Aldean's comments (member since Sep 10, 2008)

Aldean's comments from the J.R.R. Tolkien group.

Welcome, indeed. You have a very solid start there; pat yourself on the back for your first read through The Silmarillion. For more on Middle-Earth I would suggest Unfinished Tales. If you can tolerate the fragmentary nature of the material there is a wealth of story and information across all the Ages of Tolkien's subcreated world. Now that The Children of Húrin is available as a stand-alone, completely readable narrative, that section of the book might become a bit redundant, but you will find a lot of details to fill the gaps between the completed books. (One of my personal favorites is the off-hand reference to Celeborn and Galadriel taking up residence in Lothlórien some sixty centuries before the events in LotR. That's old.)

Well, I will third that; I agree that The Silmarillion is without a doubt the daunting next step for readers like Christine who are eager to explore beyond The Lord of the Rings. The difference in tone from LOTR is extreme; it is heavy, heavy narrative, but hang in there: it a amazing story full of amazing stories large and small, and the utter grandeur of the epic history will sweep you along. I remember it took me two years to labor through my first reading of Silmarillion, but I am glad I never gave up.
But I want to make a point about the distinction being made between The Silmarillion and the twelve-volume History of Middle-Earth series. Let's not forget that the book published as The Silmarillion was not a work polished and delivered to the reading public by it's satisfied author. Rather, it is the result of Christopher sorting through the mountain of drafts that his father left behind, identifying the most complete, coherent, and stylistically consistent version of the "Tales of the Elder Days", and (with the assistance of fantasy author Guy Gavriel Kay) coaxing this great unfinished tale into a readable, publishable form. Following the success of this effort, Christopher was then encouraged to go on and make available to readers the vast bulk of various stages of drafts for his father's mythology, this time with endnotes and other visible editorial devices which, while they can get in the way of casual, I almost prefer because they make clear where J.R.R. leaves off and Christopher picks up. It is infinitely interesting to see some of the core tales evolve and grow through the decades (i.e. History of Middle-Earth), but I would definitely suggest you get the coherent whole (i.e. The Silmarillion) under your belt first.

A brightly-woven plan, indeed! I must confess that your enthusiasm inspires me to join in your quest. I have spent too long in my adult life accumulating a treasured Tolkien library without taking the time to read and enjoy the books themselves (as I did tirelessly when I was your age). So it is high-time that I delved deep into Middle-Earth once more, and to be part of a community of fellow Tolkien lovers will be a rare treat. Thank you for the invitation.

I want to second Carl's comment above; readers who are looking for anything stylistically like LotR are going to be very disappointed. This is Tolkien in a very different mode, in some ways (at least in terms of the amount of time and effort he put into his whole telling of the Elder Days) his primary mode, but obviously not his most approachable or accessible. This is a tale of heros by a writer who loved the ancient, tragic sagas of our own Elder Days, and as such it is a masterful piece of writing. I have been savoring it like a fine wine.

Actually I had very mixed feelings when I learned of this book last year. On the one hand, the Tale of Túrin has long been my favorite of the Elder Days, ever since my mother read "Narn i Hîn Húrin" from Unfinished Tales aloud to me more than twenty years ago, and the chance to read it in the fullest possible version without endnotes and textual breaks was something I had long dreamed of. But I had dreamed of this so much that I had planned to do it myself,and had actually spent several years working sporadically on a collated text from the various available sources. So while I was disappointed that I lost my chance to contribute something meaningful to the Tolkien community, I am thrilled everytime I hold this beautiful volume, and I am deeply moved that Christopher himself was able to do this, in what may well be his final contribution, the fitting culmination of a heroic lifetime spent selflessly making available his father's work to a world of appreciative readers.