On April 17th (they say 18th here in Croatia) a new Tolkien book will have its premiere, Children of Hurin. Anyone getting it? I know I am getting it the moment it's out... hmmm, have to ask if the bookshop is taking preorders.

EDIT: Preordered, the price is estimated to be 30$. Can't wait.

Shouldn't the topic title be "Beware Tolkien Fans" ?

This guy isn't Tolkien, except for the fact that he's based off Tolkien's world, no one should consider him anything else than a completely different writer than the one they loved.

It is Tolkien's work. His son, Christopher Tolkien, merely pieced it all together using his father's writings. That was J.R.R's wish.

Ah, another posthumous book. Like the Silmarillion. I hope it less disjointed than the Silmarillion. I could never bring myself to re-read that thing. Far too much ado about a few rocks.

- NKF

That's something neither you nor me know for a fact, unfortunately For all we know, that claim could merely be marketing, people are more prone to buy a Tolkien book than a "Cristopher Tolkien" book, author they know nothing of.

I think I'll just stick to The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings

Shades of the Dune prequels.

Dune fans should get that one... Suffice to say that these things rarely turn out well.

I liked some of the Dune prequesl books... the Harkonen one I think.

Anywho I'm pretty skeptical on how this will turn. The Simwatzit wasn't very good but you never know

No idea about the new book but as far as the Silmarillion is concerned I really enjoyed it. More of a narative that an actual story, several naratives really... But still it helped me imagine the other parts of the Tolkien world and how they came to being. The silver shores and whatnot... Terry Pratchett has a similar kind of fantasy genesis for his discworld novels...

Well, I finally completed reading it... I'll hold final judgement for now, because it is still fresh. For now all I will say is that if you're expecting LOTR, you won't get it. This is a much more personal tale, and not at all disjointed.

Not to spoil much, I will say that the word tragic does not do it justice. And also, Chapter 3 is very short and very well written in my opinion. It reminded me of some of the more memorable CRPG dialogues, like the one between The Nameless one and Ravel in Planescape: Torment, or the one between the Vault Dweller and the Master in Fallout. However, this one is on a much different, higher scale, so to speak.

In any case, I am glad I got it, but will contemplate about it further.

When?!

I used my resurection skillz! Was looking for a nice old thread to post my anger about people who don't post enough at SC and I found this thread... Not that you don't post, I really want to know what you think about the book after all this time. Is it worth the time or can it ruin my grand J.R.R.T. picture?

Wow, it's the bump... of DOOM!

Well, my best suggestion would be to ask someone who is much more knowledgeable about Tolkien and his works. So, I guess any related forums would be good. My opinion hasn't changed so far, but to be honest, I did not read it since. I'll probably get around to it during the summer. Summer is the time to re-read all the Tolkien books. And throw in a few other books. Last year it was a few Discworld books, this year I may be looking at some old school books that I never got to properly read during high school.

Anyway, I don't think it will ruin your picture, but it is tragic which is not what you may be used to with other Tolkien's works. You may want to get Silmarillion and read it to get a better sense of context. Though Silmarillion is often rather sketchy and some don't like it. Anyway, Silmarillion has a sort of a short summary of CoH in it. But of course, it is just that, a short summary, you don't really get the same feeling of tragedy that you get from CoH.

I got the book as a gift for my BD. I read it to approx. half. Without revealing too much I can say that after 1/4 or 1/3 the style of writing seems to change a lot. As if it was not written by the same person, seriously. To be even weirder, the first quarter is written worse and doesn't much resemble the usual Tolkien's style. So if Christopher did some of his own writing he probably had to stitch the beginning.

I'm reading translated book, but the translator already translated both The Hobbit and LOTR, so I trust his translations and don't believe it would be his translating skills that inserted the weird style.