Bwa ha haa!
“The merest accident of microgeography meant that the first man to hear the voice of Om, and who gave Om his view of humans, was a shepherd and not a goatherd. They have quite different ways of looking at the world, and the whole of history might have been different. For sheep are stupid and have to be driven. But goats are intelligent and need to be led.”
—PTerry
From one goat to another!
He’ll get his revenge eventually.
checks watch for Dagor Dagorath
A pity JRRT removed that prophecy from later revisions. Though I don’t believe he’d disgarded the idea completely.
Well I don’t believe that there is any way to end the Song that doesn’t involve Turin whaling the living fuck out of Morgoth, but that’s probably just me.
Seen this? Upper right hand.. Hope it works in the States.
Sure there is. Judging by the only other example of a major baddie getting offed in combat per prophetical prediction in LOTR, Turin could, say, stab him in the leg from behind with a magically “poisoned” blade.
Very true. A straight narrative does a lot for having character’s actions make sense.
Still, I would happily chuck it out the Door of Night (along with Ainulindalë, The Lays of Beleriand, and a couple of chapters of LOTR) if it meant I could have a complete Fall of Gondolin.
If Children of Hurin made you feel better, it didn’t work.
(haven’t gotten mine yet; I’ll probably have an Amazon gift certificate or two to burn next week)
Oh man, that is so true! Ondolindë! The Rock of the Music of Water. The version of the Fall of Gondolin that JRRT wrote in the 1920’s, complete with mechanical dragons and a precocious Eärendil (Which appeared in HOMES) really really needed updating.
And the updated version, ending with Tuor’s arrival at the Hidden City, was soooo tantalizing.
I would miss Ainulindalë, though. Let’s not chuck that one quite so far.
Of course it did! Before Non-Itching Hurin, how could a reader easily satisfy their inflamed curiosity? The elements of the tale were scattered haphazardly throughout numerous published sources, in discontinuous chapters, footnotes, and tracts. **Non-Itching Hurin ** provides a single coherent narrative, soothing inflammation and alleviating Hurinary tract discomfort.
(Okay, so I haven’t read mine all the way through yet either. But I have it! And I feel better already.)
Is there a difference between the two editions on Amazon other than one is fancier?
The one or two scenes of Gollum’s being close to achieving momentary “recovery” from the effects of the One ring in The Two Towers has always made me wonder how interesting it might be to read of some kind of first person account of the descent into possession for one of the Nazgul.
As described in The Silmarillion: Those who used the Nine Rings became mighty in their day, kings, sorcerers, and warriors of old. They obtained glory and great wealth, yet it turned to their undoing. They had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them. They could walk, if they would, unseen by all eyes in this world beneath the sun, and they could see things in worlds invisible to mortal men; but too often they beheld only the phantoms and delusions of Sauron. And one by one, sooner or later, according to their native strength and to the good or evil of their wills in the beginning, they fell under the thralldom of the ring that they bore and of the domination of the One which was Sauron’s.
So at least a few of them were “good” men who took longer to succumb, and not simply the most powerful “Black Numenoreans” as might otherwise have been assumed.
Total aside: I was amused by this footnote from Wikipedia: Nâzgul is a girl’s name of Persian origin, adopted in various Middle-eastern languages, meaning “Shy rose” or “delicate flower”.. It is to laugh.
I completed the book this morning. I really enjoyed it. I think it was put together very well and a very quick read. Well done Mr. Tolkien.
Nothing new of course, just a much better package.
Jim