The Children of Húrin

It probably shouldn't have been a surprise to me that The Children of Húrin, written by an author who shaped the modern fantasy genre and whose name has become a byword for world-building, would be an exemplary act of mythological storytelling. But it was. I remember being a bit cold on The Silmarillion when I read it a few years back; a work colleague who saw me reading it on my lunch-break recommended The Children of Húrin, but while I made a note of the title I never followed up on it until now. Aside from its thrilling conceptual coda (particularly the 'Akallabêth'), I had often found The Silmarillion heavy-going and over-indulgent in its lore, and I expected the same here.

Instead, aside from early chapters which establish the show more setting and dump some lore, The Children of Húrin is a lean and fully-realised story. Much credit must go to Tolkien's son Christopher, who compiled the final version from his father's various papers, but it is clear that there was a lot of movement from Tolkien himself to make The Children of Húrin a complete tale. If it had been published in his lifetime, it could not have emerged much different from the form it is now in.

For the version of The Children of Húrin that Christopher Tolkien has provided for us is, after a slow start, an excellent classic fantasy adventure with a deeply literary, Shakespearean tragedy at its heart. The main character, Túrin, is fascinatingly flawed, reminding me of the Bard's Coriolanus. Túrin hurts his friends as much as his enemies, and wiser characters left in his martial wake are not shy of remarking to the brave, proud and reckless warrior that perhaps the 'curse' Morgoth laid on his family is in fact caused, or at least exacerbated, by his and their own decisions ("The doom lies in yourself, not in your name" (pg. 170); "it is by lack of counsel not of courage that Húrin's kin bring woe to others" (pg. 203)).

You follow Túrin in the expectation that he will reclaim his family's legacy, defeat the dark lord and bring peace to the land, and yet while there are many of the trappings of conventional high fantasy – dragons, bandit hideouts and swords of named renown – Tolkien was far too astute and worldly-wise to make it this one-dimensional. Swept along by the author's vivid world-building but made robust by its character depth and plotting, the posthumous The Children of Húrin stands, surprisingly, alongside any of his other, better-known adventures; not as supplicant to the goodwill those stories have already generated amongst his fans, but as peer. If this lay of Beleriand stands in the shadow of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, those great feats of the Third Age, it is not due to a lack of quality. Instead, it may be because its darker tone and tragic end make it more naturally suited to be positioned amongst shades of grey. show less

It is astonishing how well Christopher Tolkien has assembled abandoned drafts, half-finished notes and presumably wildly contradictory sequences into a holistic, gripping narrative. "The Children of Húrin" is admittedly very heavy on the mythical tropes, but so are most memorable legends, that's why they became tropes in the first place. And this is not (nor was it ever) intended as a novel in the vein of "The Lord of the Rings" or a children's tale like "The Hobbit" -- it is, completely and utterly, a legend. A fictitious one in a fictitious universe, but a legend nonetheless. And when compared to the Nibelungen or the Greek tragedies that so clearly inspire it, this is, in my opinion, quite good.
The names and references to Tolkien's show more surrounding legendarium and vast cast of characters and locations are occasionally somewhat bewildering (even to a fan like me, as I've not been very immersed in this since my long-forgotten teens), but there is a handy glossary of names and places in the end of the book, as well as a map. Even should one not be inclined to look them up, though, they largely do not matter, and the ones that do appear sufficiently often to establish themselves from the narrative itself.
The transitions between summarising events and showing direct dialogue are smooth and never jarred me, despite that likely being a result of the different types of sources the narrative has been fetched from. And Alan Lee's illustrations are gorgeous -- though I would have liked a more active looking cover than the still, thoughtful pose they went with, and perhaps a more detailed close-up internal illustration of the Father of Dragons than I got. But this is nitpicking, and I enjoyed them and the book greatly. show less

You've got to admire Christopher Tolkien. His stewardship of his father's work has clearly been a labour of love, a deeply serious, scholarly task requiring commitment and devotion that stands in stark contrast to the crass commercialisation that, by default, accompanies the films. So when he produces a new posthumous book as by JRR Tolkien, you have to treat accusations of cashing in with skepticism.

The Children Of Hurin is definitely not new. Versions of the story appear in The Silmarillon and Unfinished Tales. It is one of the core myths of Tolkien's Elder Days, so the story will be familiar to many. However, what we have here is a carefully collated, edited, coherent, self-contained continuous narrative, and it is something of a show more revelation. It's a marvelous read and a great story and a thrilling journey through Beleriand. The archaic style, deliberately employed by Tolkien to give a sense of distance and deep time, may be off-putting to some readers, but it very quickly grows on you, creating a vivid, powerful sense of momentum and an epic sense of scale, with every emotion, even the pettier, meaner ones, painted in strong primary colours and the titanic forces at war and the overwhelming sense of impending doom and inescapable tragedy imbuing the whole thing with that aching sense of sadness and lovely things passing that is unique to Tolkien.

The illustrations by Alan Lee are wonderful and atmospheric. There is a useful fold-out map at the back to keep the reader oriented. Christopher Tolkien restricts his notes and comments to the introduction and the appendices, and they can be safely skipped if one is so inclined. A handsome little book well worth getting, and far from leaving me cyincal about the exploitation of Tolkien's work, it leaves me wishing for further volumes giving, for example, stories such as The Tale Of Beren And Luthien and The Fall Of Gondolin similar treatment. show less

I wrote a review in The Times. Here it is:
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/...

Since it's quite a while, I thought I'd risk the wrath of the copyright folks and post the text here.

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DON’T TURN THE PAGE yet. This is not just another anthology of scribblings from Tolkien’s bottom drawer, scaffolded with annotations and undergirt with footnotes. It is a complete novel, set in an imagined northern landscape; its reworking of myth and folktale is hardly peculiar in today’s literary world, though its diction has the formal archaism familiar to readers of The Lord of the Rings. It is worthy of a readership beyond Tolkien devotees.

For sheer length of gestation this book is remarkable. show more Inspired by the Norse tale of Sigurd and Fafnir, Tolkien first wrote a story about a dragon in 1899, at the age of 7. At school he discovered the Kalevala, a Finnish epic poem, and by 1914 was trying to turn the tale of Kullervo into “a short story somewhat on the lines of Morris’s romances”. By 1919 he had combined these elements in what became the tale of Túrin Turambar, the embittered hero who slays the dragon Glaurung, but whose triumph is instantly shattered by the suicide of his wife, now revealed as his lost sister Niënor, whom he joins in death.

These are the children of the title; their father Húrin is another mythic figure, the man who defies a god and watches the resulting curse play out in his children’s fate. When the author died in 1973 he left several versions, all incomplete, from which his son has woven this coherent narrative.

Once the darkness has settled on this tale, it rarely lifts: there are no comfortable inns on the bleak forest ways. Many of the characters die violently, and there is no happy ending (or at least, it is outside this book, in the largely unwritten tale of Eärendel the mariner). In The Lord of the Rings, Frodo and friends are preserved from disaster by happy coincidence or the workings of providence — but for the hapless children of Húrin every chance is an ill fortune.

It is strange that Tolkien, a believer in Christian redemption who coined the term “eu-catastrophe” (sudden happy ending), should relish such unrelenting gloom; but as a story-teller he was enthralled by the tale of Kullervo. However much he humanised the characters and transformed the plot, the unknowing incest and the double suicide were inevitable. Túrin’s fate is overdetermined. Like Oedipus, he is doomed by the curse on his father, though the curse here is the personal and seemingly disproportionate malice of a fallen archangel, mediated by a malevolent dragon. Like Kullervo, he is doomed by his own flawed character: reckless, brooding, unyielding in pride.

The book is beautiful, but other than the atmospheric illustrations by Alan Lee, and a (mercifully short) discussion of the editorial process, much of what lies between the covers was actually published in either The Silmarillion (1977) or Unfinished Tales (1980). Yet this new, whole version serves a valuable purpose (beyond pleasing the fans and the publishers). Peter Jackson’s film trilogy raised the profile of The Lord of the Ringsas a book, but there was nothing obvious to read next. The Hobbit is fun, but it is written for children. The Silmarillion is a bit of a hotchpotch, and its hieratic opening sections put many readers off. The 12-volume History of Middle-earth is strictly for the specialist. In The Children of Húrin we could at last have the successor to The Lord of the Rings that was so earnestly and hopelessly sought by Tolkien’s publishers in the late 1950s.

There are flaws, naturally. Occasionally the prose is too stilted, the dialogue too portentous, the unexplained names too opaque: the first mention of Maedhros is wholly mysterious, as the sons of Fëanor are not named in the otherwise useful introduction; a plant called aeglos is never described; and if Lothron is “the fifth month”, as the index says, is that our May or the Roman Quintilis (July)?

There is no list of illustrations, so the reader must guess what is depicted in the plates. But these are trivia. As a nearly finished work by Tolkien, the Great Unfinisher, this book deserves to eclipse almost all his other posthumous writings, and stand as a worthy memorial to the imagination of Tolkien, the Great Subcreator. show less

I really enjoyed this story and it's great to be immersed in the world of Tolkien's First Age of Men, Elves and Dwarves. Christopher Tolkien has stitched together from his father's partially completed writings a very worthy addition to the legends of Middle-earth.

The voice of The Children of Húrin lies somewhere between the "high tone" of the Silmarillion and the more direct, personal narrative of The Lord of the Rings, but tending more to the former. There is, therefore, a certain distance that stands between the reader and the characters that prevents me (at least) from fully empathising with their plights.

I found Túrin the least sympathetic of Tolkien's heroes (or, perhaps I should say protagonists, as despite his bravery and show more incredible deeds of arms, I don't think he's a hero in the same way that, say, Beren or Aragorn are). He's self-centred, arrogant and lacks understanding of others' feelings and motivations. This may well be largely due to the curse of Morgoth, but also seems to be a basic character flaw. As he rarely has any insight into his own inner-world, there is little development of character and he seems to run on the rails of the doom that Morgoth has laid out for him.

It need not have been so, for at a point in the story where Túrin's star is in the ascendant and he's becoming a figure of power in Beleriand, Morgoth worries that Túrin might escape his doom. So, it seems that Túrin's fate and the doom he brings to others is, at least in part, due to himself and not to Morgoth.

What I found more interesting was the presentation of Morgoth as a "person" with motivations and ambitions, contrasting with Sauron in The Lord of the Rings, in which he is barely met with and is presented as an ultimate evil force without any personality. Both treatments work well in the their contexts, but it was interesting to have this Dark Lord a little more fleshed out.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book, even if it doesn't sound like it from the above, but Tolkien sets himself some high standards to be held against. Just shy of a 5 star. show less

The character of Hurin is not the focus of the plot, title notwithstanding: his role is effectively a framing device for the trials of his son, Turin. Hurin joined the unsuccessful battle against Morgoth (Melkor), and though captured helps ensure the escape of a contingent of Elves and Men. Defying Morgoth's desire to know the location of the hidden city of Gondolin, Morgoth tortures Hurin and imprisons him in Angband. Through sorcery, Hurin must witness a curse slowly unfold Morgoth's malevolence upon his family. So much for the narrative frame: the remainder of the tale tells of Turin's efforts to find his way in the world, oppose Morgoth, and return to his family. Of the other two children of Hurin: his eldest daughter dies in show more childhood, and his youngest daughter remains with her mother, separated from both Hurin and Turin. A romantic tragedy in high fantasy.

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If Tolkien provides distinct prose styles in The Hobbit, The Lord Of The Rings, and The Silmarillion, here he's provided another which fits somewhere between: more measured than the paternal storyteller of Bilbo's and Frodo's tales, but more lyrical and engaged than I recall from The Silmarillion. That may result from son Christopher's refined editing skills, or perhaps that Tolkien left a solid set of versions to work from. It works as advertised, a neat entry into the larger world of the History of Middle-earth, not as daunting or as much a slog as The Silmarillion, and I'll use it as a stepping off point for revisiting that work, perhaps looking at the various volumes published since then: BoLT, HoME, UT I and II.

Hurin helps situate the distinctions between the First Age, Second Age, and Third Age in Tolkien's mythology. Hurin's tale is in fact one of three principle stories belonging to the First Age, the others being the Fall of Gondolin and the Tale of Beren and Luthien. The Second Age (according to Robert Foster) deals with the advent of Sauron, the forging of the Rings of Power, and Sauron's initial (temporary) overthrow. The Third Age is accounted for by both the events of Bilbo and Thorin & Company, and the later events of the Fellowship. It's tempting to see the Fourth Age as allegory for modern times here on Earth, but then Tolkien had a low opinion of allegory.

The relation of Men and Elves is intriguing: a key subtheme, though not the focus of this story. But surely it's important that the two races have such close dealings, partnerships, intermarriage, and are allied against Morgoth. Whereas in the Third Age, superstition at least on the part of Men toward Elves, if not outright forgetting. Interesting, too, when realising that Men came out of the East "running from something dark" but not speaking of it. What does Tolkien make of that, I wonder.

On a smaller scale, the forgetting and darkness cast upon Nienor by Glaurung (the original Dragon, creature of Morgoth and sire of Smaug), leading as it does to feral if enchanted behavior, and eventually to incest ... that, too, seems deliberately mythopoeic in the telling. But I may be forcing a reading which I admire in myth, which nevertheless is not here.

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The map is arranged to fold out and remain visible while reading the book, and easily refolded until next reading session. Simple, clever, and highly functional. Alan Lee's illustrations are decorative rather than an added layer of visual interpretation. I'm impressed with how many there are, both full-colour as well as the pencil / line drawings scattered throughout. show less

L'errore più grande che si possa fare (e che ho fatto alla prima lettura) avvicinandosi a questo libro è credere, come affermato nell'introduzione, che sia una lettura affrontabile con una vaga conoscenza dello sfondo su cui si intrecciano gli eventi, riassunto in due balzelli nell'introduzione stessa. Questo libro è da leggere necessariamente *dopo* il Silmarillion, pena la pressoché totale incomprensione degli eventi descritti. La storia è uno dei tre racconti principali scritti da Tolkien sulla Prima Era, ripresi e riscritti durante tutto il corso della sua vita, sia in prosa che in poesia, e sicuramente il più tragico e forse quello di maggior impatto. La versione qui proposta dal figlio, riassunta nel relativo capitolo del show more Silmarillion, espande quella presente nei Racconti incompiuti, garantendoci finalmente una lettura continua e completa. Una leggenda dei tempi antichi riportata nella forma più meritevole. show less