The Children of Húrin (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780618894642)

"There are tales of Middle-earth from times long before The Lord of the Rings, and the story told in this book is set in the great country that lay beyond the Grey Havens in the West: lands where Treebeard once walked, but that were drowned in the great cataclysm that ended the First Age of the World.

"In that remote time Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, dwelt in the vast fortress of Angband, the Hells of Iron, in the North; and the tragedy of Túrin and his sister Niënor unfolded within the shadow of the fear of Angband and the war waged by Morgoth against the lands and secret cities of the Elves.

"Their brief and passionate lives were dominated by the elemental hatred that Morgoth bore them as the children of Húrin, the man who had dared to defy and to scorn him to his face. Against them he sent his most formidable servant, Glaurung, a powerful spirit in the form of a huge wingless dragon of fire. Into this story of brutal conquest and flight, of forest hiding-places and pursuit, of resistance with lessening hope, the Dark Lord and the Dragon enter in direly articulate form. Sardonic and mocking, Glaurung manipulated the fates of Túrin and Niënor by lies of diabolic cunning and guile, and the curse of Morgoth was fulfilled.

"The earliest versions of this story by J.R.R. Tolkien go back to the end of the First World War and the years that followed; but long afterward, when The Lord of the Rings was finished, he wrote it anew and greatly enlarged it in complexities of motive and character: it became the dominant story in his later work on Middle-earth. But he could not bring it to a final and finished form. In this book I have endeavored to construct, after long study of the manuscripts, a coherent narrative without any editorial invention." -- Christopher Tolkien

Author: J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
ISBN-10: 0618894640
ISBN-13: 9780618894642
Publisher: William Morrow & Company
Language: English
Published: 04/17/2007
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.10lbs
Size: 8.51h x 5.81w x 1.05d

Accelerated Reader:
Reading Level: 6.9
Point Value: 12
Interest Level: Upper Grade
Quiz #/Name: 114630 / Children of Hurin


Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 12/01/2006 pg. 92
Entertainment Weekly 05/04/2007 pg. 142
Kirkus Reviews 05/01/2007 pg. 426
Booklist 05/15/2007 pg. 4
Kirkus Best Books 07/01/2007 pg. 8
School Library Journal 09/01/2007 pg. 229
Christian Century 10/16/2007 pg. 42
LJ Best Books of Year 12/01/2007 pg. 76