Middle-earth Journeys
It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out of your door…You step into the Road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there is no knowing where you might be swept off to.
Let me know which newspaper, Iolanthe!Iolanthe wrote:Most of what I've read has been very positive but I read a review in a newspaper that made me incandescent with rage.
I think Lee's illustration style is perfect for this tale and the one of Húrin before Morgoth is outstanding.
The Return of the King
A new novel from the creator of Middle Earth.
Reviewed by Elizabeth Hand
Sunday, April 22, 2007
THE CHILDREN OF HÚRIN
By J.R.R. Tolkien
If anyone still labors under the delusion that J.R.R. Tolkien was a writer of twee fantasies for children, this novel should set them straight. A bleak, darkly beautiful tale played out against the background of the First Age of Tolkien's Middle Earth, The Children of Húrin possesses the mythic resonance and grim sense of inexorable fate found in Greek tragedy.
According to Christopher Tolkien, J.R.R. Tolkien's son and literary executor, The Children of Húrin had its genesis in a tale penned by his father in 1919. Tolkien obsessively wrote and rewrote stories over the course of his long life, and slightly variant tellings of this tale have previously appeared in several of his other works. But this is its first stand-alone publication, incorporating all the various versions and attendant fragments into a seamless whole. Does it warrant the attention of readers other than Tolkien purists?
Absolutely. Even casual readers, as well as fans of Peter Jackson's phenomenally successful film adaptation, will find their experience of Middle Earth considerably enriched by this new volume, which also features superb illustrations (both color and black-and-white) by Alan Lee.
The Children of Húrin takes place 6,000 years before the Council of Elrond (a pivotal event in The Lord of the Rings), as Christopher Tolkien points out in his useful introduction. Its setting is not your great-great-grandfather's Middle Earth, but the forests and mountains of Beleriand, a country that was drowned, like Atlantis, eons before various Bagginses and their ilk populated the Shire.
There are no hobbits in The Children of Húrin. The primary players are Men, Elves, Orcs, a few Dwarves, Morgoth (the original Dark Lord -- Sauron was his most powerful lieutenant), and Glaurung, "father of dragons," who ranks with the monstrous spider Shelob as one of Tolkien's most terrifying creations. For centuries, Men and Elves have been engaged in a mostly losing battle against Morgoth's forces, whose members -- Orcs but also Men known as Easterlings -- resemble marauding Vikings more than the crude, slightly cartoonish regiments depicted in The Lord of the Rings. More than any other Tolkien work, The Children of Húrin evokes the Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon epics that Tolkien loved and studied and taught and emulated. Its central protagonist, Túrin, is one of the most complex characters in all Middle Earth, a tormented, brooding anti-hero who bears hallmarks of a sword-wielding Heathcliff.
Shortly after the book opens, Túrin's father, Lord Húrin the Steadfast, has been imprisoned by Morgoth following a doomed campaign mounted by Elves and Men. In the battle's aftermath, the 9-year-old Túrin and his pregnant mother, Morwen, barely manage to escape becoming thralls of the Easterlings. At Morwen's urging, the boy flees to a hidden Elvish kingdom where he finds sanctuary. His sister is born not long after.
Túrin grows to manhood among the Elves, whose king treats him as a foster son, giving him a dragon-crested helm that is an heirloom of Túrin's forebears. Such treatment, along with Túrin's sternly aloof, even haughty, demeanor, causes resentment among some of the Elves. One of these detractors goads Túrin, then waylays him, and Túrin inadvertently causes his attacker's death. Out of shame and remorse, but also pride, Túrin leaves the kingdom before learning he has been pardoned. He joins forces with a group of outlaws and in short order becomes their leader, mustering them against the Orcs.
The House of Húrin matches that of Atreus in curses coming home to roost upon doomed and sometimes innocent family members. Readers looking for happy endings will find none in this book. Instead, there is grand, epic storytelling and a reminder, if one was needed, of Tolkien's genius in creating an imaginary world that both reflects and deepens a sense of our own mythic past, the now-forgotten battles and legends that gave birth to the Aeneid, the Old Testament, the Oresteia, the Elder Eddas and the Mabinogion, Beowulf and Paradise Lost.
Years from now, when our present day is as remote from men and women (or cyborgs) as the events of the First Age were to the Council of Elrond, people may still tell tales out of Middle Earth. If so, The Children of Húrin will be one of them.
© Washington Post
since my trip to Berlin for the LOTR exhibition 
, so I haven't been able to order Children of Húrin until now. It isn't available 
in Swedish bookshops, it seems, tried several in big cities on Saturday. Can't wait. 
At a friend's house, she reprimanded me for drooling over Alan Lee's appearance (am only allowed drooling over VM 
), so I will try and watch the BBC video once again in private. 
(all fingers and toes crossed) I can still find him in cyberspace.
I'm so glad I'm not alone.Iolanthe wrote:And we have Alan Lee at the end as an extra treat!
.© The Orlando Sentinel
Children of Húrin has been No. 1 on the lists of English fiction in Swedish bookshops for a while now and right before release it topped HP in presales.Iolanthe wrote:I've just realised that I meant The Unfinished Tales not The Lost Tales in my post above. Too many Tales
Yep - I like Beleg too and I was very shocked by his end the first time I read it. I enjoyed the story of Turin very much in UT and the Sil, it is raw and rather high falutin' in it's language but it's a powerful study of fate. I think you're right, Merry, Tolkien was testing out 'theories about freedom and fate'. I must start The Children of Hurin soon and get properly into the story in its uninterrupted form and see if I still feel the same way about it.
There is an interesting link on TORn that shows the book's a bestseller in the US, selling over 900,000 copies there and taking booksellers by surprise:
Can Hurin knock Harry off his broom?© The Orlando Sentinel
The translation won't come until autumn, but I doubt there is a real need for it. People, who are interested in Tolkien, buy and read the English version. 
OK, there might be some old fans, who haven't learnt much English in school. 
To be honest I have tried to read v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, so as not to come to the end 
, which I remember from Unfinished Tales. I admit that Túrin is annoying and that a lot of characters aren't properly fleshed out, the story a bit thin as well, not strange, since this was a work in progress. Sometimes the language isn't beautiful enough either, a bit rough around the edges and too simple, but what has kept me going, reading and reading, not wanting to stop, but still stopping, reluctantly, in order to keep a lot of the book for later, is an overall feeling of a lost world, a mysterious, cold, primitive world. And still perfectly recognizable and familiar. I have wandered around in Beleriand and so on for weeks, under trees, along rivers, up hills, into cosy caves and inviting halls with fireplaces and simply don't want to leave the place , although Morgoth and Glaurung seem to be running the establishment. OK, so what is it with Tolkien, that makes you feel that ME is just a distant past and a completely real thing? 
Somehow I feel like I'm there all the time, it's just that I don't always want to read more, I'd prefer to take off in another direction and go exploring. If you understand what I'm saying. Nature descriptions aren't that detailed, but still there is presence in every moment. I have no idea how he did it. 
