Amber Night

A Review.

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My reading queue tends to be pretty fluid, what with the books that the snobby pretenteroti in me feels I should be reading constantly being elbowed away like Stephen Hawking in a Wal-Mart by the trash that I want to read. As a self-professed geek (okay fine, wannabe geek, at least until I can overcome my very ungeeky love of shoes and Hello Kitty) , I’m a little embarrassed that The Children of Hurin was destined to languish in the middle third of my pile for, well, at least as long as Oprah drew breath. But over the last couple of weeks I’ve been spending a lot of time on airplanes, which tends to modify my reading habits. Whereas most people look for literature that’s light and fast-paced, in the misguided belief that the plane will get there faster if only some evil law firm in this block of paper will try to rub out the new top-of-his-Ivy-League-class hire, I tend to gravitate towards the harder reads that require more of my focus, such that it blocks out the large sweaty business man who keeps accidentally touching my leg. And so The Children of Hurin, J.R.R. Tolkien’s posthumously edited (by son Christopher) and finally published tragedy, displaced Freakanomics and a bunch of chick lit I’m too embarrassed to mention on my connection from San Jose to Denver, and then on the other leg to D.C..

The story is set roughly 6,000 years before the events of Lord of the Rings, and you don’t have to get too far into the book to realize that this is not your father’s Middle Earth. There is a primal quality to this much younger world and its inhabitants. Men and Elves live and fight side-by-side, Dwarves are relatively unknown, and the first Hobbit won’t set his hairy little feet on Middle Earth for a few thousand years yet. Even the elves seem (with some exceptions) less graceful, more primitive, more wild in their passions, and quick in their tempers.

Befitting a tale of tragedy, The Children of Hurin is dark. Don’t expect a band of unlikely heroes to perform great deeds, overcome great odds, and finally win the day. Great deeds against impossible odds are indeed performed in this story, including some that rival anything you’ve read in Lord of the Rings, but these victories always comes at great cost. They also don’t always end in victory. You’re in the first age now, and that means trouble with a capital “M.” And while we hardly ever see Morgoth, the main baddie, his presence is felt everywhere, even more so than Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. (And just how freaking bad-ass is Morgoth, by the way? 6,000 years before Sauron was involved in a bizarre slingshot accident¹ Sauron was just his Lieutenant.)

If you don’t like your heroes flawed, you won’t like The Children of Hurin. Turin Turambar is as heroic as he is pitiable, as headstrong as he is heedless to the consequences of his own actions. And although he lives under a curse placed on him by Morgoth, such a curse often seems unnecessarily redundant, for time and again Turin ensures his own doom. He almost always knows the folly of his over-developed sense of hubris, yet still throws himself and those he loves into the fray anyway. And this is really where the curse kicks in, because the same fate that lies in store for Hurin’s enemies usually lie in store for those he is sworn to protect.

If the book has any faults at all, it is in the (at times painfully obvious) fact that the book was stitched together from fragments. This was a conscious decision by Christopher Tolkien to keep the work “pristine,” but it would have benefited greatly from some minor editing, even at the cost of removing it a degree from the original author. The book has an episodic and occasionally disjointed feel, as if over the years Tolkien might have a “wouldn’t this be cool?” moment, write furiously for a few days, and then either lose interest or (as he was famously known for) hit a mad streak of writers block, only to hit on another disconnected idea sometime later. The pacing, for example, can go from plodding to break neck and back to plodding in the span of a few pages, with no real reason for the break in pace. Other reviewers have also dinged on the faux ancient style of prose, and while I think it does tend to be a limiting factor in the accessibility of the work (the first paragraph of the book alone will turn away countless potential readers), it does serve to pull the reader into middle earth, perhaps reading some ancient manuscripts deep in the bowels of an ancient library somewhere in Minis Tirith, and definitely not being drooled on by the guy sleeping in the seat next to you.

But what the book lacks in editing, it makes up for in being quintessentially Tolkien. Lovers of Tolkien’s writings will instantly see that this is his story: untainted, unedited, and with nothing added that didn’t originate from his own hand. It’s as close to what the author would have published if he’d have actually finished it as you can get. You will recognize familiar themes such as devices who turn on their owners (in this case, a sword), a giant battle that makes all the battles in Lord of the Rings combined look like a a schoolyard scrap (which you hard-core fans will know as the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, or the Battle of Unnumbered Tears)², honor, courage, betrayal, and of course the more personal internal struggles of his protagonists.

But as much as Tolkien fans can revel in these few new moments, the likes of which haven’t been seen for over 3 decades, never forget that The Children of Hurin is a tragedy. There are no golden eagles swooping in to save the day, no triumph of the courage of men, and definitely no homo-erotic Hobbit pillow fights. And just when you think Tolkien could wring no more tragedy from this story, he socks you in the gut in the very last few pages of the story where, if you are me, you curl up into a little ball and sob for 2 hours.³ Seriously, if you aren’t weeping like a baby when you close the back cover, you might just be the last of the final five.

Finally, the book is illustrated with paintings and pencil sketches by Alan Lee, who is famously credited for designing the look of the Peter Jackson films. You’d think Lee’s contributions would add much visual depth to the story, but you would be wrong. The paintings are generally uninspired, and Lee picks odd and sometimes even mundane moments to depict. I can only wonder why Lee passed up such an opportunity to give us more representative glimpses into a young and wild middle earth, opting instead for the mundane. There are a few exceptions, such as the frightening depiction of a tortured and broken Hurin, or the tantalizing glimpse of Glaurung the dragon, but mostly the art work is a disappointment.

Fortunately the prose doesn’t suffer from the mediocre artwork. The Children of Hurin is a must-read for fans. Non-fans who like a good tragedy will probably find it a good read as well, but if you’re not prepared to put a little work into your reading, you might find it a bit overwhelming.
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¹ It’s all fun and games until someone loses everything but an eye.
² For those of you who googled for Nirnaeth Arnoediad looking for the real stuff, and found yourself here, welcome and sorry to disappoint.
³This made the other passengers nervous.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2007 at 5:45 am and is filed under Ook. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.