There is always another sequel. (Sigh.) I blame Douglas Adams for his "increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy"

Wikipedia article (with cover art): The Children of Húrin.

Statement about the book by the Tolkien Estate.

There is always another sequel prequel.

Given that description on WikiPedia, Rings fans had best avoid reading Tik-Tok of Oz.

Slightly tangential: have any of you read The Worm Ouroboros by E.R. Eddison? It enjoyed a bit of reflected popularity during the first big Tolkien revival in the 60s, but has been more out of print than in here in the States since then. Brilliant epic fantasy, though some complain that is Eddison prolix. I find his wordiness really works for the kind of grandiose story he was telling. I wish they'd find more of his corpse to pick over like they have with Tolkien (20+ posthumous publications since the 70s).

Eddison, the Pynchon of fantasy worlds. Great themes obscured by a pathological need to maximize word count. Eddison works best, imo, when read aloud by someone with a deep understanding of each passage.

Here's the first watercolo(u)r by Lee that's been released, the euphoniously titled Beleg Cúthalion Departs Menegroth."

I really enjoy Lee's artwork. It's such the antithesis of the usual ultrashiny high-contrast swords-and-muscles fantasy art.

There is always another sequel

In this case, prequel - and how. It's sort of like releasing a follow-on movie to Gettysburg entitled Pharsalus.

Is there any official Middle Earth fan fiction out there? Like there is for Star Wars? I haven't seen it, if so. I think that's how I'll regard this book, and I think that will make it just fine. After all, his son's a fan, to be sure.

Looks like it's 320 pages. (And probably with generous typesetting, to make it seem even that long.)

I can't convince myself this is "real Tolkien," no matter what HarperCollins and Tolkien's estate and Christopher Tolkien say. And I never was able to get through The Silmarillion, so if this is more of the same then I will probably pass.

I do like Alan Lee's watercolors, though--I have the edition of The Lord of the Rings that was released to celebrate Tolkien's 100th birthday, the first one to have the Lee color plates. (After the release of the films and all the subsequent movie tie-in editions there's nothing special about it, though it's interesting to see how many of Jackson's compositions ended up duplicating the compositions of those plates.)

As for Eddison--I haven't read The Worm Ouroboros, but I have read the Zimiamvia trilogy, which I think is also out of print in the US. I enjoyed it, but it took a while for me to get through it.

I'll bet it's not as dull as God Emperor of Húrin is going to be.

The problem with much of The Silmarillion is that it's not really storytelling of the same sort as Lord of the Rings; it's more of a synopsis. I've read some other posthumous publications (Unfinished Tales is what springs to mind) which delved more deeply into the ground-level stories Tolkien had written, and those were much more enjoyable. I am hoping this new book is more like that.

I have always felt that The Silmarillion is like the Bible for the Middle Earth world, with its bad narrative and its overly complex (and boring) genealogy that covers thousands of years.

The Silmarillion is more like, oh, Paradise Lost than the Bible. But Memo's analogy is one I've used, too.

I read quite a few of the earliest Unfinished Tales volumes, and I rather liked them in the sense that they were often more annotation than regurgitation. That is, they provided fascinating insight into Tolkien's mind and the objectives he had for his work.

This, though, I'm not sure about.

I think The Silm is probably one of my three favorite books and also one of my three most-read books. :)