Tolkien’s son finishes ‘Hurin’ saga

More than 30 years after his death, a “new” book by J.R.R. Tolkien goes on sale today that may well be the author’s last complete work to be published posthumously.

Tolkien’s son and literary executor, Christopher, now in his 80s, constructed “The Children of Hurin” from his father’s manuscripts and said he tried to do so “without any editorial invention.”

Already told in fragmentary form in “The Silmarillion,” which appeared in 1977, the new book is darker than “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” for which Tolkien is best known.

The story is set long before “The Lord of the Rings” in a part of Middle-earth that was drowned before Hobbits ever appeared and tells the tragic tale of Turin and his sister Nienor, who are cursed by Morgoth, the first Dark Lord.