I'll keep it simple - Rated 
If like me you love The Lord of The Rings but couldn't get to grips with the Silmarilion then give this a go, but be warned there's some pretty dark material but well worth a read.
Like the book of job only less cheerful - Rated 
This story was so miserable and grim - an unending tale of stupid act after stupid act as our hero/heroine stumble from one disaster to another. Endless mind numbing genealogies, - sigh. A real depressive story and I don't think christopher lee's narration helped either - it wasnt quite right - too - leaden I think. Yes I did wade through all 8 cds and I would not recommend it.
Children of Hurin - Rated 
Overall The Children of Hurin benefits from a good story. Unfortunately there are also drawbacks. Firstly, the text is far too slight and lacks the descriptive elemnts that brought Hobbit, Simarillion, and LOTR to life. Secondly there are far too many obtuse names cropping up here and there. The introduction at the start that lays out the context is helpful, as is the glossary of names at the back, but it is annoying flicking backwards and forwards for help from these. Unless you have the ability to store hundreds of random fantasy names of course.
However, the story moves swiftly and the pages do fly by, and though many characters are undeveloped the central character of Turin is very well written. Turin is kind of like Conrad's 'Lord Jim', owing all his mistakes to a arrogant notion of pride. His character gives the book a tragic feel due to the fact that wherever he goes he ruins everything for people there! The idea of this being due to a curse on Hurin from Morgoth is good but more development of Morgoth/Hurin's side of the story throughout would have given a more balenced feel.
Good story though, quite a nice quick read, and much easier to get into than most of his denser 'background' works.
In response to those who disapprove of this book... - Rated 
I've read some comments that said the book is not worth buying. Well, they are wrong. Here are my reasons to it:
It is a good narative, full with the drama that the children of Hurin the Steadfast faced after the Fifth Battle of Beleriand, in the 1st Age of the Sun. Those who have read other Tolkien books will be impressed by the more serious and epic stile of "CoH" (The Children of Hurin). Those that liked the story of Turin Turambar in "The Silmarillion" will be delighted to discover his story at an enormously expanded scale.
It is true that the story appears in "Unfinished Tales...", but there it is frequently interrupted by commentaries that are of great interest, but nonetheless spoil the story itself. Moreover, you could not have read the story as it is told in "CoH" before, simply because it had nowhere been published like this.
Citing Christopher Tolkien, in "The Children of Hurin", ed. HarperCollins, 2007, p. 7, Preface:
"...it has seemed to me for a long time that there was a good case for presenting my father's long version of the legend of the Children of Hurin as an independent work, between its own covers, with a minimum of editorial presence, and above all in continuous narrative without gaps or interruptions, if this could be done without distortion or invention, despite the unfinished state in which he left some parts of it."
This has been done in a very professional way, providing readers with a solid story to delight them.
It's worth buying, even if you already own "Unfinished Tales..." and "The Silmarillion", because "CoH" is a legend in its own right.
Not to be compared with Lord of the Rings - Rated
I feel that some of the publicity surrounding this book is misleading. Children of Hurin is not a proper novel in the sense that the Lord of the Rings volumes or the Hobbit are. It is written to read more like a traditional legend. As such it lacks all the fleshing out of the characters etc, and detail of events etc that you would expect in a fully developed novel. However it is readable. I do question how much it really adds to the events we know from the completed stories. This book is set in an earlier age and the only real similarity is that there are men, dwarves, elves and orcs.
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