Children of Hurin?

Question

I read the Lord of the Rings and loved it- one of my favourite books now. But then I tried to read The Silmarillion and gave up quite soon in.

My question is should I read the Children of Hurin?

Answer 1

Maybe you should try jumping ahead in The Silmarillion instead. I regard the "Beren and Luthien" chapter as one of the best bits of Tolkien's fiction around. (Incidentally, two chapters later, "Of Turin Turambar" is a shorter version of the same story as "The Children of Hurin.")

But not everyone likes The Silmarillion. My old test was to ask whether someone liked the stories in the Appendices of LoTR. I don't mean the linguistic stuff, calendar data, lists of rulers and dates, etc., but stories like the tale of Aragorn and Arwen or the ones about the Dwarves. If you didn't like that, you probably won't like The Silmarillion, and if you didn't like any of THAT, you probably won't like The Children of Hurin for similar reasons.

But you might have bogged down before you got to the good stuff. Ainulindale and Valaquenta are not exactly the best openers.

Answer 2

The Children of Hurin is great, but the writing is very sophisticated. It's easier than the Silmarillion, though. Go for it; what's the worst that could happen?

Answer 3

The Children of Húrin

The Children of Húrin was published on 17 April 2007, by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom and Canada and by Houghton Mifflin in the United States. Alan Lee, illustrator of other fantasy works by J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, created the painting on the jacket as well as the illustrations throughout the book. Christopher Tolkien has also included an excursus on the evolution of the tale, several genealogical tables and a redrawn map of Beleriand.
The story of The Children of Húrin takes place in an imaginary time and place, the First Age of Middle-earth. More…..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_hurin