The last great literary work of legendary fantasy author J.R.R. Tolkien, The Children Of Húrin, was released by Harper Collins last week around the world. As with many in the nerdly community where Tolkien is held in the same regard as, I dunno, Jesus, I was anxious to read the book but also somewhat hesitant. The memory of failed attempts at scrabbling through Tolkien's The Silmarillion still plagued my mind as surely as the dark hand of Morgoth twisted the fate of Túrin himself. But as you may surmise from this last Húrin-derived comment, the new tome, edited together from Tolkien manuscripts by his son Christopher, is indeed worthy.

The story centres around a region of the vast continent known as Middle-Earth that is now sunken beneath the waves (including the ancient city of Gondolin, where many of the magic weapons used by the Heroes of the Ring were forged). This region, dominated by elves but also peppered with human kingdoms, lies in a constant state of war between the goodly races and the orcs, dragons and wicked humans who worship the evil deity Morgoth. To put things in perspective, Sauron, the big bad evil eye that nearly destroyed the world in the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, was a servant of Morgoth.

This story is very nearly a post-apocalyptic tale, wherein the forces of evil are ascendant and only a few hidden elven kingdoms and bands of humans stand against the dark tide of Morgoth's forces. The titular Húrin is a human king who defies the big bad Morgoth and has his family cursed by the dark one. The main character is his son, Túrin, who attempts to stand against Morgoth, but continues making rash decisions that result in unfortunate instances ranging from kingdoms being destroyed by dragons to accidental incest of Shakespearean proportions. He is a tragic hero who escapes his curse, but I think we all know how these kinds of stories end for tragic heroes, yes?

Parents be warned, this is a dark, often frightening tale filled with death and deceit. But for more mature readers, The Children Of Húrin is a perfect prequel to the latter day tales of Tolkien made so famous by Peter Jackson's magnificent trilogy. It spares us the meandering elf-songs or long winded dissertations in Sindarin, but pulls back the veil to reveal insight into the source of the great sadness haunting the elven people in later years, presents the role of dragons in Middle Earth and of course, satiates the vast army of Tolkien fans while we wait to hear whether or not Sam Raimi will be directing The Hobbit! Those of us not playing that new LOTR MMORPG that is!

Win a copy of The Children Of Húrin.