Imperial Purple

J.J.R. Tolkien
Edited by Christopher Tolkien
Illustrated by Alan Lee
The Children of Húrin
HarperCollins 2008

I have literally (and I mean ‘literally’ literally) lost track of the number of times I have read The Lord of the Rings. It is a towering work of fiction. On the other hand, I have never been a particular fan of his extensive posthumous work – what a friend of mine refers to disparagingly as ‘Tolkien’s Laundry Lists’.

He is being unfair but there is sometimes the feeling that every bit of paper that the good Professor ever scribbled on must have been published somewhere. I remember the dismay with which I discovered that Frodo originally suffered under the name Bingo. Tolkien rightly rejected this idea – probably after hearing his children singing B-I-N-G-O and Bingo was his name, O. This is the sort of thing an author should be entitled to keep secret – it is a cruel thing to publish early drafts.

Having got that off my chest, I can say that The Children of Húrin is a fish of very different fettle. According to Christopher Tolkien’s editorial notes this is a story that his father worked on for a long time, both before and after The Lord of the Rings. Although he never completed it to his satisfaction he nevertheless left many complete sections and drafts of other sections. His son has done a good job of tying these manuscripts together into a coherent narrative.

The story concerns, as you might expect, Húrin’s children – mainly his son Túrin but also his daughter Nienor. Húrin, if I have understood the genealogical chart at the back correctly, is the great, great grand-uncle of Elrond Halfelven. It is set during the First Age within the context of the wars against Morgoth. It is epic in tone and full of words like ‘foreboding’, ‘doom’ and ‘fell’.

Túrin is the quintessential hero – sturdy, tall, a great warrior and a leader of men (and elves). He also has a streak of darkness and hubris which, in a tragedy which might come from Shakespeare or Euripides, ultimately drags him to his doom.

Although we see a fair bit of fighting in the book, the wars are peripheral to the main story. We do see the fall of the elven stronghold of Nargothrond to the dragon Glaurung. But our main focus is that much of the blame for the fall belongs to Túrin and his warrior pride which builds a bridge across the defending chasm so that his army can easily ride out. He neglects to consider that the bridge might also be used by enemies going the other way.

Heroically, Túrin eventually slays Glaurung but the dragon, with his dying words, tells Túrin that he has unknowingly married his own sister and she is pregnant by him. Euripidean indeed.

It is not a light read but it is a quality one. This is Tolkien at his most majestic, full of rolling phrases and poetic sentences. His son has done good work in bringing this one to light.

Terry Pratchett
Nation
Doubleday 2008

Terry Pratchett has achieved such a reputation now that his latest book – Nation – does not even have any blurb. It is assumed that you will buy it just because it is by Pratchett, never mind what it is about.

Well, it worked for me. I bought it and did not regret doing so. It is one of Pratchett’s best books to date.

The setting is, more or less, our world during the Victorian era on a small Pacific island. Its inhabitants refer to it simply as The Nation. Their idyllic existence is brought to an abrupt conclusion by the arrival of an enormous tidal wave. The only survivor is Mau, a boy on the edge of manhood, who is at sea when the wave arrives.

A European ship, the Sweet Judy, is wrecked on the island at the same time and here too there is only one survivor – a young girl named Ermintrude who prefers, quite reasonably, to be known as Daphne. She is also 139th in line to the throne of England. As her ghastly grandmother once informed her "it only needs one hundred and thirty-eight people to die and your father will be King!"

What we have is a wise and charming coming-of-age story. Mau and Daphne must learn to cope with language, a steady trickle of refugees from other islands, and the distant but worrying threat of the Raiders. Mau must come to terms with the failure of his gods – what good were they when they let the entire population be wiped out? His struggle with belief is one of the strong elements of the book.

The point of view of the book switches between Mau and Daphne but very smoothly, without the need for specific chapters for each. We get a different world view in each case and can see the same events from two completely different perspectives. It is the work of a clever and mature writer.

I’m not going to say any more about the story elements. You will find them out for yourself when you read the book and I don’t want to ruin it for you.

If, by some chance, you fail to read Nation you are missing out on something very special.