This is only a good read for those that have read The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion in that order. Pretty much this book is about strings never tied up in these books, and a lot more detail about the stories. The storylines of the characters it follows are, Tuor, Turin, Aldarion and Erendis, Galadriel and Celeborn, and the wizards/istari. Most of the book takes place in Beleriand, ruined after the war of wrath and not mentioned in any of the movies. This book is telling me, to not get involved in wars or curses, because your entire line will pretty much die.
Personally I would give this book a 3 and a half, it started a lot of the paragraphs with “And now (the character its focusing on) (did this)” and it got old after about an hour, but that was only in the first story, in the other stories not much of that was used, maybe it was just a section of the book.
I also felt that it was going over a lot of things already stated in the Silmarillion, with a lot more dialogue. Unfinished Tales can be really interesting as long as you want to know more about the imaginary world created by J.R.R. Tolkien in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. There are a total of 14 parts to this story, if you disregard the index. I recommend this to you, only if you have already read and enjoyed The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion (and no, you cannot just watch the movies for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings). All in all this book has been very interesting, but very long, it takes a very long time to read and it moves slow. The slowness is to keep you reading, I should think, and a lot of it gets repeated. J.R.R. Tolkien did a great job of creating new things to learn and understand in the Unfinished Tales, while still keeping some hidden and mysterious.