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anahorish16 's review for:
The Silmarillion
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Predictably, it took ages before I finished The Silmarillion, but it is absolutely worth the effort. It's a very dense, biblical history, covering thousands of years and dozens of characters. The names will confuse you, the family trees will frustrate you, and you will be flipping back and forth between the text and the index of names, maps and family trees because you keep forgetting who was who and where on Arda they are now. But you will enjoy a deeper understanding of the peoples of Middle-earth, their histories, their relationships with each other, and so much else that informs the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. The places of Beleriand and Númenor are magical, the stories of Thingol and Melian, and Beren and Lúthien beautiful--but my God, the suffering, the death. The story of Arda is not a happy one. There is astounding beauty, but astounding heartbreak, too.