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REVIEW THE CHILDREN OF HURIN By J.R.R. Tolkien 313 pages...
There are two kinds of Tolkien fan: the day-trippers, who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and let it go at that, and the hard core--the mighty Uruk-hai of Tolkien fans--who have delved into The Silmarillion and grok the deep history of Middle-earth. The latter group will snap up The Children of Húrin, a "new" tale of Middle-earth cobbled together by Christopher Tolkien out of manuscripts left behind by his dad J.R.R. But there's a lot there for the weekend warrior...
...human warrior who had the good fortune to be trained by elves in wicked swordsmanship. Your villain is the cowardly and spiteful Morgoth, your basic evil incarnate, who squats in his dark fortress of Angband and makes war on all that is just and beautiful. Children is written in Tolkien's full-on high-heroic style, which is sometimes hilariously dorky and faux-archaic, and as a short subject it never achieves the towering operatic grandeur of the trilogy. But it's still a huge pleasure to be back in Middle-earth and see it in a younger, wilder...
...Children is written in Tolkien's full-on high heroic style, which is light on the characterization and sometimes hilariously dorky. (An example, chosen more or less at random: Túrin's helmet "was made of grey steel adorned with gold, and on it were graven runes of victory. A power was in it that guarded any who wore it from wound or death, for the sword that hewed it was broken, and the dart that smote it sprang aside." Et cetera. The book also comes with some pseudo-Blakean illustrations by Alan Lee.) But once you surrender...
...Just heed this warning: The Children of Húrin is a darker, bitterer tale than we're used to seeing from Tolkien. Its hero is proud and imperfect and willful - more Boromir than Frodo - and his story is full of accidents and disasters, poisoned barbs and ruinous betrayals and grievous misunderstandings. Which makes sense: after all, if the good guys had beaten the forces of darkness in the First Age, they wouldn't have been stuck with Sauron in the Third...