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The Silmarillion is a peculiar book - apparently Tolkien started writing it in WW1, and was still revising it when he died, which is�� nuts. It starts off with a creation story - amazing - and continues into the colonisation and the first contest for Middle Earth - great - before delving microscopically into lineages and individual stories in the Second Age. Some of these are great, but a lot of the detail in this second “act�� really sizzled my brain.

Up until this point, you get some fascinating context for LotR, which followed like, 30(?) years later; the timescales involved in the creation of this whole world are insane and impressive in equal measure. Off-hand references in LotR are deliberately referential to the Silmarillion, e.g. Return of the King mentioning that Shelob is the last of Ungoliant’s children, and it turns out that Ungoliant was a big-ass spider that shat all over two giant shiny trees, so that’s fun. However, the nitty-gritty of who’s related to who when the focus shifts from the Undying Lands to Middle-Earth is simply too hard to follow on first reading (in my opinion).

If you stick with it, though, holy crap - you get rewarded with the Akallabêth, explaining why the world is round for Men and detailing the fall of Númenor, which is incredible. After this, you then get to read about the preceding events of Lord of the Rings up until the destruction of the One Ring, which makes the tough bits more than worth it.

The intro warns you about how difficult a read the Silmarillion is, and I went into it willing to sacrifice the bits I wasn’t able to follow. I ultimately didn’t skip anything, but it’s a struggle at times. It also apparently contradicts itself a lot, but I honestly didn’t notice, as it’s still told from a “translator�� persona by the author.

tl;dr the beginning of Tolkien hard mode, v cool