The Children of Hurin

A friend of mine bought me The Children of Hurin for my birthday last year and I finally got around to reading it. I’ve struggled to convey, in words, here on this blog, the impact Tolkien had on my life back in the early 80s, way before his mass-marketization. I don’t know if I have, properly. But I sense that you get the gist of where I’m going here.

My wife bought me a nice set of the trilogy a couple of years ago, but I’m kinda afraid to re-read it. The first time through was so overwhelming, how can any second voyage through Middle-earth possible compare? You know what I’m saying? There are some books I’m just fearful to revisit, for the potential let-down factor. It’s happened before, and I’ve written about that, too, on this blog.

However, right around when I started this blog, I re-read The Silmarillion. If you are interested, you can read my review here. It’s short and to-the-point, and conveys a lot of what I was too lazy to explain back in the first paragraph of this post.



The Children of Hurin is, basically, the fleshed-out tale of Turin Turambar, last seen in his own chapter midway through The Silmarillion. We’re back in the First Age of Middle-earth, before the destruction of Beleriand, before the fall of Morgoth and the rise of Sauron. The hero is an ill-fated loner warrior from the clan of Hurin, noble Men who aided the Elves in their wars against the Enemy. Hurin, Turin’s father, is captured by Morgoth and punished to watch helplessly the ironic twists of tragedy that will inexorably lead to his son’s undoing.

A correction: that chapter in The Silmarillion is really a summary of a much longer tale. And that longer tale is actually a 2,000-line poem of Turin’s tragic life written in the early 1920s. There is a winding appendix detailing the genesis and development of The Children of Hurin, from J. R. R.’s metrical stanzas to the editorial reconstruction by his son Christopher. (By the way, I am not rabidly anti-Christopher Tolkien, as some of his father’s super-devoted, pseudo-Elvish fans are.)

So what did I think of The Children of Hurin? I liked it. A fast, quick, easy read, hard to put down. What can be a better read than that? It was like an afternoon walk through the neighborhood of your youth. Lots of memories, lots of nostalgia, yet it’s new in a way, because you’re new: you’re older, wiser, and more “in control,” though that all may just be an illusion. But I can’t begrudge it because it was an enjoyable couple of hours.

Overall, Hurin’s not as encyclopedic as The Silmarillion. And it’s not as lyrical, wondrous, and awe-full as The Lord of the Rings. From a prose point of view, it falls somewhere in between, perhaps slightly closer to the trilogy. Thematically, it resembles best, I suppose, a Greek tragedy populated with Tolkienish nouns.

A knowledge – or at least a once-through – of The Silmarillion, while not absolutely necessary, would be helpful so as not to get lost in the historical and geographical details. It’s definitely beneficial to skim through the Genealogies and List of Names at the back of the book, as a mini-refresher. The List does not give away the fates of the characters in the tale, though I thought some of the chapter titles unnecessarily revealed plot points.

A grade? Hmmm. I think a solid B fits well here. It’s definitely for Tolkien fans, and not as an introduction to his world.* Nor does it work as a stand-alone novel. But I recommend it, for don’t we all like to take out the photo album every now and then, and revisit those people and places of our past …


* The best way to read Tolkien is in the order of chronologically published works: The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and, now, The Children of Hurin. Some may argue that The Silmarillion should be read first as a prologue to Tolkien’s world, but the dry writing would turn all but the hardiest adult fans off.