Customer Reviews
Amazing 
2008-06-14
I bought this book with the illustrated edition of Lord of the Rings (box set). The covers are a bit the same so they go together really well.
I just love this edition of "The Silmarillion". There are many bright illustrations (by Ted Nasmith) and they are very beautiful. It's difficult to illustrate a book like "The Silmarillion", but Ted Nasmith has done a great job.
Under the dust cover there is a blue fabric cover, it makes the book very sturdy.
I recommend anyone this book. It's a great addition to any bookcase, and it comes for a great price!
A fascinating, rich history of Middle-earth 2008-06-07
For those who have read The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and want more information and backstory from the earlier Ages of Middle-earth, this is where to look.
Tolkien's first foray into Middle-earth was actually one of the stories in The Silmarillion, which he began during his service in World War I. Later, after completing both The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, he went back and added in more and more history for the world he'd created - too much, in fact, to finish. The Silmarillion was first published in 1977, 4 years after Tolkien's death, and even then it did not include all that he hoped to write about his world. Fortunately, some of his most beautiful and tragic tales are contained in it, including:
-The creation of Middle-earth by Illuvatar and the fall of Melkor
-Tales of the Vala and the Firstborn (Elves)
-The Tale of Beren and Luthien, the love story to end all love stories
-The Children of Hurin, the dark and tragic tale of Turin Turumbar and his sister Nienor Niniel
-The fall of Numenor
It's also worth buying this particular edition, especially if you're a Tolkien enthusiast, because Ted Nasmith's gorgeous paintings pop off the page and bring the story to life. What more could you ask for?
Great Book!!! 2008-06-02
After recently converting to the Catholic Church and knowing that J.R.R. Tolkien was a very respected Catholic. I wanted to read some of his works. I have watched all three Lord of The Rings movies and absolutely loved them. I read the Hobbit years ago and thought it was a wonderful book as well, so I decided that I would purchase the Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings and read them all.
After reading some of the reviews regarding the Silmarillion and noticing that alot of people were complaining that it was either boring, or difficult to read. I hesitated and almost didn't purchase it. What a mistake that would have been! I loved the book and didn't want to put it down. It is truly a page turner and even if your new to reading Tolkien like I am, you will still love it.
I have read the Holy Bible many times and unlike what some of the reviews said, this book "does not" read like the Old Testament. I just finished reading the Ilyad and the Odyssy by Homer and I found them to be alot more difficult to read then this book.
Overall I would recommend that you don't take some of the negative reviews to heart and just purchase the book. I think you will be happy you did.
the greatest book I have ever read 2008-02-05
The sheer scope of this book is staggering. The writing of this book is a feat unmatched in the known history of the world that any one man could create an entire mythology over his lifetime and mostly in secret! I was one of the few people who read The Silmarillion before reading either The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings. As such, I was blown away, even more so than when I read the latter books, by how grand this story is. It is a dark and somber tale that doesn't revel in trite victories against the forces of darkness like Lord of the Rings. Rather, it is a tragic tale of endurance in the face of unyielding evil. The Silmarillion is much longer and challenging to read than The Lord of the Rings. However, for those who persevere throughout the many thousands of characters and lengthy history of Middle Earth, a jewel of a book is to be found. I would recommend The Silmarillion for all true J.R.R. Tolkien fans and fans of mythology as well. Some fifteen years have passed since I first read The Silmmarillion, but time has not stopped it from being my favorite book.
The Best Edition of The Silmarillion Yet Published in the U.S. 2008-01-21
Since I think most readers considering this edition of The Silmarillion are familiar with the book's contents, I am reviewing here the binding, paper, print, et cetera. If you have not read The Silmarillion, and/or have doubts about whether you'll like it enough to invest in a nice hardcover edition, then you probably should start with a paperback copy (with the up-to-date text).
This is certainly the best edition of The Silmarillion so far published in the United States. In the UK, HarperCollins published a 30th anniversary edition in 2007, and a leather/india paper edition in 2001, both of which are marginally higher quality than this one, but both are very difficult to find in the US, and cost three to five times what Amazon charges for this edition. Easton Press also has an edition of The Silmarillion, in full leather with hubbed spine and gilt edges no less, but it is only available as part of a five volume set including The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, at a price of nearly $300. The details:
*The cloth binding is rugged and attractive, coated with a semi-glossy protectant so that it resembles leather somewhat, but without the texture of leather or leatherette. It is a very sturdy sewn signature binding which will survive multiple readings easily, which is particularly appropriate to The Silmarillion, since most of all of Tolkien's major works readers tend to re-read sections over and over, and use the book somewhat like a reference book. The spine is foil stamped in gold, and the stamping is sharp and good looking.
*The paper stock is the same as was used in the 1992 hardcover box set of Lord of the Rings illustrated by Alan Lee (the book's dimensions are the same also). This paper is coated and slightly glossy, and takes ink very well. It also resists permanent staining or marking (dirty fingerprints or other stains easily wipe off with a damp paper towel). The printing itself is dark, clear, and consistent. In the year I've owned this book, even in the humid climate I live in, I have found absolutely NO transference of ink, either from text or the color plates. Given the glossy stock, this is an indicator of very high quality production. The fold out map of Beleriand (and part of Middle-earth) is glued inside the back cover, and is a lovely full color glossy representation, much less prone to tearing than many other maps bound into Tolkien titles.
*As for the Ted Nasmith illustrations, they are quite different in style from Alan Lee (and Nasmith's work's here in oil paint, where Lee's LOTR and Hobbit work has been mostly watercolor or tempera), but beautifully evocative, lush in color, and more "modern" and realistic than Lee's. Like the 1992 (re-issued 2002) boxed-set of LOTR, the illustrations are printed on the obverse (right hand) of the page, and the text continues on the reverse (left hand), so there are no blank page sides, which I think is more attractive. The illustrations are lovely and well complement the text. A few of these plates are new to this edition, and do not appear in the 2001 hardcover of The Silmarillion (ISBN 0618135049; jacket image of elves awaking at Cuivienen). This edition is a larger format than that book, and thus are the illustrations.
Lastly, this edition contains a new (1999) preface by Christopher Tolkien, and the famous 1951 Milton Waldman letter in which Tolkien presents one of the most comprehensive and coherent descriptions and explanations he ever made of his conception of his legendarium. The text is technically "2nd edition, revised," and thus contains a few corrections not in earlier second edition printings. I highly recommend this edition of The Silmarillion for anyone seeking a copy that is both a beautiful addition to one's library, and one which will stand up to years of reading. It is uncommon to find both qualities in one book.
The best publishing of The Silmariliion I've ever seen 2007-10-28
The tales of The Silmarillion were the underlying inspiration and source of J.R.R. Tolkien's imaginative writing; he worked on the book throughout his life but never brought it to a final form. Long preceding in its origins The Lord of the Rings, it is the story of the First Age of Tolkien's world, the ancient drama to which characters in The Lord of the RIngs look back and in which some of them, such as Elrond and Galadriel, took part.
The title Silmarillion is shortened from Quenta Silmarillion, "The History of the Silmarils," the three great jewels created by Feanor, most gifted of the Elves, in which he imprisoned the light of the Two Trees that illumined Valinor, the land of the gods. When Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, destroyed the Trees, that light lived on only in the Silmarils; Morgoth seized them and set them in his crown, guarded in the impenetrable fortress of Angband in the north of Middle-earth. The Silmarillion is the history of the rebellion of Feanor and his people against the gods, their exile in Middle-earth, and their war, hopeless despite all the heroisim of Elves and Men, against the great Enemy.
The book includes several other, shorter works beside The Silmarillion proper. Preceding it are "Ainulindale," the myth of Creation, and "Valaquenta," in which the nature and powers of each of the gods is set forth. After The Silmarillion is "Akallabeth," the story of the downfall of the great island kingdom of Numenor at the end of the Second Age; completing the volume is "Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age," in which the events of The Lord of the Rings are treated in the manner of The Silmarillion.
This new edition of The Silmarillion contains the revised and corrected
"second edition" text and, by way of introduction, a letter written by J.R.R. Tolkien in 1951, which provides a brilliant exposition of his conception of the earlier Ages. It also contains almost fifty full-color illustrations by the artist Ted Nasmith, many of which appear for the first time.
Tolkien's true life work, ultimately unfinished though it is 2007-10-04
In the Tolkien canon, THE SILMARILLION is the most highly contested of all his works. Constructed as a prehistoric history of the Universe, the book has the cultural significance of the Bible in Tolkien's universe. It is Tolkien's primary work, but it's also his most troublesome, in more ways than one. One thing you need to know. In Tolkien scholarship, there are two primary ways to refer to the "Silmarillion". One is the Silmarillion, the legendarium proper, and then the 1977 SILMARILLION, which may or may not be what Tolkien envisioned.
THE SILMARILLION, the book Tolkien spent all of his adult life writing, was, sadly, incomplete when Tolkien died at the age of eighty one in 1973. Naturally, this begs the question why did it take him decades to write the book, and it still be unfinished after all that time? Well, to understand that, you need to understand two things: the scope of the project, and how Tolkien worked.
The scope of the book was a complete imaginary history, a totally self-contained mythology, all written and developed for his home country, England (my home country as well). Imagine the Greek and Roman mythologies, all those myths and gods, developed by one man. Imagine Homer completely inventing all the gods for his stories. Imagine how hard that would be to come up with your own mythological traditions as such. No wonder Tolkien had such a hard time completing the work.
Now, the scope (which is extremely ambitious for any artist) was compounded by how Tolkien worked. First, he was a philologist first and foremost, and so before the stories he invented languages. All of these languages (which would have taken a life-time to develop on their own) had their own history, and are so interlocked with the mythology that you cannot remove them. He developed the main body of legends around these languages. Many features of the central body of legends changed relatively little over the years, but he wrote different versions of them at different times and in different styles. Some of the legends were set in poetry, those in annalistic histories, others in condensed summaries, and others in the more traditional (at least, for modern readers) novel format. A lot of these writings are also unfinished, due to Tolkien's perfectionist tendencies. Christopher Tolkien said that for most of his father's writing there existed a stable tradition from which Tolkien worked from, but there was no such thing as a stable text for the primary legends.
All this is tied to how Tolkien worked. C. S. Lewis famously stated that you did not influence Tolkien, you may as well as try to influence a bandersnatch. Tolkien would either take no notice of your criticism, or else he would start all over from the beginning. And so he did. A lot. Tolkien would reach a certain portion of the draft, be unsatisfied, and began the whole thing over again, while never reaching the end. Or Tolkien would have two copies of the same manuscript, one to be the fair copy and one to be working copy. Well, Tolkien would make conflicting revisions on both copies at separate times. How do you decide his final intent? Good question. These tendencies presented major problems from Christopher Tolkien when he prepared the 1977 SILMARILLION.
Another problem with Tolkien's work also is that toward the end of his life, he began contemplating changing major features of the mythology that stretched back to the earliest versions. A lot of these changes had to do with cosmology, with the sun and moon, and changing Arda (the earth) from a flat-world to a round world. In the original mythology, and the 1977 version, Arda begins as a flat world but is made into a round world. Tolkien contemplated other major changes that would have totally changed much of the more distinguishable features of the mythology, stable features present from the very beginning. Consult "Myths Transformed" in MORGOTH'S RING, Vol. 10 of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH for more information.
Then we have the problem of THE LORD OF THE RINGS. Tolkien was tantalizing close to some sort of final version of the work in the late 1930s (indeed, the 1937 version of the "Quenta Silmarillion" is the only complete version he ever made of the primary work and which is heavily used in the 1977 SILMARILLION). Then, due to publisher demand, Tolkien began working on his masterpiece for the next fourteen years, leaving the "Silmarillion" legendarium completely untouched for over a decade. When Tolkien picked up the Silmarillion again, he now had to account for LOTR and somehow incorporate that major work into the mythology. Tolkien did a lot of work on the legendarium after the completion of LOTR, but this work was plagued with uncertainty and contemplation of radical rewriting.
And in the last years of his life, Tolkien also began moving away from strict narrative and began working extensively on theological matters, essays on Elvish culture and lingustics, and other matters not tied to the actual narrative of the main storyline.
So when Tolkien died in 1973, he left his son Christopher in quite the predicament. Decades of writng, much if it unfinished, with a staggering palimpsest of manuscripts from which to draw from would be daunting to anyone. As literary executor, he had to come up with a publishable version of the work (as clearly that was his father's wishes, and Christopher was the man for the job, being most acquainted with the work). So, in four years, with the assistance of Guy Gavriel Kay, he cobbled together a self-contained narrative, largely compatible with the Hobbit cycle. Due to Tolkien's tendency to not finish drafts, some of the narrative in the last portion of the work had not been touched by Tolkien in literally decades (The Fall of Gondolin never got a complete version other than the 1916 Lost Tales story). Thingol and Melian presented thorny problems, especially the Girdle of Melian (her magical protection around Doriath). Christopher and Kay constructed the chapter dealing with the ruin of Doriath from scratch, with no corresponding writing in Tolkien's own work.
Yet another major issue was, due to getting a version of the book published as soon as possible, Christopher rushed through much of material, and did not have access to all of his father's manuscripts, some of which had been sold off. While he always used post LOTR material as often as possible, Christopher was as many times incorrect as not when guessing his father's intentions for the work. In the ensuing twelve volumes of THE HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH, where he had years to get to know the manuscripts, Christopher examines more closely his father's works, and there is much in those twelve volumes that were Tolkien's final intention for the work, but did not make it into the published version. Christopher has stated, given time, he may have produced a much different version than the one published. But he is now retired and will not revise the book (much of which would have to be wholesale).
That's quite a bit of history, and ultimately all that history may bog potential readers down in their journey into THE SILMARILLION. For all of its imperfections, its unfinished nature, the endless debates on how much the 1977 version is what Tolkien really intended, the book is powerful mythology. The reading is dry, and the names are jawcracking trying to pronounce. While it's hard to keep track of the multitude of characters and all the permutations and migrations of the three main Elven tribes, there are unforgettable images in the book, and beautiful passages of despair and hope.
While the work is not the most accessible for modern readers, for those who persist you can see why Tolkien really did regard this as his life work, or, as Tom Shippey says, "the work of his heart". And what a mighty work it is, despite its unfinished nature.
Tolkien is the Man! 2007-09-16
I really do believe that to truly appreciate the stories of The Hobbit as well as the Lord of the Rings Trilogy, one must read The Simarillion. The breadth and scope of Tolkien's creativity truly begins to be seen within the Simarillion. I heard or read somewhere that Tolkien thought of his writings and such as a creation within creation, that he was most glorifying God when he was being as creative as possible, in effect creating a world just as God had.
Well, I think the fact that any man could have such breadth of vision and conceptualization as is evident in the Simarillion, that fact in and of itself, brings glory to God. And I think the fact that Tolkien painted the unfolding history of his world in the colors of not only love, trust and triumph (as well as many other 'virtues'), but greed, selfishness, pride, and many more aspects of a fallen nature is reflective of the Bible in many respects, for Tolkien does not seem to be trying to tell us a story as we want to hear it, but rather just acting as a purveyor of events that were.
At times I found myself dragging through sections, through certain stories. And at other points I found myself reading pages breathlessly, impatient to know and experience what was to come next. But, overall, I found that my pace reading this book was akin to the pace I take reading through a non-fiction book - Tolkien's writing is so rich, and his style so strong that I couldn't just consume it as I do other non-fiction works.
So do I recommend it? Absolutely - but don't expect a Robert Jordan, Stephen Lawhead, Anne McCaffrey or the like. Tolkien's books have been proven by time, not by the bestsellers list. This is different - this is what most fantasy writers of the present are striving to approach.
Silmarillion 2007-09-16
This is a great book, I have read it a long time ago and decided to do so again, so I bought this hardcover version, which is very nice. If only all the "real" history books were so interesting...
His masterwork 2007-09-16
It took me most of my life to really appreciate Tolkien's work (I'm slow I guess). And I have really come love and cherish LOTR. I know of nothing that comes even close to it in so many ways... except for the Silmarillion.
The scope and vision of the Silmarillion is so gigantic that if it had not ended before the events described in LOTR, but had included them in a form similar to the rest of the book, as (Middle-)Earth-shaking as they were, they probably would have been covered in a few pages... a chapter at most. Events of the scope and magnitude of LOTR occur over and over in the Silmarillion. It does not cover them all with the detail of LOTR, but the stories are profound and rich and moving. The Silmarillion must have been largely complete in Tolkien's mind when he wrote LOTR because the events of the Silmarillion during ages and centuries before LOTR profoundly (and consistently) influence not only the character and values of most of the characters, but almost every word and action they take. It is as though LOTR was a single delicious fruit and the Silmarillion was the fruit-laden tree which bore it.
Taking on the Silmarillion is a commitment. But for those who found LOTR worthwhile, I think they will find the Silmarillion at least equally worthwhile.
I agree with others who warn readers against starting with the Silmarillion even though it comes first chronologically.
It probably is best to start with the Hobbit, even though it was written with different voice and aimed at a different audience than the other works. Context-wise, it probably is the best place to start.
It is probably best to read LOTR next and the Silmarillion last... but having read the Silmarillion, you'll probably want to go back and read LOTR again, equipped with the enriched perspective you will have...
