The pandemic, subsequent government precautions set in place to aid the containment, the protests going on downtown and all over the nation in support of Black lives due to the recent tragic murder of George Floyd by yet another racist white police officer during a string of racist attacks, assaults, threats and murders going on since 2020 started, reading and listening to Black voices and Black leaders, and living quarantine life in general with dogs, have caused a build-up of book reviews. My apologies.
The Silmarillion is sumptuous in landscape and aesthetic description, and I absolutely enjoyed imagining each intricate character delicately fleeting into the next. The awestruck history of the Kings thrust onto their Sons, some who scorn, others who flee; jealousy of an Enlighted turning into aeons of pulsating Evil, permeating in suble action and slight of thought. Bright jeweled lives lived and lives ended, adorned with archaic adjectives (of course; this is Tolkien my friends) seemed to thread each “chapter” of the book to the next, as well as dark wails of admonishment, for desecrating the only virtues Consciousness brings: hope, and love.
Delicious choice of words and ease of flow of story aside, the book does read like a history book in terms of density and the crazy amount of names and individuals involved, but most of the time I found myself pleasantly and sleepily going along the paragraphs, content with accompanying the ever-changing scenes because it read like a collection of short stories that were loosely connected, or at the very least in the same universe, and definitely not like a class test.
If you have time on your hands, and are already wizened to the sometimes wry ways of Science Fiction/Fantasy novels, and (most importantly) are already familiar with Lord of the Rings (if not then please read the first book of the Lord of the Rings series tq), then give it a go! I think dreaming of sword-fighting and falling in love and Gods and Nature in a faraway, mythical land, disconnected from the strife we’re facing daily in reality, would be refreshing.
4.5/5
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