LOTR or Silmarillion: Which book had more compelling charaters?

Answer 1

Most readers regard The Silmarillion as a colorless list of names. But it's in the details that history comes alive. And the ghosts of those who inhabit The Silmarllion still exert power.

Answer 2

Of course there is no comparison. LOTR is a fantasy novel with life-like characters. I have reread it many times and never failed to find something new each time. Tolkien himself said that it grew in the telling, but I think that it goes beyond that. It also grows with ones personal experiences because Tolkien was able to write on many levels at once. The Silmarillion is more like a text--dry and boring. Christopher hesitated to change his father's work. Who can know what it would be like had Tolkien had the time and/or inclination to develop it.

Answer 3

I've read the LOTR several times. Always different and compelling each time I read it. I have never made it through the Simarillion. It is about as dry a book as one could possibly write.

There are quite a few interesting chars in the Similillion but good luck staying awake long enough to get the context of thier lives.

Answer 4

In my opinion, LotR is about characters and lives and the future of an entire world. The Silmarillion is just history. It's comparable to the Bible for Middle Earth. The characters - though intriguing - are spoken of in past tense and only briefly. You have no time to get to know them or remember them before you're directed to his son, and then HIS son, and then HIS son... and so on and so forth.

Answer 5

LOTR is great, but who can possibly deny that the stories of Beren and Luthien, the rise and the sinking of the land of Numenor and the story of the chaining of Melkor do not make fabulous reading!!