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235 of 243 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Marvelous novel, stylistic bridge between THE SILMARILLION and the Hobbit Cycle., 19 April 2007
A fan once wrote to Tolkien, saying that he only read THE LORD OF THE RINGS during the Lent season, because the novel is so hard and bitter. For those unfamiliar with the storyline of THE CHILDREN OF HURIN, many will be surprised at how dark the "new novel" actually is. CoH is much bitterer than its famous predecessor.
The literary world was shocked at the announcement a new Tolkien novel was being published. After all, Tolkien died 34 years prior to CoH's publication date. Reactions varied from trepidation and fear, to charges that the Estate is trying to milk the pubic for more money, to sheer excitement that, beyond all odds, we're getting new Tolkien. Hollywood is eying it greedily, though the Estate is not interested in selling the film rights any time soon.
Depending on where you stand in Tolkien fandom will largely define your reactions to the story.
First, some quick facts:
*CoH can be read independently of Tolkien's other works, thanks to C. Tolkien's excellent introduction, which explains the context in which the novel occurs in Tolkien's universe. Though an overall knowledge of Tolkien's legendarium is helpful, due to the story's strength it's not required.
*CoH is much darker than the Hobbit Cycle and is tragic on a Shakespearin level. Even Shakespeare's characters have a better fate than the Children of Hurin.
*CoH's principal plot focuses on the dark lord Morgoth's curse on Turin and Neinor, the Children of Hurin, for Hurin's defiance against Morgoth. Morgoth is Tolkien's equivalent of Satan, who Sauron is a mere servant too.
*CoH is easier to read than THE SILMARILLION, though CoH still employs in places the archaic style found in that book. Stylistically CoH bears similarities to both LOTR and THE SILMARILLION, mingling the archaic style of the later with the more conventional novelistic approach of the former.
*Although the novel has been "reconstructed" by Christopher Tolkien, unlike certain elements of the published SILMARILLION, there has been no editorial interpolation or invention. Other than minor grammatical errors and some brief transitional passages, the text is entirely as Tolkien conceived it.
*Approx 25% of the text has never been published before. The remaining 75% has been published in THE SILMARILLION and UNFINISHED TALES, though Christopher Tolkien notes there are several changes to the text that do not appear in UNFINISHED TALES
*Though widely publicized Tolkien began this in 1918, almost all text used was written AFTER LOTR was composed
*There is a swift narrative urgency. While THE SILMARILLION stands as a broad overview of Tolkien's mythology with hundreds of characters vying for the readers' attention, CoH focuses on a well-defined cast of main characters.
There are three primary readerships that will be approaching THE CHILDREN OF HURIN. Depending on what group you belong to will largely define your reaction to the work.
The first group is that portion of Tolkien's fanbase who has read the Hobbit Cycle, and most if not all the posthumous publications regarding his legendarium (THE SILMARILLION, UNFINISHED TALES, and the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series). These are the hardcore Tolkien fans.
This group will overall be quite pleased with the work. Due to the largely unfinished nature of Tolkien's legendarium, it's nice to read a completed version of one of the First Age's central legends. Most of the text will be known to them, as it has already appeared in UNFINISHED TALES and THE SILMARILLION. There are several stretches that have not been published before, or the material is handled differently than in previous publications. The story is already well known to this group, and there are no plot surprises. I will say, however, even though I knew how the story ended, when I finished reading CoH, I was moved by the sheer pathos of the tragedy, moreso than when I read the other, compressed versions.
The second group have largely read only the Hobbit Cycle, and found the posthumous books dry, difficult reading.. It is for this group, and the third group, that C. Tolkien primarily did this project for. Due to the arid, remote style of THE SILMARILLION, and the diffuse, contradictory, and unfinished nature of most of HoME, as well as the heavy editorial content, much of Tolkien's mythology remains unknown to the casual reader. CoH's aim was to make the First Age legends more accessible to the general reader. For those of this group unfamiliar with the story, many will be surprised its darkness. There will be readers who find Turin's tragedy off-putting, but other readers will be very moved.
The third group knows Tolkien primarily through the Peter Jackson films. This group will probably have the most far ranging variety of reactions of the three main groups, from sheer delight at the story to utter bewilderment. Those looking for another Hobbit type story will be invariably disappointed. This group will probably be the most surprised at the darkness of the story.
Overall, CoH is a fine novel, and a perfect bridging link between his most famous work (LOTR) and, as Tom Shippey says, the work of his heart (the Silmarillion). I also feel that CoH, in terms of style, is, to put it in vulgar terms, Silmarillion light and LOTR heavy, and serves as a primer for what to expect within the Silmarillion. While CoH certainly shares several main hallmarks of the Silmarillion style, especially the beginning chapters, the book reads quite well, and bridges the remote style and wide focus of the Silmarillion with the more conventional novel approach of the Hobbit cycle. CoH also has the benefit of being a product of long study of the manuscripts to produce the most accurate version to Tolkien's intentions, something that cannot, unfortunately, be said of the 1977 SILMARILLION.
Will CoH become a major addition to the fantasy canon of literature? Only time will tell. But if I was a betting man, I think time will be very gracious to this last novel from the father of modern fantasy.
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42 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beginners guide to The Children of Hurin, 22 Jun 2007
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
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97 of 102 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good... but..., 27 April 2007
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...
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