‘Children of Hurin’ adds to Tolkien storehouse

“The Children of Hurin”

by J.R.R. Tolkien (Houghton Mifflin, 320 pages, $26)

In his foreword to “The Lord of the Rings,” J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “This tale grew in the telling.” More than 30 years after his death, it’s still growing.

“The Children of Hurin” is one of Tolkien’s earliest writings about the world of Middle-earth, although he never finished it. His son, Christopher, has completed the task (taking an editor’s credit), and the resulting book is advertised as the first full-length Tolkien work published since “The Silmarillion” in 1977.

The story takes place in Middle-earth’s ancient past, thousands of years before the time of “Lord of the Rings.” Hurin leads his people to war against Morgoth, Middle-earth’s original Dark Lord.

The battle goes badly, and Hurin is captured by Morgoth, who lays a curse upon his family as punishment for Hurin’s defiance. The imprisoned Hurin is condemned to watch helplessly as the tragic lives of his children, son Turin and daughter Nienor, unfold.

Young Turin is sent away by his mother to be raised in safety, and he grows up to become a great warrior. But he yearns to be reunited with his mother and sister, and along the road to that reunion Morgoth’s curse takes root.

For Tolkien, who was of Britain’s lost World War I generation, struggle is tied to sacrifice, loss and sorrow – and sorrow marks nearly every page here.

Many Tolkien fans are already familiar with the story; parts of it have been published before, in “The Silmarillion” and the 1980 compilation “Unfinished Tales.”

In the new book’s preface, Christopher Tolkien says that part of his aim is to introduce a new generation of Tolkien readers (and, probably, fans of the Peter Jackson films) to his father’s earlier writings – mythic tales inspired by old northern European legends.

But part of what made “Lord of the Rings” so compelling was that the reader discovered Middle-earth through the eyes of Frodo and the other childlike hobbits; the trilogy wonderfully blended children’s story into heroic saga.

“Children of Hurin” is pure, dark saga; no capering hobbits are found here, and Tolkien’s prose, which harks back to an earlier era, can be daunting to the modern reader.

For some, however, part of the trilogy’s appeal was in the richness of the imaginary history that underlay the story: the faded glory of proud kings and their kingdoms, long since crumbled into dust, surviving only in stories handed down through generations of Tolkien’s folk.

In that vein, and for devoted Tolkien purists, “Children of Hurin” is a gem – one of Middle-earth’s “Great Tales,” as Tolkien called them, fully realized at last.