Thread by @IMAO_

Time for me to rant about The Silmarillion. I thought “hey, this will be some neat background stories that add color to the The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.” I was wrong on so many levels.

First of all, it’s not stories. It reminded me most of early parts of Genesis, but that’s overselling it. It’s more like J.R.R. Tolkien wrote Wikipedia-level plot summaries of stories only he ever read.

There’s barely any description of anyone or anything. A person that’s been mentioned for a hundred pages will die with the sentence “he was slain.”

The Silmarillion is also a constant vomit of names you have no idea how to pronounce and have no idea how to keep track of.

Example sentence:

“There was small love between the Edain and the Easterlings, and they met seldom; for the newcomers abode long in East Beleriand, but Hador’s folk were shut in Hithlum, and Bëor’s house was wellnigh destroyed.”

You’re constantly like “Have I seen these names before, or are these new ones?” It’s impossible to follow unless you keep a notebook with you and keep referring back to it. There are thousands of names of people, places, factions.

Also, important people tend to have multiple names for some reason, which Tolkien moves between at reckless abandon just to make things more confusing. At times, this seemed like an Andy Kaufman-esque joke on me.

Also, Tolkien doesn’t like commas for some reason, which means you’ll confusingly have two made up names jammed together and mistakenly thing they’re one name.

“with the hilt-shard of Narsil Isildur cut the Ruling Ring from the hand of Sauron”

And that was a bad example sentence, because that involves things you’ve heard of and care about if you’ve read Lord of the Rings. 90% of what’s in the book has no direct bearing on anything from Lord of the Rings.

The main story is about these powerful rocks or something called the Silmarils made from some powerful pre-elf. Then Morgoth (also Melkor, because confusing), the Satan of Middle Earth, takes those rocks. Eventually he is defeated when everyone decides to defeat him.

I’m making this sound way more interesting than it is.

You do get a little bit more background on Sauron, but not much. Early on he decided to follow Morgoth because he... wanted to be evil, I guess. You don’t get really any color on that.

In fact, you get no more background details about anything you would actually care about. The very last part give a bit more details on the rings and the One Ring, but not much.

For instance, I was curious about the hobbits and how they ended up in their peaceful, isolated existence. Hobbits are literally mentioned on just one page. “There were hobbits. No one paid attention to them. Eventually one of them got the One Ring.” That’s it. That’s all you get

Maybe more details on wizards like Gandalf and what’s their deal? Nope. Last ten pages it just says wizards appeared for some reason and were kind of powerful. No more details.

But if you wants hundreds of pages of mechanical description of the not very relevant adventures of Elrond’s great grandfather surrounded in a sea of names you can’t pronounce, The Silmarillion has you covered.

So, just for Tolkien super fans. Strangely, I now want to reread it because I think I’ll understand it better the second time.