintermute42]

I read The Children of Hurin soon after it was released. As the reviewer and others have commented, it's not an easy read. I was deeply disappointed in the book because I found it extremely dark, depressing and pointless. The main characters are doomed by the curse. As I recall, everyone dies. I finished the book and regretted reading it. The only high point were the lovely illustrations. I used to work with a guy who was a big fan of dark Russian novels, especially the work of Dostoevsky (Crime and Punishment, etc...) He probably would have liked Children of Hurin too.

Re:The Children of Hurin is dark and depressing

[voice_of_all_reason]

Well, they were Men... that's kind of their thing.

The End

[westlake]

Some day, when the works have gone into the public domain, there may be writers who successfully turn their hand into finishing the pieces from Tolkien's mythology. Sadly, most of us will not live to see that day.

I have never understood this Geek obsession with derivative works.

We do not need more of Middle Earth. We need writers of talent who have faith in their own creative vision.

Re:The End

[hey!]

Sure, and it was a waste of time finishing Shubert's 8th Symphony when there is a universe of unwritten music to be considered, some of which is undoubtedly better.

The appeal is that it is the unfinished work of a master. Anybody can have an opinion about how it should be finished. Finishing it in a satisfying way would be a great achievement.

Re:The End

[Chandon Seldon]

I have never understood this Geek obsession with derivative works.

Geek obsession?

Wanting to hear more about the same characters in the same world is a normal reaction to works of fiction, not limited to geeks at all. Otherwise there wouldn't be so much demand on authors (and movie directors) to release sequels.

Re:The End

[DNS-and-BIND]

The problem is that those writers are few and far between. I don't think anyone created things the way Tolkien did. Heck, his books aren't even supposed to be real books, they're just cultural settings for the artificial languages that he liked to invent. He was a hugely talented professor of literature - how many of those spend time writing fantasy books these days?

Re:Tolkien themes

[MightyMartian]

The Hideous Strength was the worst of the space series, but the whole Aslan-Jesus motif in the Narnia series grates on me. I gather it was a major sticking point between JRRT and CS Lewis. JRRT despised allegory and absolutely rejected the Lord of the Rings was one. CS Lewis, on the other hand, basically made his two major fiction works into very intentional Christian allegories.

An interesting sidenote on all of this is that CS Lewis's space trilogy and the Numenor story that ultimately came to be the Second Age of Middle Earth sprang from JRRT and CS Lewis deciding that one would do a time travel story and the other would do a space/science fiction story. CS Lewis made three novels out of his side of the bargain, JRRT never finished his, but quickly found it swallowed into his mythos (just like the Hobbit), and the Numenor time travel story, unfinished as it was, came at a critical moment when JRRT was beginning work on the Hobbit sequel, and I think it can be argued that it was precisely the Numenor story which allowed him to come up with the extraordinary backstory for Bilbo's ring.

Pro Tip

[stratjakt]

Tolkien wrote shit. Seriously, TFA gets it right.

LOTR and Hobbit are the only readable prose he wrote.

Re:Tolkien themes

[meringuoid]

Yes, he was Christian, and more specifically Catholic, and while there is a deep level of Catholicism in his works, he never intended to write an allegorical variant of Christianity (unlike his good friend CS Lewis).

An interesting thing to notice here is that despite both men being faithful Christians, and Lewis in particular consciously writing a Christian allegory, there is no Church in their works, no organised religion. I find only one temple mentioned in the whole history of Arda, and that was built in Numenor in the days of its darkness, to sacrifice victims to Morgoth, with Sauron as its high priest. I find also only one temple mentioned in the chronicles of Narnia, and that is the great temple to Tash in the Calormene capital. Both of these are portrayed as thoroughly evil institutions. The religion of the heroes, where it exists at all, is simple and personal and carried on entirely without the involvement of any kind of priest.

Pfft. Not that LotR itself is an easy read.

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with much of what he said in the review - I tried to read The Silmarillion, but just couldn't get into it. I too was expecting a LOtR experience, was was very much disappointed by what I found. To be honest, I've had much the same experience with LotR itself. While the reviewer talks about LotR being written in a modern style (as opposed to a difficult, "classical" style), I've never been able to make it through the party in the opening chapters of the first book.

The Silmarillion is even worse because it seems to be openly attempting to emulate the style of the Bible without any of the real weight or message behind it.

Smith of Wooten Major

[jd]

Farmer Giles is perfectly good as a children's book, as is Smith. "Tree and Leaf" is an excellent short story - a trifle allegorical, as it's obvious enough that Niggle is Tolkien himself and Parish is C. S. Lewis. Niggle's propensity for concentrating on the leaves rather than whole trees is an excellent description of how he left his stories, and I'm certain he intended it as such. Roverandum is said to be a good young children's story. His "Father Christmas" letters might prove amusing, too, although those and his (now lost) stories of Bill Posters really should be more inspiration for parents. The Tales of Tom Bombadil are wonderful nonsensical poems and rhymes that I think most kids would like. There may be other stuff, but that's about all I can think of.

just my 2 cents

[Gillibiabtiag]

I actually really enjoyed reading it. I think that in large part, this was because of the incredibly fortuitous timing. I'd just finished re-reading "Oedipus Rex," and both stories have the same sort of "epic tragedy" feel to them. To be sure, this is not the kind of book that I'd view as "light reading" in any sense, but it's enjoyable nonetheless. Of course, I'm also a really big fan of Tolkien's writing style; all of his stories seem vast and alive in a way that very few other books do, in my opinion.

Robert, Roderick, Rodney, Roland, Roger

[tepples]

There's also the problem (that I find) of many names being similar - Finrod, Fingon, Fingolfin, Finarfin. I don't see how Germanic given names, made up of a prefix plus a suffix, are any different. Case in point: Edward, Edwin, Edgar, Edmund; Willard, William, Wilbert, Wilfred; Robert, Roderick, Rodney, Roland, Roger. You can find more examples in any baby name list.

Moron

[nerdacus]

Anyone who expected Hurin to be more like LOTR than the Silmarillion is a moron. All reviews of the book before and since it came out made this clear. If you go in knowing what you're getting, it is a very enjoyable book (assuming Silmarillion is your thing - if it's not, don't read Hurin). Slamming Hurin because it's not as accessible as LOTR is a waste of editorial space. Given that it is essentially an extension of or fleshing out of a portion of Silmarillion and other similar books, I think it's quite good and enjoyable in the same fashion, and I would recommend it to anyone who is a fan of its progenitors.

Try in another language

[williamyf]

I am a Spanish speaker. I really enjoyed LoTR books in Spanish, therefore, when in Canada, I tried the Silmarilion in English... Better not! While my English is acceptable (296/300 in my ToEFL, much worse 3 years after the fact), I could not get past the ancient english.

From then on I read every Tolkien book (silmarilion, unfinished tales, lost tales) in Good Spanish translations and enjoyed each and every one. The trick is that they use FORMAL Spanish to translate the ancient english, instead of ussing ANCIENT spanish.

Re:Try in another language

[carlsefni]

Interesting observation -- I'm a native English speaker now living in Latin America and working hard to improve my Spanish. I can read non-fiction and technical Spanish well enough, these days, but literary Spanish (with its much wider range of vocabulary and more artistic constructions) often still defeats me. Being intimately familiar with Lord of the Rings in English, I've read through a fair bit of the standard Spanish translation now; that's been very helpful, since I can usually understand passages in Spanish that I might not otherwise understand simply by virtue of knowing the story and being familiar with the English version. I have not, however, attempted to read The Silmarillion or the Children of Hurin in Spanish yet!

In Retrospect

[BCSWowbagger]

Once I finished The Silmarillion, after three attempts and a span of six years, I was very happy to have done so. It is an amazing, epic story, and I finished it with a definite sense of longing for more. The fact that Silmarillion greatly enhanced my appreciation of Middle-Earth's long history on my next read of LotR was purely secondary. I continue to recommend the book to friends with extraordinarily long attention spans, and the few who finish it continue to remark that it really is an excellent work.

I expect the same will be true of Children of Hurin when I finally pull it off my bookshelf and finish the last two-thirds, four or five years from now.

Or maybe six.

Incest and Dragons.

[PHAEDRU5]

This book gives you incest and dragons. Tastefully done. What more could you want?

Wots new?

[kuthkameen]

When I heard that Christopher Tolkien was releasing a new book, I was overjoyed. However after reading a few news articles I realised the new book was nothing but a collection of tales from The Silmarillion and a few History of Middle Earths(god knows which ones!) So guys, there is nothing new in this book....everything has already been said before in a different way and in parts or pieces.

Is there a Hobbit II?

[duncan bayne]

"Yes there is," you reply, and hand him your manuals and dice ...

Refinished Tales

[Doc Ruby]

Someday, all the non Hobbit/LotR books are going to be great source material for someone as brilliant as Tolkien to rewrite in a modern style, and again Middle Earth will take over the world with its magic.

In fact, that is what JRRT claimed he was doing himself: "translating" old stories from their ancient languages into "modern" English.

I'd love to see that "modern style" be some kind of videogame or - even better - a 3D game world in which the stories unfold among the characters, and players can just join the action to feel like part of it.

And we are supposed to believe it's not committee

[dragisha]

working "on behalf" of dead writer. Now, and in years (and chapters) coming.

And buy it, at least in volumes we bought LotR. More is better.

Special price if you get it bundled with Elvis' latest.

Re:Tolkien themes

[trytoguess]

Now that depends on what denomination you're in doesn't it? Christianity is like a bunch of lawyers interpreted the bible in every way imaginable and every single view got it's own denomination. I aint exagerating much, where I live there's parts of the city where there's a church or two... every fricken BLOCK.

From the looks of things Judaism, Islam, and even Scientology are heading someplace similar.

Re:Tolkien themes

[shutdown -p now]

There's even more to it than that. The reason for the lack of churches in Tolkien's Middle Earth works in particular is that there is no active deity to worship. The Creator God of the Tolkien mythos, Eru, has not intervened into the world's affairs, save for a single case (the flooding of Numenor). The Valar, who did some active meddling in the First Age, are not gods, and indeed emphatically refute any attempts to address or treat them as such - since that would be sacrilege against Eru. This all is, of course, very different from any flavor of Christianity.

Re:Tolkien themes

[meringuoid]

The reason for the lack of churches in Tolkien's Middle Earth works in particular is that there is no active deity to worship. The Creator God of the Tolkien mythos, Eru, has not intervened into the world's affairs, save for a single case (the flooding of Numenor).

Much the same could be said for billions on Earth who worship gods who do very little of substance outside of ancient legend. Two notable English authors included.

The Valar, who did some active meddling in the First Age, are not gods, and indeed emphatically refute any attempts to address or treat them as such - since that would be sacrilege against Eru.

Actually, one Vala at least is invoked frequently in the manner of a god - or at least a guardian angel or patron saint. Consider the efficacy of the name of Elbereth as a ward against evil - it repels a Nazgul, breaks the power of the Watchers on the road to Mordor, activates the phial of Galadriel, strengthens the will against the call of the Ring. This is the kind of thing I meant when I referred to the heroes' religion. Now, I can understand that the High Elves would not establish a priesthood and build temples to Elbereth, because they had known her personally in Aman. But I'm surprised that the mortal civilisations they influenced never did so. The nearest they get is dedicating a single, open-air site to be sacred to Eru - but no monument and no priesthood is mentioned.

Meanwhile the Hobbits, who are presented as Tolkien's idealised English culture, appear to have no concept of religion whatever. Even Faramir's practice of looking to the West before eating - a grace - is alien to Frodo, whose people know only humanistic customs of courtesy and hospitality. Frodo himself is the only hobbit we meet who shows any spiritual leanings at all, all of which he seems to have learned from the Elves.

Moving on to Lewis's world, Aslan undoubtedly is a god - in fact he's plainly Christ. Yet though on Earth Christ established a church and appointed apostles to lead it, Aslan never did anything of the sort. Things are done and promises made and kings crowned in the name of Aslan, but the only church ever established in his name was a fraud founded by Shift the Ape, and it led directly to the destruction of Narnia. The heroes have faith in Aslan and the country is dotted with sacred sites - Aslan's How, for instance - but the profession of priest is unknown in the land, unless Father Christmas counts, or Silenus.

Tolkien and Lewis were both good Christians. But I wonder if at some level, they didn't wish they could have been good pagans instead...

Some Tolkien Needs to be Heard, not Seen

[DJSpray]

I'm a big fan of Tolkien's works; I've even read and enjoyed large portions of the History of Middle Earth volumes, including his fascinating Lost Tales, early drafts of stories that later became parts of the Silmarillion, and some of the long poems. But I have found that some of them, such as The Silmarillion itself, and now The Children of Hurin, really benefit a lot from an audio presentation rather than just reading. I tried to get into The Silmarillion several times, but the text never really engaged me; my eyes would start to just slide down the page without absorbing anything. That is, until I listened to Martin Shaw's unabridged reading. It really comes to life; it is no longer like reading the phone book in Elvish. The same thing applies to The Children of Hurin. There is a great unabridged reading by Christopher Lee.

These readings don't make good background sound while working; they need your concentration. I'm a notorious multi-tasker and sometimes I think I've lost the ability to focus on one thing at a time, unless it is code. But they would be great for a long commute or to listen to on your iPod at the gym.

A strangely uninformed (and uninformative) review

[carlsefni]

I am somewhat mystified how a reviewer in this day and age can pick up The Children of Húrin and be "hoping for something along the lines of 'The Hobbit' or 'The Lord of the Rings'". I mean, a number of variants/fragments this same tale have been published beginning in 1977, and none of them bear any resemblance to the style of either The Hobbit or LOTR, while its latest incarnation as The Children of Húrin explicitly presents itself as yet-another-reconstruction drawn from JRRT's various (mostly previously published) draftings and re-draftings. Given these known facts, how could one possibly expect the style of The Children of Húrin to be anything other than what it is? (That is, a sort of imitation of 19th-centuryish English interpretations/translations of non-Modern-English classic mythological and legendary texts.)

And so, with that in mind, how can one reasonably identify (if I may paraphrase slightly here) "unfamiliar proper names" as "problems that plague the book"? This is a pseudo-legendary text treating the doings of figures imagined to live in a vastly different time and place, equipped with their own languages and cultures that are expressly different to those of the modern Real World in which we readers live. Are we to complain that the protagonists are not called "Larry" or "Jennifer", and that they do not live in "Elftown, USA"? We may as well complain of unfamiliar names and places in The Odyssey or the Mahabharata! (The emphasis on genealogies and family connections in common in genuine myth and legend -- for example, it will be familiar to those who have read medieval Scandinavia sagas, or the Kalevala ... or the Old Testament -- and so entirely appropriate to the style of work JRRT aspired to produce.) Beside, how hard is it to pronounce, say, "Dorthonion" anyway? Despite these issues seen to present difficulties for "a modern audience", actual discussion of the story itself is compressed into less than two paragraphs that offer us little more literary insight than that its protagonist possesses flaws.

Confusingly, this review seems to assume less knowledge about Tolkien's works that would be available simply by skimming the marketing blurbs on the published The Children of Húrin book itself, let alone the now more than 30 years of publishing history associated with alternative variants of the tale. As a consequence, it has little more to tell us except that the reviewer did not realize it was not written in the style of The Hobbit or LOTR, that they are bewildered by unfamiliar names presented in contexts different from those of modern popular fiction, and that they rated it "7 out of 10" despite having apparently found relatively little in the book that appeals to them. I suppose this review itself shows us that there are such readers out there -- perhaps they should be advised in advance that, if they haven't already come across, say, The Silmarillion (let alone the sprawling HoME anthology), they won't find the writing much like that of The Hobbit! Meanwhile, this review tells us little about the story itself or how it was constructed, and only hints vaguely at whether or not the story is effective (once readers bothered by such things get past the unfamiliar names and style). Not surprisingly at this point, there is no discussion of whether this version improves on or suffers in comparison with the tale's previously published variants (or even how it is related to them). In the end, given the existence of the numerous rather more insightful reviews (both positive and negative) published closer to publication date of the book itself, I am left wondering what this review of The Children of Húrin is for.

Re:Tolkien themes

[meringuoid]

Yet though on Earth Christ established a church and appointed apostles to lead it, Aslan never did anything of the sort.

A correction to my previous argument. Aslan did not appoint apostles or priests - but he did appoint kings. Aslan personally inaugurated King Frank at the creation of Narnia; it was he who set up the Pevensie monarchy after the fall of the White Witch; and he endorsed the Telmarine dynasty of King Caspian after the defeat of Miraz.

This is actually quite in keeping with Lewis's religion, which was the Anglicanism of empire. The King is in his person both sovereign ruler of the kingdom, and head of the Church. The Narnian monarchy, then, is a step further in this direction. The Church and State are not just closely related as in England, but actually the same entity. If the King is true to Aslan and the people are true to the King, then all is well in Narnia; no priests are needed to tell a Narnian how to live, because it is simply a matter of following Aslan's appointed King and living one's life as as good a Narnian as one is able.

Something similar might be argued for the constitution of the Numenorean empire and its successor states in Middle-earth, which were for most of their history dominated by an aristocracy of the Elf-friends, who followed the traditions of the Eldar, respected the Ban of the Valar and revered Eru. The trouble began when the 'church' as represented by the Elendili separated from the State as represented by the King's faction. I wonder if we can see a trace of Tolkien's Catholicism here? - the Elendili by their alliance with the Eldar always held allegiance to Gil-galad's Noldorin kingdom in Eriador, which might sometimes have conflicted with the short-term interests of the Numenorean state; exactly the conflict of interests that once left Catholics in England in such dire straits, seen as potential traitors loyal to the Pope over the King. Ar-Pharazon as Henry VIII and the entire Akallabeth as Tolkien's literary vengeance for the English Reformation, perhaps?

Tolken v. Calvino

[greg-calvino]

Tolken was a master of language, creating many intricate verbs, nouns and adjectives. there are many more writers who have done the same and are virtually unrecognized. Greg Calvino

Tolkien has published more dead than alive.

[grytpype]

Way to go Christopher!