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The Children of Húrin

J.R.R. Tolkien

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Jan 11, 2013 Joseph rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Now I will sing the doom song.

This is probably the grimmest tale of Middle-earth, filled with treachery and betrayal and evil glamours and shocking revelations and all other manner of doom and tragedy. If you read The Silmarillion, you know the gist of the story. (If you didn't read The Silmarillion I'm not sure why you're reading this book in the first place.) This volume presents the tale of Túrin Turambar in a longer, more complete narrative (although it's still relatively short by modern sta ...more

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Apr 05, 2017 S.E. Lindberg rated it it was amazing

In short, The Children of Húrin is very Tolkien... but much more dark/grim than most people have read. I own the Alan Lee illustrated version and the audiobook narrated by none other than Saruman-actor Christopher Lee. Extremely dark! A dense read made easier by the narration and tenor of Lee. Listening to C.Lee while looking at A.Lee's illustrations is a great experience.

If anyone thinks JRR only wrote happy fairytales, then they will be surprised by this ultradark tale. On the other hand, Tolk ...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Lee Broderick rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, fiction-fantasy

My first impression of this is that it's a fuller version of one of the longest tales in The Silmarillion . Fuller but not necessarily richer. There are a couple of factors that contribute to this.

That earlier book provided a glimpse into J.R.R. Tolkien's enormous ambition. Within that work, The Children of Húrin is perceived as just one (notably) piteous series of events within the mythology of an entire world. That provides context to the tragedy told here - the events and characters that i My first impression of this is that it's a fuller version of one of the longest tales in The Silmarillion . Fuller but not necessarily richer. There are a couple of factors that contribute to this.

That earlier book provided a glimpse into J.R.R. Tolkien's enormous ambition. Within that work, The Children of Húrin is perceived as just one (notably) piteous series of events within the mythology of an entire world. That provides context to the tragedy told here - the events and characters that in some way shaped these events and those that succeeded them. That might, to some extent, explain the greater richness of the first published version.

The second contributory reason is perhaps more contentious. Christopher Tolkien has received a fair amount of criticism over the years for any and every perceived shortcoming in The Silmarillion. Publication of The Children of Húrin reopened these debates, allowing Tolkien fans new and old to pick at any scabs that had begun to heal. Many of the accusations levelled at this book, particularly of 'turgid prose' appear to me to be very similar to those levelled at C.R.T. after the first time he edited his father's work.

'Turgid' is, I think, at best a subjective criticism that's born of modern tastes and misunderstandings based on The Lord of the Rings . As hugely successful as that book was (in several senses) it was not representative of the author's intent. I wrote of The Hobbit that it was an epic for children and this better illustrates his aspiration. Writing for adults his style is deliberately reminiscent of the viking Sagas, just as much of Poul Anderson's work was.

If a criticism can be made more objectively (I hope), it's that this novel is far less polished than The Silmarillion. That's mostly likely a slightly ironic result of the earlier criticism directed towards Christopher Tolkien and shows what a good editorial job he and Guy Gavriel Kay did then. Wary and, perhaps, regretful of that he's taken a very light touch here, as painfully explained in his introduction and appendix. Perhaps a firmer hand might have produced something more akin to his father's designs than the early drafts assembled here. ...more

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