Although for some newspaper insiders the biggest debate around The Children of Hùrin was whether or not to bother with the accent, there are of course millions of hyper-keen Tolkien fans out there desperate to get their hands on the great man’s Lord of the Rings prequel. Assembled from his old manuscripts by his son, it faced criticisms of cashing in before it was even published. But it was taken wholly seriously by the broadsheet reviewers.

Kelly Grover in the Observer is forgiving of any little questions over authorial authenticity, saying: “For those who assert that even such well-intentioned tinkering amounts to little less than literary forgery, only an arid academic edition of the extant texts would have been acceptable. But for those in search of a soulful, seamless read the rehabilitation of this sober tale will be gratefully received.”

Philip Hensher in The Daily Telegraph, too, can see flaws, many flaws in the book and in Tolkien in general. But he, too, is prepared to forgive all: “There are almost too many reasons to detest this new Tolkien confection. His prose hasn't improved beyond the grave. It is still that joke Edwardian-Biblical with made-up irregular past tenses ("it would cleave all earth-dolven iron'') and absurd plurals - we are spared "waives'', but only just. . . . There are plenty of things to be said against Tolkien, but there seems little point now in denying the fact that he is, simply, part of English literature.”

The book is far darker (more evil, more twistedly sexual) than the Tolkien works previously published. Nicholas Lezard in The Guardian warns readers of this, saying: “So there's something very pagan about Tolkien's world, and it gets more pagan as we go further back. The Children of Hùrin is practically Wagnerian. It has a lone, brooding hero, a supremely malicious dragon, a near-magical helmet, a long-standing curse, a dwarf of ambiguous moral character called Mim and - the clincher, this - incest. Which is here a disaster and not, as in Wagner, a two-fingers-to-fate passion.”

Brian Appleyard in the Sunday Times had trouble finishing the Lord of the Rings because of Tolkien’s heavy prose, but seems to prefer this book to Tolkien’s other works. With eyebrow-raising seriousness he says: “an intense and very grown-up manner saves it from the failings of his other works. The prose is still more gesture than depth, but there is a real feeling of high seriousness. It is not a children's story like The Hobbit, and it is much darker than The Lord of the Rings. This is Tolkien in Wagnerian mode. Indeed, it may be possible to say that it is echt Tolkien.”

It was in the blogs, predictably that the connoisseurs’ criticisms were raised, despite overall approval. Dave Arney liked the book’s darkness: “The doomed hero makes for the most interesting. He cannot find a happy ending, and no decision that he makes will save him from his fate. Instead it is the actions that he takes, and the choices that he makes that define his doomed existence.” However, “If I have one piece of criticism, it is only that the titles of the chapters give away much of the plot. Like other tragedies, we know that most of the characters must die, however, we don’t know when. Thus having the chapter titled, The Death of …, takes a little bit of mystery out of the story. I think I would have preferred to let the foreshadowing of Tolkien’s writing give the sense of impending doom.”

From Livejournal came appreciation but also bemusement: “The only thing that really bothered me about the tale was the frequency with which people changed their names. I recognize that doing so is part of the Middle-Earth culture and I'm certainly supportive of the idea that identities are fluid, but the protagonist, Turin, goes by four or five names through the novel.”

Satish in Bangalore also had doubts: “It is written in a bit archaic style and some how the details and complete personality sketches that used to be hallmark of Lord of the Rings is not present in this book. It is more dark and it is almost an even match between the good and evil. The evil wins or almost wins. The story takes place in the First Age of Men when men and elves were living relativily in close quarters and dwarfs were almost not to be seen. Even the dwarves that come in the story are ill at heart.”

However, considering that this was a rather inauspicious book, cobbled together from old manuscripts, a vast departure from the Lord of the Rings, the reception has been good. People are intrigued rather than appalled at the depth and darkness of Tolkien’s imagination and its impressive presence on the bestsellers’ charts demonstrates that there are plenty more of you out there enjoying it.

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