The Children of Húrin

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Physical God: Melian and Morgoth are angelic, god-like beings who take physical form in Middle-Earth. Black-and-Grey Morality: Túrin tries his best to be a great hero but is constantly hounded by his temper and inflexible moral views, not to mention having a convicted rapist as his second in command. The first of the poems "the Lay of the Children of Húrin", his early but most sustained work in the ancient English meter, intended to narrate on a grand scale the tragedy of Turin Turambar. The Austrian band Summoning, known for its Tolkien-themed lyrics, released a song titled " Menegroth" which is a setting of part of the Lay of Leithian. Kelly Grovier from The Observer, on the other hand, stated that it "will please all but the most puritanical of his fans", referring to the scepticism about Christopher Tolkien's involvement.

In the end, The Hero kills The (literal) Dragon, ridding the world of one of the greatest evils it has ever seen. The book was released on 17 April, 2007 by Houghton Mifflin in the United States, and by HarperCollins in the United Kingdom. And did it really speak to Túrin before he killed himself, or was he just hallucinating from extreme emotional distress? Húrin tells him to go back to Hell, and Morgoth finds out that his captive cannot be bribed, tricked, tortured or threatened into betraying the Elves.He suggests that Tolkien chose to favour Turgon at the expense of Maeglin, because Turgon was a direct ancestor of Elrond and therefore had to be spared the blame for the fall of Gondolin. Túrin accidentally causes the death of the King's counsellor Saeros, who attempts to jump a ravine while fleeing a wrothful Túrin. The remainder of the plot follows Húrin's struggling son Túrin and daughter Niënor as the curse winds its way toward a terrible conclusion.

An audiobook edition was recorded by Christopher Tolkien (preface, introduction) and Christopher Lee (text). For those who want to know even more about the tale I will give a brief summary and give a guide how to read the story (if you cannot wait for the new completed version of The Narn).

The Tolkien scholar Nicholas Birns commented that the book solves a longstanding problem, that Tolkien's Middle-earth writing is "really one giant work", whereas to a publisher, it consists of one complete novel, one children's book, and an enormous mass of background materials, some of them more or less consisting of stories. Manthor too is killed; he asks Húrin: "Was not this your true errand, Man of the North: to bring ruin upon us to weigh against thine own? The House of Bëor rules over the land of Ladros, the Folk of Haleth retreat to the forest of Brethil, and the lordship of Dor-lómin is granted to the House of Hador. In the book Christopher Tolkien mentions a third Túrin poem, this time in rhyming couplets and incomplete.