Yet another dive into the realm created by Tolkien. Spoilers ahead!
Our titular heroes, Beran (a man) and Lúthien (an elf) fall in love. This book chronicles their tragic and deep love story, including how Beren is willing to go to any lengths to be with his love, even stealing a Silmaril from the evil Morgoth.
So this book wasn't really what I expected, but that's honestly more on me for not doing the research going in. It's not a coherent tale about Beren and Lúthien, but rather a compilation of snippets of various of Tolkiens works collected by his son, put in the right order for them to tell the tale. There's even a non-canon "prototype" version of the story we're shown at the beginning, which was quite interesting.
So while this wasn't a coherent story, it still told its tale well and I didn't have too much trouble keeping up. The only parts where I sometimes checked out a bit was the poetic segments. That's not on Tolkien whatsoever, by the way; they're brilliantly written. I just don't like reading poetry, especially in long sequences like this. Just a personal preference. I find it hard to pay attention to this style of writing for a long time, and some of the poem chapters in this could get quite long.
I do love the lore and characters we get to know in this part of the First Age. It was great to see how devoted Beren was to his love. The bond between the duo and the great wolfhound Huan was also great to see, as well as both Morgoth and Sauron playing a role here.
Please keep in mind that I'm still new to exploring Arda beyond the trilogy, a single read of The Silmarillion and The Hobbit, so I still have a bit of trouble keeping all character names remembered and piecing together which lore falls where. But I am working on it and plan on reading most if not all of Tolkien's works in this universe in the future.
Rating: 4/5
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