bluesoaplime t1_jd24k5l wrote on March 21, 2023 at 8:16 AM

I'm reading the Silmarillion rn and I think it's great it too! It's so epic and really fleshes out everything.

I stopped reading Two Towers half way through and never finished the trilogy, but decided to give Silmarillion a go anyway and I love it way more - it's really captured my imagination.

I feel like the writing also isn't as difficult as people say. It isn't necessarily easy but I was expecting waaay worse given the reviews on it's style.

Makes me want to try to read the trilogy again when I finish.

JoltinJoeDimaggio OP t1_jd30gkx wrote on March 21, 2023 at 2:01 PM

I can easily see how some people might prefer the Silmarillion to the LOTR. Once you read the Sil you realize that LOTR only covers a fraction of time and that so many stories come before it. The Sil is also a lot grittier and darker, if you haven’t gotten to Turin’s story yet then buckle up

forman98 t1_jd31qtw wrote on March 21, 2023 at 2:10 PM

I first read the Hobbit and LoTR when the LoTR movies came out back in the day. I enjoyed it quite a bit but it was tough. I decided to reread them a couple years ago and got completely hooked. What helped, though, was often pausing my reads to watch some youtube videos about some part of the book I was in. Most youtube videos on Middle Earth are pulling from the Silmarillion and his other works. This gave everything a much greater depth, knowing a rough history of each part of the book. It no longer seemed like some adventure story, it seemed like an active tale taking place in a world extremely steeped in history. With timelines of hundreds of thousands of years you get a real sense of scale of LoTR. I've since read the Silmarillion.

My favorite aspect of it all was if you look at LoTR as "modern day" when most regular people no longer believe in magic or even know if the old tales they grew up with are actually true. These Hobbits are quite like that, but are then thrust into this story where this one ring that was lost like 3000 years ago is actually real and the being that created it is alive and wants it back. The LoTR is sort of the final epic tale of Middle Earth. The characters often allude to the other epic tales like Beren and Luthien, Fingolfin vs Morgoth, etc, but don't realize they are in one of these tales until about halfway through the journey.

You should definitely go back and read the series once you've finished the Silmarillion.

SevenBushes t1_jd7unt2 wrote on March 22, 2023 at 1:50 PM

I read about the gap in time between events and thought “wow that’s really long” but never framed it the way you just said regarding the “modern day” and let me say thank you for drawing that comparison. From our perspective it’d be as if some ancient Egyptian or Roman king turned out to be living underground and all of a sudden wanted his artifacts back - really changes my perception of the outlook the characters would have had during their adventures!