The Children of Húrin [Kindle Edition]

I have read the other reviews left and find myself slightly amazed the diversity of views. It is clearly a love-it or hate-it phenomenon. For readers of the Silmarillion, the over-arching storyline is familiar, as it is summarised in this work, please read my companion review. The Children of Hurin is a piece by Christopher Tolkien, who also completed the Silmarillion on his father's behalf and this installment is one of the three main works that Tolkien wished to see completed in the epic tragedy that the Silmarillion was to be: Of Beren and Luthien (which is complete), The Children of Hurin and the Fall of Gondolin. In the foreword, Christopher Tolkien underlines the fact that this book is written for devotees of the existing series of tales, and particularly dedicated fans. Although I cannot claim to be as devoted as those who can quote sections of the story, my enthusiasm comes from exploring and forgetting some details as a casual reader. This separate publication is highly recommended to read as a bridging work, for Lord of the Rings fans to become familiar and confident to attempt The Silmarillion. I acknowledge from another reviewer that, without background of characters in the early chapters, the sudden introduction of names and places that have no reference on Middle Earth can be daunting and imposing (indeed, these tales are set in Beleriand, a region west of the Westernmost shores of Middle Earth that became destroyed before even Bilbo Baggins was born.) I would highly recommend a list of Dramatis Personae for future editions and a brief summary of their character to make this transition easier.

Having outlined some of the flaws here, I think it is important to balance up unmentioned strengths of the works. First and foremost, it has been overlooked that Alan Lee provides several beautiful full colour illustrations at regular intervals in the piece, as well as many more monochrome vignettes through and at the end of chapters, which help in complementing Tolkiens vivid descriptions.

The book can be depressing in parts, but readers of the Silmarillion will be familiar with this from the shorter chapter piece, and that the depressive element comes from maligned Turin, who has misfortune to have been son to Hurin, a man who was captured by the Great Enemy and spurned the attempts to corrupt him, resulting in a curse being placed upon his family. This curse is not purely manifest, but more a vow to relentlessly seek vengeance to hunt Hurin's offspring and anyone associated to them, but also because knowledge of this curse, Turin's experiences lead him to become pessimistic and, by his own reactions to others, help bring dismay and doom upon himself. Therefore tragic irony becomes a major plot driver and can therefore be paralleled with Hamlet and Macbeth, though Turin is for the most part a hero beset by tragedy, rather than a hero wholly corrupted by earlier actions for greed or vengeance.

Secondly, the embellishment of an earlier work could seem repetitive and boring to established fans, and indeed some lines of dialogue and prose are identical to their earlier counterpart. However, it is the manner in which the previously undrafted works lead up to these lines that makes this story worthwhile. For example a section where Turin is blamed for the death of someone is revealed that the Elf provoked his demise by relentlessly taunting Turin, a series of events not explicitly referred to and so underscores the death as a tragic accident that had dire repurcussions rather than the act of a brash ranger murdering the Elf in cold blood. The book makes a welcome return to having appearences of Dragons, which has only really been tackled in the novels in The Hobbit. In particular, the formidable wyrm Glaurung is presented as a General with as much influence as the successor Sauron.

In summary, I also echo the fact that this would be a superb gift for a reader of Tolkien

This is a tale of unrelenting tragedy. Drawn from the history of the First Age of Middle-earth, it tells of how Morgoth, the original Dark Lord to whom Sauron was but a lieutenant, wreaked appalling vengeance upon the family of the man Hurin, chiefly for his refusal to betray a great hidden city of the elves who were his allies. Readers acquainted with the story from a more summary version published three decades earlier in THE SILMARILLION will have some idea what to expect. They will also understand the part these events ultimately did play in the fall of virtually every elven kingdom in the vast land of Beleriand before it sank beneath the sea, still millennia prior to the events recounted in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

This new telling, however, differs from the former in at least two respects. First and most obvious, it greatly develops the details so that we come to know the doomed players more intimately, better appreciating both their flaws and their virtues, and thus feeling the tragedy more personally when it manifests itself in turn after turn of their lives.

Second and perhaps more subtle is what this version leaves out. THE SILMARILLION continued the story further, revealing later events which, while not negating these present disasters, at least mitigated them somewhat, suggesting that evil's triumph was indeed only for a season. (There were also poignant touches, such as the extraordinary future of a certain gravesite, which lent a melancholy beauty to the sorrow.) Here, however, Christopher Tolkien, the author's son and editor, chooses to end the tale at a point which before had occurred in mid-paragraph. When I first glanced through HURIN and then reacquainted myself with the earlier publication, I seriously questioned this decision.

It has been said that part of Shakespeare's genius in writing his own tragedies was his choice to abstain from moralization. Rarely did the Bard attempt to explain a character's fate in terms of what he or she ought to have done, or of some divine wisdom which, if glimpsed, might explain or even vindicate the suffering. Shakespeare simply showed tragedy with all the seemingly pointless capriciousness of real life, and left it to his audience to speculate further.

Tolkien was not Shakespeare, however. While even THE HOBBIT and LOTR are haunted by melancholy and a sense of loss, Tolkien believed in a transcendent Sovereignty and argued eloquently for some element in such tales which, however faintly, foreshadowed a distant 'Eucatastrophe' (i.e., happy ending) to come, 'giving a fleeting glimpse of Joy, Joy beyond the walls of the world, poignant as grief.' By cutting off the story of Hurin's family where he does, Christopher denies it that consolation.

Having said this, I must make a confession: When I had read HURIN through properly from the beginning and came again to the final two pages, I broke down and sobbed. The same juncture had had no such impact on me in THE SILMARILLION. I may prefer the elder Tolkien's tempering of tragedy with hope and question the philosophical implications of ending this story so abruptly; yet I can not deny that doing so made the bitterness of that end immeasurably more powerful. For a moment I FELT the despair of those who had endured such relentless doom, who left the world knowing nothing of some vaguely conceived consolation in the far future. While that moment lasted, for me their suffering had become very real.

If there is, as Tolkien believed, a 'Joy beyond the walls of the world', the heartbreaking fact remains that there are those who live and die and, for any number of reasons, fail utterly to apprehend it. Consolation may be, yet some are never consoled. THE CHILDREN OF HURIN is not a pleasant book, yet it captures something of the seeming futility in which so many souls have passed through the world. At the least, it reminds those who find and live in hope not to grow callous toward those who are cheated of it.

I've been a fan of Tolkien for years and enjoyed this book very much. But I think I only did so because I have allowed myself to become some immersed in the Tolkien mythology. For me, I liked the extra richness it brought to stories we already know and reading it had that comforting feeling of slipping under a warm blanket on a cold day.

Having said that, I'm not entirely sure that The Children of Hurin actually adds all that much to the story as previously presented in the Silmarillion. Yes, there was a bit more dialogue, but the sweep of the narrative was still very broad and there wasn't actually anything much new here.

Perhaps more seriously, one of the reasons I think I liked the book was because I know the mythology and back story from the Silmarillion, including all the different names and characters, inside out. My suspicion is that if I'd come to it 'cold' as it were, the procession of new names and references to other parts of the mythology would have been close to impenetrable - as some of the other reviews on this page suggest.

So. Here's the rub. There's not a great deal of 'added value' here if you've already read the Silmarillion, unless you're a Tolkien obsessive like me. But at the same time, you kind of need to have read the Silmarillion first for half of the text to actually mean anything to you at all.

I AM a Tolkien obsessive and so did enjoy The Children of Hurin. And I just can't bring myself to give it less than '4' for this reason. But part of me wonders whether it really deserves a '3' for the weaknesses I've just mentioned...