By J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Christopher Tolkien. HarperCollinsCanada, 313 pp, $34.95, hardcover

J.R.R. Tolkien often said that in building the world, creating the languages, and inventing the history of which The Lord of the Rings is a part, he was trying to assert a mythology native to England, a place he believed had always imported its folklore from other cultures.

Christopher Tolkien's introduction to The Children of Húrin establishes that he respects his father's intentions. In providing a context for the novel, Christopher describes the characters as if they truly were historical figures, captured for all time on dusty parchment. With full-colour illustrations by noted Tolkien artist Alan Lee, the book is handsome indeed.

Christopher has long acted as the editor his father never had. (It is worth noting that Christopher's son Adam helped prepare the book, continuing the Tolkien lineage.) Christopher's knowledge is encyclopedic, and he's become deft at sorting through the mass of information left by his father and organizing it into more manageable and digestible chunks.

Which is exactly what he's done with The Children of Húrin. Not entirely a new story, this book pulls together pieces of the tale of Túrin, son of Húrin and Morwen, who lived "some six and a half thousand years before the Council of Elrond", the meeting that led to Frodo and Sam's journey to destroy the One Ring. While portions of the novel have been published–posthumously–in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales, the complete saga of Túrin and his destiny in Middle-earth has never before been told on its own terms.

What's apparent here is that there's not much to the story of Túrin. The Children of Húrin is basically a series of plot points strung together with some Tolkien-esque dialogue. Túrin's father is captured by Morgoth. Túrin is sent to live with the Elves. He grows into a great but impulsive warrior. He slays some Orcs. He unknowingly marries his sister. You get the point.

By assembling these pieces, Christopher shows that his father spent a great deal of time and effort creating a world, and for this the senior Tolkien is to be admired. But not everything he wrote about Middle-earth is worthy of publication. Pieces of his constructed mythology may have helped him create The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, but that doesn't mean they warrant books of their own.