The Children of Hurin 209
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.
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.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 |
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.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Beren and Luthien (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Hard to read.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:stfp (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
The reviewer is too nice: (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not read the original? (Score:-1, Interesting)
"Many scholars have noted the similarities between the tales of Turin and his misfortunes and the Kalevala of Finnish myth, a collection of tales that Tolkien was intimately familiar with."
http://www.tolkien-online.com/the-children-of-hurin.html [tolkien-online.com]
Re:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
So many miss the point (Score:4, Interesting)
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:WTF? (Score:4, Interesting)
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:Hard to read.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Roverandom [amazon.com]
You may want to check wiki [wikipedia.org] on this as well. It mentions several other children's books. However, I have only read the one.
This could not interest me less... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:WTF? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
How to read and enjoy the Silmarillion (Score:-1, Interesting)
Once you see things in this light, you realize what a complete loss his passing is. He could have written dozens of books on par with the Hobbit, or LOTR just from the material in the Silmarillion alone. And you get a glimpse of his fantastic imagination.
Try reading it again, but this time imagining a more fruitful, LOTR-type story for each chapter alone. Imagine what the story could have been if only he had the time to write it. I think you'll appreciate it, and the author, much more.
Now, if only someone would come along with Tolkien's story telling ability and bring out the real stories waiting to be told. Unfortunately, I doubt we'll see that in our lifetimes.
Re:Tolkien themes (Score:3, Interesting)
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?