Book Review: The Children of Húrin (JRR Tolkein)

"Then Mablung said bitterly: 'I also have been meshed in the doom of the Children of Húrin, and thus with words have slain one that I loved.'" - JRR Tolkein

Here it is, decades after the passing of JRR Tolkein, and eons after his epic sagas of The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings left their mark on fantasy literature.  Fans wanting more could always fall back to The Silmarillion.  Now, after all this time, Tolkein's son collected, edited, and released this collection of tales to provide even more Middle-Earth action.

Does that mean this book is inherently awesome? Perhaps for diehard Tolkein fans, but I found the book to be a total chore to go through.  Even though it's a pretty trim tome with only 257 pages, it is completely saturated in names, places, and folklore that mostly goes way over my head.  I personally found it tiresome to flip through so many proper pronouns and trying to keep track of who was what and where they were and what they were doing.

Part of the problem is the prose, which I felt tried so hard to be extravagant and grandiose that it felt like Tolkein was trying to rewrite the Prose Edda or something.  As such, it came off as being extremely stiff and dry.  It made it hard for me to personally connect to the characters or the plot, and combined with the onslaught of namedropping, I found myself trudging through the book, going through the motions of reading without truly becoming engrossed in it.

I understand that the book is compiled from various other bits and pieces, which have their connections to The Silmarillion, and parts of this may have been published before in other volumes.  The story is a huge, sprawling, somewhat random saga that includes all manner of war, drama, orc and dragon-slaying, and adventuring.  There are familiar elements, but a lot of it is fresh and new, covering areas and events that are otherwise far from the classic Lord of the Rings era.  In the end though, Children of Húrin is less of an actual story and more of a compendium of background legends and history in the overall lore of the Middle-Earth.

In the end, if you're a huge Tolkein fan and can absolutely dig deep into all the names and history of the Middle-Earth without much reservation on the author's prose, then the book will likely be a total winner for you.  For casual reading, I felt the book was dry, convoluted, and way too dense.

2.5/5 (Entertainment:  Poor | Story:  Marginal | Book:  Average)