I still to this day don't understand the point that book served. I don't know if it was just a product of its time but I don't think a bunch of children would behave like that in the event of being stranded

A bit criticism to the Silmarillion is that the style is very dry and the plot is disconnected.

This is by design. The Silmarillion wanted to be the creating work of the UK mythology. As such, it mimicked the style of other mythological sagas: the Mabinogion most notably, the minor Homer, the Eddas. Part of the idea is to create a shared well-know scene from which other authors can draw to set their own works.

In some ways, it was incredibly successful: nowadays it’s impossible to talk about Elfs without referencing Tolkien’s in some ways.

Was very unserious and required a lot of suspension of disbelief but the book was cute and fluffy and when I read it, that's exactly what I needed

If you have ever been interested in jewish folklore, it's the closet to "accurate" you're probably gonna get over everything else. its depiction of a dybbuk is far more accurate than the nonsense people have latched onto. If you don't know, the dybbuk box story was not accurate to how a dybbuk works at all

I have been reading the English translations and the characters and especially their dialogues feel very fake. I do appreciate the hard science aspect of the books but the long monologues, kids speaking like middle-aged philosophers, and army personnel being one-dimensional macho men breaks the immersion for me. It has the depth of a 1980s low-budget thriller.

I don’t read a lot of hard science fiction or translations of Chinese books. I don’t know if this is genre-related.

It's honestly really good so far. Moves quite fast too.