Everybody who is anybody
has read or seen The Lord of the Rings, there is no denying the book
is in places dark but in the end it is the story of how good triumphs
over evil and so on and so forth. Reading the Hobbit(which is a
prequel of sorts to the lord of the rings), one gets the same
feeling. And so when I ordered the Children of Hurin I was expecting
another tale of magical worlds, of creatures large and powerful and a
story with Elves, Dwarfs and Men. No surprises there, the book did
have all of them.
But what amazed me was how dark and dismal
a world Tolkien has painted, the great time of the humans has not yet
come, the dwarfs are all but extinct and the Elves are growing wary
of combat and fighting evil. Agreed that good does triumph over evil
in the end but what is perhaps the master stroke of the book is that
Turin(The protagonist) is perhaps at best grey, not white. Turin’s
activities are erratic, impulsive and Turin portrays a character that
is short tempered.
Tolkien has done a brilliant job in
weaving a complex web of deciet and misfortune that follows Turin
through out the book, I will not go into the details of the story as
that would spoil your fun(Especially if you are a Tolkien fan and
have not yet read the book). But saying that Tolkien was in a happy
and elated mood when he created this book would be incorrect, there
is definately a dark undertone to the book and one that lasts tlll
the very end of the book. Yes our hero triumphs over evil and yes the
book is all about making the right choices in life but honestly
speaking Tolkien has outdone himself.
A few other things that
are worth adding and which I missed in the book were a poems
(especially elvish), another thing that was a little different was
that the book is rather short in its reading, I managed to finish the
book of in a day not like The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings, since
the book has actually been reconstructed by Tolkien’s son and is not
completely JRR’s work I think that is understandable.
So to
round it up is this a typical Tolkien book, NO. But the question is
it worth buying for the 390 odd I spent on it(Indiaplaza.in full
marks of the pricing and quick delivery). Definitely. If you are a
Tolkien fan or just a person who wants to read a good story akin to
the lord of the rings a must buy. As always no revealing the plot.