New Tolkien book out today, kinda

“Lord of the Rings” author J.R.R. Tolkien’s new book hits shelves today, which is quite a feat when you consider he died in 1973. The book is “The Children of Hurin” and sadly, it’s not really written by Tolkien, it just has his name on it. His now 80-year-old son Christopher took a bunch of his old manuscripts and cobbled them together into something Tolkien never really intended them to be. It’s not the first time he’s done this, there are several other posthumous books like this floating around out there with Tolkien’s name on them. I’ve read them and most of them just aren’t any good, probably because Tolkien never intended for them to be books. If you’ve ever read “The Silmarillion” then you have some idea of what “The Children of Hurin” may be like.

It’s set long before Lord of the Rings and tells the tragic tale of Turin and his sister Nienor who are cursed by the first Dark Lord Morgoth. Morgoth was sort of like Sauron’s boss. He makes Sauron look like a pussycat by comparison. The interesting thing here isn’t the book, but that Reuters says Hollywood is sniffing around it for movie possibilities. Various studios are reportedly already hot to buy the rights to it. After New Line screws up The Hobbit though, they may regret spending any money on it. On the other hand, if they do screw it up maybe this could be a way for Peter Jackson to come back to Middle-Earth and do something with it without having to fight New Line for the right to film it.