Found an old book review I wrote during a bout of depression.  Think I'll resurrect it here:

The Silmarillion

by J. R. R. Tolkien

(Fantasy novel; Middle Earth #1)

Perhaps it is because my mind is empty and cobweb-ridden this year, since I have sold so many books and disavowed many more, but Tolkien's The Silmarillion poured effortlessly through the windows of my eyes. I have heard that even Tolkien buffs have trouble wading through this precursor to The Hobbit and the Ring trilogy; I paused several times because I didn't want it to end.

It may not be the literary merits (as great as they are) of The Silmarillion that mesmerized me so much as the mood it evoked: reading of the earliest eras of Middle-Earth transported me back to my own adolescence, when books of wonder with their fantastic lands and marvelous inhabitants stretched out endlessly before me -- yet all remained within my grasp, if I but pulled out my library card or saved up a few quarters for a paperback.

Studying the well-limned map of Beleriand, with its mountains, forests, lakes, and rivers, became strangely calming. Here were far lands with alien names, the stage for great and mythic works. Now the urge steals over me to pull out my Atlas of Fantasy and study other realms of the fantastic. A covetous feeling engulfs me -- I must take back the lands that, due to whims, temperament, and circumstance, I have relinquished over the past quarter-century: Amber, Narnia, Nehwon, Darkover, Deryni, Oz, Islandia, and a score of others.

Much effort went into these maps and into The Silmarillion itself (Tolkien labored on it, off and on, for most of his life!). This storehouse of talent, this battery of a love of storytelling, sent its current through the filaments of my being. I must re-start my own tales and fill them with adventures dear and creatures dire!

I have become a boy of twelve again, the "golden age" of SF (and fantasy) reading; I am free of school on a lazy summer's day, belly-down on the sofa or bed or carpet, chin propped on hands. I listen to the rush of a fan or air conditioner, my roamings through the molten July heat done for the afternoon. I leave my room and my home -- temporarily, at least -- and drift like an astral traveler to other worlds and times.

Yet I am also an adult, more worldly, better able to understand the complex words and phrases, spotting more similes and references. I am able to scribble my own thoughts on paper and even see them in print once in a while.

Old folks think wistfully of former days. Youth expects "now" to last forever. A few people, however, hold the best of both ages within their breasts; they are guided and goaded to this state of bliss by miraculous books like J. R. R. Tolkien's Silmarillion.

You might expect me, after the above ravings, to give the book endless "stars", but I know few readers will agree with my blathering assessment. Realistically, had I read The Silmarillion at any other time in my life, I would have barely kept my head above the ocean of names of Elves, Dwarves, Humans, rivers, cities, lands, weapons, and battles. (Indeed, I recall several false starts in reading the book back in the '70s.) Even as a compromise, however, I can't give the Bible of Middle-Earth less than four out of five stars: ****