(Yes, I finally got around to reading this book.)
The trouble with Tolkien’s Middle Earth writing, apart from The Lord of the Rings, is the acute lack of hobbits. It’s hard to carry off the high heroic tone for a modern audience without offering non-heroic, funny intermediaries with whom the modern reader can identify. The moment I came up with the character of Father Aillil for my Erling books, I understood that the books could work. Modern readers find purely heroic characters and situations kind of clunky. I say it to our shame, but there are few old-style heroes among us (I’m talking about a whole cultural ethic here, not people who do heroic things), and we experience culture shock when we encounter such characters.
I’m not saying The Children of Húrin fails for this reason. I read it with great enjoyment. But you should be prepared for a rather different experience than what you get from Tolkien’s masterwork. If you’ve read The Silmarillion, you know what I mean, and indeed you will have read this story already, in a different form.
The Children of Húrin has been compared to an Icelandic saga. That’s true, if you’re thinking of the high heroic sagas, like the Volsunga Saga, sagas about heroes of old who were larger than life in every way—braver, crueler, more passionate than you and I.
Húrin is not the hero of this book, but his story frames it. At the beginning we learn how he earns the enmity of Glaurung, the evil dragon, who curses him and his family, then forces him to sit watching on a mountain as the curse works itself out. At the end he reappears for a brief epilogue.
The central character is his son Túrin, who (as the Vikings would have put it) has every good quality except for luck. Mighty and brave in battle, devoted to his family and friends, he nevertheless takes every wrong turn. He makes disastrous choices, trusts the wrong people, is offended by his best friends and offends those who should be his allies. In the end the dragon’s curse works itself out in his personal relationships, in a manner worthy of Greek tragedy (something Tolkien imposes on the saga form here, like the recent movie, “Beowulf”). Pity and terror are here in full measure.
I enjoyed it a lot, but it wasn’t lighthearted reading.
Recommended for serious-minded readers. I think it would be all right even for younger teens, if they’re mature.
I loved it, but I think mainly because it was Tolkien. Second-tier to LOTR, and possibly even to the Sil, but I found it to be a great, tragic, extraordinarily sad tale.
Good review Lars.
Wolf Time rocks, by the way. I’m nearly finished. Looking forward to reading your other stuff.
Glad you like it, Bill.
The arrival of hobbits into Middle-Earth was basically a genius-level afterthought, as hobbits had their own separate origin years after Tolkien had already been writing about Middle-Earth. At some point it came to him that the larger world that Bilbo was discovering could be Middle-Earth, and as you say, that made it a much easier place for people to relate to.