After much deep and profound brain things inside my head, I have decided to give my own personal review on the books that I'm reading (if you want to know what I'm reading right now, look right over there -->). Okay, that said I am now going to announce what book I'm going to review today (drum roll please): The Children of Hurin!

Why do I choose to review this book over the others? Because it is most positively the best book on that list (besides the Bible, which doesn't really count, because no matter what book you're comparing it with, the Bible whoops it in the "Best Book" competition). Okay, question answered; onto the review.

The Review

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but that were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World.

In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Turin and his sister Nienor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves.

Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Hurin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, the Dark Lord and the Dragon enter in a direly articulate form. Sardonic and mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Turin and Nienor by lies of diabolic cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled.” –The Children of Hurin, back flap.

This definition by Christopher Tolkien, third son of John Ronald Ruell Tolkien (a.k.a. J.R.R. Tolkien) hardly scratches the surface of this wonderful book. This book rates as one of the top ten in my list of books that I like and I give it, in a scale of one to ten, like a nine-and-a-half.

I won’t give away much, but I will say this: The Children of Hurin is one of those books that you love and hate at the same time. I will explain why. The hate comes from the fact that everything that could go wrong in Turin and Nienor’s (pronounced “Toorin” and “Ni-enor) lives, does, and worse, if that can be imagined. They get chased by a dragon, get lied to by their friends, get hypnotized so that they don’t remember a thing, have their love torn out of their life, and lots of other bad stuff. You seriously have to read the book to see what I mean.

For Tolkien lovers (you know, the people who have a bazillion pictures of everyone from LOTR all over their bedroom walls and LOTR trading cards taped next to their laptop touchpad), this book occurs before Sauron and the Ring were even heard of, in the First Age of Middle-Earth. You know that evil guy that is mentioned about once in LOTR? The guy named Morgoth? That’s the evil dark lord in this book, and I can tell, he has a lot of power.

The love for the book comes from the fact that it is so beautifully written and has a great story. You have to read it to get my point, because I’m not going to reveal any more stuff about the story. It’s just that good.

Well, that’s the end of that review. Here’s a link to buy The Children of Hurin.

Tenna ento lye omenta,

HRTF