I've heard many people say that it "reads like the Bible", or like a history book: there aren't any "viewpoint characters", or really any recurring characters at all (especially if inscrutable angelic beings don't count). Certainly if you're expecting another story in the style of The Lord of the Rings, you'll be disappointed.
Personally, I loved the book, but I was hungry for all the "lore" about Middle-earth and its history that I could find. I think most people would really prefer a self-contained story.
Oh, and for the record, an underlying reason for many people disliking The Silmarillion may be that Tolkien never really finished it. I have a little bit of a writeup of the story behind that on my Tolkien FAQ site: http://tolkien.slimy.com/faq/External.html#SilmChanges
I suspect that the author may have had more luck explaining the difficulty of the Silmarillion if he had compared the number of unique proper nouns. I enjoyed it, but ISTR when I read it (over 30 years ago now) that it did have the feel of a telephone directory.
I was thinking the same. I never had problems with Silmarillion. Couldn't read Messages from Middle Earth however, that was just not enough connection. But Silmarillion, man, that's an epic collection of stories. I think it might be a cool material for a TV series. Say, one season for every major story with the same characters, plus some creative freedom for the screenwriters of course.
Just think about it - battles with hordes of orks, hero elves AND 30 or so Balrogs. And loosing / winning a battle doesn't just blow up a tower, it creates spasms in damn middle earth. The ring wars got nothing on that..
Agreed. Compared to the Silmarillion the Lord of the Ring war seems kind of cute. Imagine a thousand balrogs riding on dragons against the elven city Gondolin.
Later parts of the book might be good (or even great) in movie format, but there's no way one can turn Ainulindalë into a movie... Or can they? For years I was passionately against the idea, but now that I think about it again, maybe I'm just being over-pessimistic? I mean, LOTR turned out to be quite good...
IMO quite good is an understatement, it has become the best any LotR fan could have ever hoped for. And about Silmarillion: Think about how good some TV screenwriters have become in recent years - IMO they turn out more high quality TV scripts than movies nowadays, mostly because the big budget movie industry needs to always take the safe bets (and so you get stupid flicks like battleship et al.)
It reads like a history book to me, or a collection of legends, rather than a traditional story arc. I enjoyed the Silmarillion, but more like one would enjoy reading about the rise and fall of the Roman empire than reading fiction. It was more of a learning experience. It also made LOTR a lot richer when I went back and read it again.
