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Its like reading a history book about that time period in Prussia where every who ruled was named Frederick except your reading it for fun and not a class grade. the bad part about this is that for whatever reason all of the male characters have almost the same name thus making it not only boring to read but difficult to understand. this book was written like a text book, it has no plot and no character development it just tells the entire history of middle earth. the story spans several ages so you read about many different generations of families.
after he fails he is exciled from Valinor. After he obtains these he travels to middle earth and wipes out the men of the north. The silmarillion is a great read that excels in any other of Tolkiens writings. When this happened he swore to take revenge abd did so by takeing the silmarils which are the only source of light in the forest of lorien. Another reason why I think this is am excellent read is because it connects all of Tolkiens writings reletive to middle eart which is important to tose both farmiliar and unfarmiliar to the lord rings. It is a great read because it describes the fight between good and evil. For example in this book one of the Valar named Melkor turns his back on the rest of them and tries to take over Valinor which was the home of the elves.
It is a nice addition to my collection. I've read the Hobbit and the Trilogy twice; but this book is a slow go. I will finish it eventually.
This similarly scholarly work is absolutely NOT meant for anybody who has never read Tokien's work. I only finished that because it was required reading for college. The archaic sentence structure is most reminiscent of sagas such as 'Beowulf'.which up til now has been the single most difficult literary work I've attempted to read.
I thought 'The Silmarillion' would be the best place to start, but I now know better. The best word I can use to describe this book is 'impenetrable'.I can't help thinking that the book's posthumous release was just an attempt by Tolkien's son to just get something out on the market for the fans who'd discovered the trilogy and/or 'The Hobbit' in the '60s.Perhaps it's telling that, although this book has remained in print alongside the others, it seems to have faded into the background, and is apparently something only the most dedicated Tolkien fans can enjoy.I can certainly see how Tolkien was influenced by the folk histories and creation tales of various cultures. I've owned 'The Silmarillion', along with 'The Hobbit' and a collected 'Ring trilogy' for some time, but hadn't actually tried reading them til now.
Unfortunately, this work is just as dense as they are. I might try to read 'The Silmarillion' again, but not until I've read 'The Hobbit' and 'LOTR' first. I wasn't expecting it to be a novel, more a collection of connected short stories.
It wasn't til I actually started reading that I realized I was wrong.
The largest part of The Silmarillion covers the thousands of years which make up the First Age, in which the Great Enemy Morgoth makes war upon the Valar or angels of Iluvatar/Eru, The One. Finally we have a recapitulation of the history of the Third Age, in which Morgoth's chief servant Sauron was finally defeated. Compiled from a mass of unfinished and disorganized writings, this is the closest we will ever get to J.R.R.
The main part of the Silmarillion closes with the defeat and casting out of Morgoth. Christopher Tolkien edited and compiled the writings which became The Silmarillion, and some have criticized him for eliminating much of the beauty which characterizes his father's writing at its finest. The next part, the Akallabeth, deals with the history of Numenor, the island realm given to the noblest Men, the Edain, as a reward for their struggles.
Its important to undertand that even though The Silmarillion was not published until four years after the death of its author, it nevertheless contains some of the earliest of his writings about his invented world. All of these were drawn into the Great Conflict against Morgoth and endured centuries of warfare. But its important to understand that the Silmarillion is meant to be the motherlode of Middle earth lore, and that the later embroiderings developed to adorn this original text.This edition is greatly enhanced by the beautiful illustrations provided by Ted Nasmith.
Tolkien's masterwork as he himself imagined it. As the lands later known as Middle earth were formed, new creatures were born to populate it, first the Elves or Eldar, and later Men, Dwarves, and others.
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