Beren and Lúthien

Name: Beren and Lúthien
ISBN: 9780008214227

by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, ʻImanuʼel Loṭem · first published 2017

17mentions

3recommended by

16HN commenters

2017–2025first – last mentioned

19% recommend69% neutral13% critical

Fiction & Literature Fantasy

The New York Times Bestseller J.R.R. Tolkien's Beren And Lúthien is one of the three 'Great Tales' of the Elder Days. The epic tale of Beren and Lúthien became an essential element in the evolution of The Silmarillion, the myths and legends of Tolkien's First Age of the World. Always key to the story is the fate that shadowed their love: Beren was a mortal man, Lúthien an immortal Elf. Her father, a great Elvish lord, imposed on Beren an impossible task before he might wed Lúthien: to rob the greatest of all evil beings, Melkor, of a Silmaril. Painstakingly restored from Tolkien's man

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What Hacker News says

garou · Jun 1, 2017 · Recommends

I loved to read this story on Silmarillion. It is a fantasy story about love but still being deeply inspired by Tolkien feelings from his wife. I did not knew about it when was reading and how they (Beren and Lúthien) started loving one another can be a bit fantastic but all their adventure and how they 'are' with themselves feels real and veritable.
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
db48x · Sep 20, 2022 · Recommends

…organized) records of how his stories evolved over time. Christopher Tolkien later published stories from those notes, but also successive versions of the same story from different stages of it's development. "Beren and Luthien" is especially fun because you can see Tolkien's mistakes, such as characters like "the appalling Tevildo", Prince of Cats who captures Beren in the earliest surviving draft.
on “You can watch how much I rewrite here” ↗
koolba · Nov 13, 2017 · Recommends

The Silmarillion is by far my favorite book in that set. The story of Beren and Luthien alone would make a fantastic series. I hope that's the route they go as well.
on “Amazon to Adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s Globally Renowned Fantasy Novels” ↗
subsubzero · Jul 5, 2022 · Mentions

…gigantic flop for amazon. The story looks like its not even based on anything Tolkien written, which is beyond me given there are so many interesting tales Tolkien wrote that have not seen the screen(Beren and Luthien, the fall of Numenor, the silmarils and Elvish wars of the 1st age). And like the parent above mentioned it is alarming that the actors are all unheard of and there are no connections to the successful…
on “Amazon spending $465M on season 1 of The Lord of the Rings series” ↗
nextaccountic · Jun 23, 2022 · Mentions

This is a misunderstanding. Firstly, Christopher published tons of material after the Silmarillion: the whole History of Middle Earth series, plus Unfinished Tales, Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The fall of Gondolin, and some other books. But more importantly, JRR Tolkien intended to publish the Silmarillion as an actual book with a canon narrative, just like Lord of the Rings, but he die
on “New Tolkien book, The Fall of Númenor, to be published” ↗
quake · Apr 10, 2018 · Mentions

…exceptionally consistent. Considering the bulk of all work put out was done by JRR, with Christopher Tolkien doing editing passes during compilation. For instance, the Children of Hurin and The Lay of Beren and Luthien were described in LOTR and the Silmarillion, but were not included largely due to length and incompleteness (the Silmarillion is really just a Cliff's Notes version of the full Legendarium, allegedly).…
on “Third Tolkien Trilogy, THE FALL OF GONDOLIN to Publish on August 30” ↗
Steuard · Jun 1, 2017 · Mentions

Tolkien's writings have been one of my chief hobbies for years (http://tolkien.slimy.com/), so I've been really curious about what this new book would be and how it would be received. Having read a fair bit about it and skimmed through the 30-ish pages available for preview on Amazon... I'm still not sure. To explain that, I'll start with some background. The previously available books by Tolkien
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
ctdonath · Jun 1, 2017 · Mentions

Now available on iBooks: Beren and Lúthien by J. R. R. Tolkien & Christopher Tolkien https://itun.es/us/knBOfb.l
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
zipwitch · Jun 1, 2017 · Mentions

…to tinker or re-write rather than producing a single final draft. (That's intended only as an observation, not a criticism. I sympathize with the tendency.) So for the stories he really liked (of which Beren and Luthien is certainly one) there's a lot of material. I'd hope for a completed poetic version, but as a life-long Tolkien fan, I'll be buying it regardless.
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
Mediterraneo10 · Aug 7, 2017 · Mentions

Not so. The material in "Unfinished Tales" was known since at least immediately after Tolkien's death, but publication was delayed for years until "The Silmarillion" had been published and allowed to soak up bestseller attention for a while first. The same is true of "The Tale of Beren and Lúthien", which Christopher Tolkien was aware of all those years since his father's death, but it was decided
on “Maurice Sendak Picture Book Discovered” ↗
valarauca1 · Jun 1, 2017 · Mentions

…narrative focus. Reading the Silmarilion cover to cover is like reading the Bible cover to cover you won't enjoy it. CT did a good job with Children of Hurin. The more developed stories (Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, and The Fall of Grondlin) were going to be stand alone novels with several drafts finished before JRR's death. Having read the Silmarillion you should recognize these stores spanned several chapters…
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
hashfyre · May 14, 2018 · Mentions

…Old English Poems. Norse: - The Poetic Edda - Prose Edda - Beowulf - Volsung Saga Middle English: - Pearle, (The concept of The Ring being "My Precious") Welsh: - Culhwch and Olwen, inspired Beren and Luthien (Silmarillion) - Red Book of Herghest (Welsh Vellum) directly inspired Red Book of Westmarch Finnish: - Kalevala (Story of Kullervo) inspired Children of Hurin (Silmarillion) German: - Nibelungen…
on “Tolkien Expressed a “Heartfelt Loathing” for Walt Disney” ↗
sevensor · Jun 1, 2017 · Critical

…that was published decades ago. The Tolkein literary estate is a money machine -- they've already published pretty much anything Tolkein ever wrote, no matter how disjointed or fragmentary. The tale of Beren and Luthien is well-known and memorable, and all the bits of it are in other books already.
on “JRR Tolkien book Beren and Lúthien published after 100 years” ↗
trm42 · Apr 10, 2018 · Critical

…of Middle-Earth series compiled by Christopher. I have to say I was disappointed in the Children of Hurin as it was once again repeating the same story with slight variations. After that I skipped the Beren and Luthien and will skip the new one as well. But my view may be distorted by the HoME series as they were full of different versions of the same stories.
on “Third Tolkien Trilogy, THE FALL OF GONDOLIN to Publish on August 30” ↗
elihu · Sep 6, 2022 · Mentions

…who's going to be important later. The second time through you at least know who the main characters are and what decisions are important. Some parts are more like a traditional narrative: the story of Beren and Luthien, and Turin Turumbar. If you didn't find it enjoyable to read before you might not change your mind at a second reading, but if it really was a long time ago it's possible your perspective may be different.
on “Amazon putting a three-day pause on reviews for Rings of Power” ↗