I'm not sure how I feel about this book. Like all of Tolkien's books, it was engaging and well-written, and his son, Christopher, did a stellar job of keeping Tolkien's vision entact while (most likely) eliminating the family tree references that bog down some of the other works. On the other hand, The Children of Hurin is totally depessing, the protagonist is too arrogant to be likeable, and the novel as a whole could have been strengthened by a link to, say, The Hobbit and/or The Lord of the Rings, since it's the history of Middle Earth in an earlier period -- I didn't really see (or worse, feel) how the devastation of these earlier wars between men/elves and Morgoth led to the later, greater showdown, but that element could have givn the novel a real power.
This posthumous book clearly mimics the classic dramas of say, Sophocles and Euripides (and that may be an automatic turnoff for some), but strangely it lacks the chorus wrap-up at the end that helps the readers feel fulfilled with some sort of moral, even if everything else has gone to hell.
But still, I liked it. I looked forward to coming home and cracking it open. So go figure...
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