This is one of those books that’s impossible to rate, so I’m just giving it 4/5 and moving on.

From the commentary provided by Christopher Tolkien, it very much seems like Tolkien (a) saw that the Norse were missing a long-form poem about Sigurd and Gudrún, and (b) sat down and wrote one. With no intention of ever sharing or publishing it. In meter.

Which really just highlighted for me why Tolkien adaptations struggle with writing dialogue. The canon dialogue was written by a man whose entire life was language and who wrote poems FOR FUN, IN A METER NOT USED IN MODERN ENGLISH, in a single copy that had occasional edits made to it later–

and modern scriptwriters just do not have that mastery of the language.

-1 deduction because I don’t know why Chris didn’t make connections between the Legend and Middle-earth, particularly Turin and the Second Kinslaying.