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184 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
Fills out Middle-Earth
When you read Lord of the Rings there are innumerable references, some of them too puzzling and important to ignore, to events from the past; people, battles, places, names. It occurs in The Hobbit as well, but to a much lesser degree. If you read either of those and don't like them, or found them hard going, so be it, and don't bother with this. But, if you read them...
Published on 28 Dec 2001
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60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
Poor Deluxe edition
I have purchased the deluxe editions of the LOTR, and the three volumes of the History of Middle Earth. All of these books are superb and are printed on fine India paper. However unlike these books the Silmarillion deluxe which I bought is printed on much heavier, poorer quality paper. The print quality in the first few pages was also very dissapointing. Although...
Published on 6 Jan 2004 by MR S CONNOR
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184 of 187 people found the following review helpful:
Fills out Middle-Earth, 28 Dec 2001
By A Customer
When you read Lord of the Rings there are innumerable references, some of them too puzzling and important to ignore, to events from the past; people, battles, places, names. It occurs in The Hobbit as well, but to a much lesser degree.
If you read either of those and don't like them, or found them hard going, so be it, and don't bother with this. But, if you read them and like them, you will be wanting to know what it was all about. Where did dragons come from? Who are Elrond and Gandalf? What is the Balrog? Where did Sauron come from? Who are the Men of Westernesse? What was the Last Alliance? Where did the One Ring come from?Tolkien did that deliberately. He created a complete world, with a history from start to finish. Lord of the Rings is only the end of the tale that starts in the Silmarillion, with the beginning of Middle Earth. He wanted LotR to be the story, the compelling tale, but what happens in it, and the places it happens in, is all part of a great history.
That history is told in this book. From creation of Middle Earth to beyond the end of LotR, it covers everything that happened. It genuinely is a complete mythology. For that reason, the Silmarillion is an inferior *story* to LotR, but tells you the *history*. It doesn't read like a story at all, but like a history, a bible of Middle Earth. Many, many happenings, places and especially names, will put off the casual reader, and rightly so. It is the stuff of legend, too dense for anyone without an interest in getting to the heart of Middle Earth and, therefore, LotR and the Hobbit. One of the best things is the glossary in the back, which has in it every term, name, thing and place in Middle Earth, and what they are. Of course, even though it is technically a prequel to LotR, don't attempt reading it first. Like I say, it fills out the world that LotR and the Hobbit create.
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60 of 61 people found the following review helpful:
Poor Deluxe edition, 6 Jan 2004
I have purchased the deluxe editions of the LOTR, and the three volumes of the History of Middle Earth. All of these books are superb and are printed on fine India paper. However unlike these books the Silmarillion deluxe which I bought is printed on much heavier, poorer quality paper. The print quality in the first few pages was also very dissapointing. Although externally it looks the same as the other deluxe editions it certainly isn't worth the money. DO NOT BUY THIS EDITION !!I am now very doubtful as to whether I will complete the collection by buying the Hobbit deluxe. I really think that the The Hobbit and the Silmarillion should be at least half the price of the other deluxe titles as with the Silmarillion you are getting 365 pages including indexes but in the LOTR it is 1137 pages of fine india paper. The LOTR deluxe is certainly worth the £100 price tag but I feel Harper Collins are just cashing in trying to get us to pay the same price for what amounts to a substantially poorer quality book in every way. I hope someone at Amazon takes note of this, I have purchased many books and DVD's from your site and expect you to stand up to publishers and get a fair deal for customers !! Don't let them rip us off.
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137 of 141 people found the following review helpful:
Tolkien's true life work, ultimately unfinished though it is, 6 Oct 2007
In the Tolkien canon, THE SILMARILLION is the most highly contested of all his works. Constructed as a prehistoric history of the Universe, the book has the cultural significance of the Bible in Tolkien's universe. It is Tolkien's primary work, but it's also his most troublesome, in more ways than one. One thing you need to know. In Tolkien scholarship, there are two primary ways to refer to the "Silmarillion". One is the Silmarillion, the legendarium proper, and then the 1977 SILMARILLION, which may or may not be what Tolkien envisioned.
THE SILMARILLION, the book Tolkien spent all of his adult life writing, was, sadly, incomplete when Tolkien died at the age of eighty one in 1973. Naturally, this begs the question why did it take him decades to write the book, and it still be unfinished after all that time? Well, to understand that, you need to understand two things: the scope of the project, and how Tolkien worked.
The scope of the book was a complete imaginary history, a totally self-contained mythology, all written and developed for his home country, England (my home country as well). Imagine the Greek and Roman mythologies, all those myths and gods, developed by one man. Imagine Homer completely inventing all the gods for his stories. Imagine how hard that would be to come up with your own mythological traditions as such. No wonder Tolkien had such a hard time completing the work.
Now, the scope (which is extremely ambitious for any artist) was compounded by how Tolkien worked. First, he was a philologist first and foremost, and so before the stories he invented languages. All of these languages (which would have taken a life-time to develop on their own) had their own history, and are so interlocked with the mythology that you cannot remove them. He developed the main body of legends around these languages. Many features of the central body of legends changed relatively little over the years, but he wrote different versions of them at different times and in different styles. Some of the legends were set in poetry, those in annalistic histories, others in condensed summaries, and others in the more traditional (at least, for modern readers) novel format. A lot of these writings are also unfinished, due to Tolkien's perfectionist tendencies. Christopher Tolkien said that for most of his father's writing there existed a stable tradition from which Tolkien worked from, but there was no such thing as a stable text for the primary legends.
All this is tied to how Tolkien worked. C. S. Lewis famously stated that you did not influence Tolkien, you may as well as try to influence a bandersnatch. Tolkien would either take no notice of your criticism, or else he would start all over from the beginning. And so he did. A lot. Tolkien would reach a certain portion of the draft, be unsatisfied, and began the whole thing over again, while never reaching the end. Or Tolkien would have two copies of the same manuscript, one to be the fair copy and one to be working copy. Well, Tolkien would make conflicting revisions on both copies at separate times. How do you decide his final intent? Good question. These tendencies presented major problems from Christopher Tolkien when he prepared the 1977 SILMARILLION.
Another problem with Tolkien's work also is that toward the end of his life, he began contemplating changing major features of the mythology that stretched back to the earliest versions. A lot of these changes had to do with cosmology, with the sun and moon, and changing Arda (the earth) from a flat-world to a round world. In the original mythology, and the 1977 version, Arda begins as a flat world but is made into a round world. Tolkien contemplated other major changes that would have totally changed much of the more distinguishable features of the mythology, stable features present from the very beginning. Consult "Myths Transformed" in MORGOTH'S RING, Vol. 10 of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH for more information.
Then we have the problem of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Tolkien was tantalizing close to some sort of final version of the work in the late 1930s (indeed, the 1937 version of the "Quenta Silmarillion" is the only complete version he ever made of the primary work and which is heavily used in the 1977 SILMARILLION). Then, due to publisher demand, Tolkien began working on his masterpiece for the next fourteen years, leaving the "Silmarillion" legendarium completely untouched for over a decade. When Tolkien picked up the Silmarillion again, he now had to account for LOTR and somehow incorporate that major work into the mythology. Tolkien did a lot of work on the legendarium after the completion of LOTR, but this work was plagued with uncertainty and contemplation of radical rewriting.
And in the last years of his life, Tolkien also began moving away from strict narrative and began working extensively on theological matters, essays on Elvish culture and lingustics, and other matters not tied to the actual narrative of the main storyline.
So when Tolkien died in 1973, he left his son Christopher in quite the predicament. Decades of writng, much if it unfinished, with a staggering palimpsest of manuscripts from which to draw from would be daunting to anyone. As literary executor, he had to come up with a publishable version of the work (as clearly that was his father's wishes, and Christopher was the man for the job, being most acquainted with the work). So, in four years, with the assistance of Guy Gavriel Kay, he cobbled together a self-contained narrative, largely compatible with the Hobbit cycle. Due to Tolkien's tendency to not finish drafts, some of the narrative in the last portion of the work had not been touched by Tolkien in literally decades (The Fall of Gondolin never got a complete version other than the 1916 Lost Tales story). Thingol and Melian presented thorny problems, especially the Girdle of Melian (her magical protection around Doriath). Christopher and Kay constructed the chapter dealing with the ruin of Doriath from scratch, with no corresponding writing in Tolkien's own work.
Yet another major issue was, due to getting a version of the book published as soon as possible, Christopher rushed through much of material, and did not have access to all of his father's manuscripts, some of which had been sold off. While he always used post LOTR material as often as possible, Christopher was as many times incorrect as not when guessing his father's intentions for the work.
In the ensuing twelve volumes of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH (essential volumes for Tolkien scholarship and fans), where he had years to get to know the manuscripts, Christopher examines more closely his father's works, and there is much in those twelve volumes that were Tolkien's final intention for the work, but did not make it into the published version. Christopher has stated, given time, he may have produced a much different version than the one published. But he is now retired and will not revise the book (much of which would have to be wholesale).
That's quite a bit of history, and ultimately all that history may bog potential readers down in their journey into THE SILMARILLION. For all of its imperfections, its unfinished nature, the endless debates on how much the 1977 version is what Tolkien really intended, the book is powerful mythology. The reading is dry, and the names are jawcracking trying to pronounce. While it's hard to keep track of the multitude of characters and all the permutations and migrations of the three main Elven tribes, there are unforgettable images in the book, and beautiful passages of despair and hope.
While the work is not the most accessible for modern readers, for those who persist you can see why Tolkien really did regard this as his life work, or, as Tom Shippey says, "the work of his heart". And what a mighty work it is, despite its unfinished nature.
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52 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
Hard to get into but well worth the effort, 8 Feb 2000
By A Customer
It took me three attempts to get past the first chapter - the song of creation in which the world is formed - but it the effort was worth it.The full majesty of Tolkien's vision unfolds in this book, which was only hinted at in Lord of the Rings. The Silmarillion tells the history of the Elves, the Dwarfs and the Men - who were born into paradise only to see it spoiled by their own weaknesses and the machinations of The Enemy. The Silmarillion explains the glory of the Elves, and why Tolkien loves them so much, but also allows for the triumph of Beren, a mere Man who achieves the greatest feat in Tolkien's history. If you have read Lord of the Rings, you have to read the Silmarillion - and then read Lord of the Rings again!
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
Myths of Middle-Earth, 1 Jan 2004
If you preferred the book of The Lord of the Rings to the films, and especially if you read the Appendices to the book with enjoyment, then this book is for you. The Silmarillion provides the inside information you need to understand what the characters in the Lord of the Rings are talking about. If you ever wanted to know more about Numenor, or wondered who Luthien Tinuviel and Beren the one-handed were, then you will find the answers here. And not at tediously protracted length. This book contains several works, not one. And in the longest tale, many of the chapters recount individual legends that stand alone. People can be put off Tolkien by his books' lack of fleshed-out believable characters, humour, points of contact with real life, and sparkling, pacy prose. All these things are especially absent from the Silmarillion. The people you meet here are all fair damsels, tall heroes, twisted villians and proud kings. They talk in deliberately archaic language, and the prose of the narrative is portentous and stilted. This is all deliberate. Whereas, in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, Professor Tolkien was in the business of story-telling, here he is setting out to manufacture myths. He designs his characters not to be people but archetypes along the lines of Pandora and Loki. And it works. The deeds done are suitably mighty, the evil works satisfactorily atrocious and the strokes of fate fittingly tragic. The history of Tolkien's world - not just here but in the Lord of the Rings too - is a story of gradual but inexorable decline from an initial state of sublime grace. Tolkien delights in talking about corruption, fading and passing away; he seems in love with the past. In the Silmarillion he tries, with some success, to create a mythical past worthy of love.
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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
I liked it very much. What a surprise., 1 Oct 2003
I had viewed the reading The Silmarillion as a chore that I would get round to one day - a duty I owed to the writer of my favourite story, Lord of the Rings. I'd glanced through my brother's copy and thought the style of writing turgid. He confirmed that it was hard work and the word "and" was virtually worn out by over-use. Last night I finished reading that borrowed copy and I enjoyed it so much that I've just ordered my own copy. It should arrive in the post some time next week. I'm ready to start again. Tolkien's style and use of language grew on me. I suddenly realised, when I was about half way through the book, that I'd stopped grinding my teeth and was actually experiencing pleasure. Astonishing. Not what I expected.Another thing I didn't expect was finding that The Silmarillion is not a single story about a silmarillion. The silmarils were absolutely key to much of what happened in this world of Elves, men and dwarves. Three were made: fabulous jewels, lit from within by the light of the two trees that illuminated the world before the sun and moon were set in the sky. Yet the silmarils take up a relatively small space in the book which is actually a collection of stories that explain the creation, origins and histories of the world and its peoples. The next time I read Lord of the Rings, I will enjoy it even more, knowing the background of people like Elrond and Galadriel, Gandalf and Treebeard, Sauron and the Balrog. We never do find out where Tom Bombadil and Goldberry came from, but still ...
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75 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
A great additional achievement of Tolkien's, 29 Jan 2000
By A Customer
"The Silmarillion" is the book you should read AFTER having read "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit". It explains the entire history and mythology of Middle Earth, taking you right through from its creation to where "The Lord of the Rings" ends ... the middle section of "The Silmarillion" is, in my opinion, the best part. You find out why it is that Gandalf and Thorin Oakenshield are so pleased when they discover the swords Glamdring and Orcrist in the troll's lair. You find out more about Gondolin, the Elves, and why exactly it is that they act the way they do in "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings". You also find out more about the Men of Middle Earth, who Sauron is, who Elbereth is and other such elements which frequently obtain only a brief sketching in the other works."The Silmarillion" is a great read in itself, giving great extra evidence on how carefully thought out Tolkien's Middle Earth was. My advice is to re-read "The Lord of the Rings" after having read "The Silmarillion". It is at any rate definitely worth the investment!
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65 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
Majecstic insight into Tolkien's inner workings, 10 Dec 2001
Having read Chrisipher Tolkien's reworking of his father's notes in 'The Silmarillion', I don't believe that JRR ever really intended them to be published. The history of Middle Earth is a many splendid thing, but ne'er made complete even by his son's most passionate editing.But the wondrous voice of Shaw adds a magnificent majesty to the plight of the Elves and the forces of good against the Dark Lord. Unabridged, unsurpassable. I imported the CD version of Silmarilion through Amazon.com a few years ago and was entralled by every word Shaw recited of this great biblical history of Middle Earth. I've only listended to this entire collection hundreds of times, and I can only imagine tiring of it's retelling several lifetimes from this one.
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25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
By the light of Iluvatar!, 11 Aug 2003
Excellent audio version of what many have found to be a difficult Tolkien masterpiece. Martin Shaw is an outstanding narrator. His tone, colour and dramatic ability give life to a literary form which could appear little more than a mystical reworking of the book of Deuteronomy.No hesitation in recommending this. For all Tolkeenies, it gives wide and convincing backdrop to the events pre-dating the War of the Ring. If you have not read it before, I would suggest having a copy of the book to hand as well. The biblical lists of names can be baffling without such assistance- even with the best of storytellers .....
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
Breathing life into the Elder Days, 13 Jun 2001
By A Customer
Unlike 'The Lord of the Rings', 'The Silmarillion' is a collection of disparate tales, rather than a continuous narrative. Filling in some of the details of the history which, tantalisingly, is hinted at in 'Lord of the Rings', this work covers a far greater span of time. It deals with the creation of Middle Earth, the arising of evil, the disobedience of the Firstborn (the Elves) in choosing to fight the evil, and the disasterous consequences to them which flow from that choice. It is a very moral tale, and draws on strands from various myths of creation, not least the Scandinavian legends, as well as the Biblical accounts.The book does not have a storyline in the manner of 'The Lord of the Rings'. Instead, it tells the history of a number of the characters involved in the great events of the Elder Days - that age of the world which, in 'The Lord of the Rings', is defined as the period prior to the destruction of Morgoth, the Dark Enemy. It is a much closer examination of the events of that period than anything which is to be found in 'The Lord of the Rings', and to some extent this does rob the Elder Days of the romance and mystery which is afforded to them by the distance at which they appear in 'The Lord of the Rings'. Also, the stories are related as a history, or rather a series of histories, not as an unfolding narrative, so the tales emerge from reported accounts of what occured. Unlike in 'The Lord of the Rings', for example the battles at Helm's Deep or on the Field of the Pelennor, there is no feeling of "being there". The immediacy is missing. Nevertheless, Christopher Tolkien has done a remarkable job in editing his father's writings, which in terms of the material covered in 'The Silmarillion' had been begun in 1917 and had continued on and off until 1973, to produce so cohesive an account of the Elder Days. Much that was only fragmentary, or at least incomplete, could not be included, and was defered to form part of the many later volumes which have been published since 'The Silmarillion' saw print in 1977 - the series which commences with Tolkien's "Unfinished Tales". Accepting that in purely narrative terms 'The Silmarillion' will not satisfy in the way that 'The Lord of the Rings' does, this book nevertheless succeeds in what it sets out to do, to expand on the background elements in 'The Lord of the Rings' and set that book in its intended context. This is an enjoyable read, illuminating many corners of the story, but it is advisable to have read 'The Lord of the Rings' first. That is not to say that 'The Silmarillion' has no merit on its own. On the contrary, it has a beauty of language and imagery, and a high style and grace. But there is no getting away from the fact that events have cast this book as the 4th volume of the saga, and the three volumes of 'The Lord of the Rings' need to be read first, for 'The Silmarillion' is at many points an explanation of matters arising from those three volumes. Nevertheless, this is a very enjoyable excursion into many of the areas which, for want of space, could only be hinted at in 'The Lord of the Rings'.
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