Should You Read the Silmarillion
You’ve probably heard of Lord of the Rings; after all, Tolkien is a renowned author who had a huge impact on the fantasy genre as we know it today – but have you heard of The Silmarillion, the unpublished lore behind the Lord of the Rings. Well you’ve probably heard of that too, after all, there was a TV show that tried to base its storyline loosely on the Silmarillion – and unsurprisingly failed – but is the Silmarillion worth reading? Well, that’s hard to say.
The Silmarillion is a series stories that weave together to make up the lore, and the history of Middle Earth. Some of them are quite long and intricate, some of them are shorter, but most of them are connected and play off each other to unwind a longer narrative. They read very similar to the ancient Norse tales that Tolkien loved so dearly. Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s actually quite interesting at times, and there are definitely some stories I would love to have seen expanded upon, such as the tale of Beren and Luthien, or the creation stories. That’s all probably going to be meaningless to you if you haven’t read the The Silmarillion, but my point is, there are some gems in this book. You’ll also get to read a lot about Elrond, Galadriel, Sauron and Glorfindel. So if you’re a Lord of the Rings fan; you’ll definitely find a lot of this really interesting.
If you’re not a fan of Lord of the Rings; then you might struggle to get into it. Reading the Silmarillion is like reading the notes an author made for their novel. It’s just that in Tolkien’s case, well, he made quite a lot of them. A whole series worth. Remember, the Silmarillion was never published by Tolkien, it was published by his son, and it's highly debated as to if The Silmarillion was even written to be published at all, or was just there to serve as notes for Tolkien's world. With that in mind, it's unfair to judge this book with the same criticism we might give to another story that was constructed to be read by a general audience. Instead, judge it in the same way you would judge the notes you made for your series.
To summarize – if you’re a fan of this series then you’ll definitely enjoy this. If you’re not a fan of the series…well…you might still enjoy reading this. I mean you might get a kick out it. But you’re going to get much more of a kick out of it if you go and read The Lord of the Rings first.
Now I really have to say – even though I’ve been hyping this book up quite a lot, there are some parts that really do drag out and it’s not all page turning. But really, you just have to take the good with the bad.
Well, you’ve heard enough from me.
D.M.Aquilina
