Astrid Hawk

I must admit, I did not enjoy this - but I can admire the craft that produced it nonetheless. It's like reading a religious text for much of it, from the grammar style (e.g. negations after the verb - "he came not there again") to some of the vocabulary choices ("he was wroth") to the practice of summarizing action but dwelling on the who and the where.

Andy Serkis was a fantastic narrator (especially when voicing dragons - less so with female voices) -- but overall it was a mistake to listen to the audio book as my first experience with this work. I found it impossible to keep track of all the different elven and place names, who was son/daughter/sister-son etc to whom, and where they had featured in vignettes earlier. It doesn't help that many characters have multiple names in the different "tongues" that are used interchangeably in the stories, and some are similar (at least audibly) to each other. I found myself listening in no more than 20-30 minute chunks and then looking up summaries and family trees and other resources online. Even then, I know I didn't retain much of the detail... there was simply too much of it.

In the last 30 minutes the book finally veers into familiar territory in the 3rd age. It made me laugh when we got there - all along I'd been thinking "if you wanted to tell the story of the Lord of the Rings in this format, it would be no more than 5 minutes long" and sure enough - it was less than that.

Throughout this long mythological study (because that's really what it was), I kept thinking back to the hubris that created this. Tolkein himself recognized it in the (45-minute-long!) excerpt of a letter that is included in this edition of the book, and I think it's part of why he never intended to publish it. He set out to create an English language epic myth, complete with creation story, because it didn't exist outside of religious contexts. And after a few hours I just couldn't help thinking... maybe it *shouldn't* exist? There are so many more enjoyable ways to express this creativity and these ideas.

Regardless, I powered through, because I've long felt that I can't claim to be a fan of Tolkein's work without ever having read The Silmarillion. After reading it (and having the context of his letter), I realize I was wrong. You can't fully understand Tolkein's work without understanding the context in which it was created, but a reading of The Silmarillion reveals more about Tolkein's view on enduring literature than on his main works themselves. And... as mentioned... he was never planning to publish this anyway.