Review of The Fellowship of the Ring:
Of course this is one of the all-time classics, and one of my favorite movies. Yet this is only the second time I’ve read (this time listened to) the book. I remember why: The Lord of the Rings are more atmospheric than anything else, I feel like. The stories are long, much longer than they need to be, and filled with lots of redundancies or unnecessary additions. I could certainly do without all the songs, and there’s so much encountering and running away from various types of danger that I could (and did) tune out a number of times and then tune back in without missing anything. I don’t typically read high fantasy set in alternate worlds for exactly that reason: I find the genre overall to be all atmosphere with very little characterization. But I love the atmosphere conjured by the Lord of the Rings so very much. It feels so much like something from my childhood, even though I read it for the first time as an adult. I think some of that is because I did read the Chronicles of Narnia as a child, and I can see how much either C.S. Lewis influenced Tolkien, or vice versa. I can just picture the two of them sitting in front of Lewis’s fire and taking turns reading their works in progress to one another, each of them chuckling when they saw moments where the other had stolen from him. What an experience that must have been!
My rating: ****1/2
Political content: none (it’s a classic)
Sexual content: none
Language: none
Violence: present but minor
Review of The Two Towers:
The whole LOTR trilogy really does read like one continuous story that’s so long it has to be broken up into three books. There isn’t too much of a separation from one to the next.
One thing that delineates The Two Towers from The Fellowship of the Ring, though, is the separation of the characters. Unlike the movies, which integrate the story of each of the companies by jumping from one to the next, The Two Towers follows one set of characters for an entire “book”. One story follows Merry and Pippin as they escape from the orcs, and then as they meet up with Treebeard the Ent, master of the trees. Lots of songs get interspersed once again that I could have done without, but they do make Middle Earth feel more like its own culture.
Another storyline follows Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas as they attempt to pursue Merry and Pippin. They first encounter the semi-resurrected Gandalf again, which is a fun reunion. Aragorn meets the lady Eowyn, which gets a lot less screen time in the book than in the film–but she’s at least set up as a love interest, whereas Arwen never really was in the first book.
Finally, we follow Sam, Frodo, and Golem. I was wondering if they’d ever even come into the book as they get the last third of it. Boy, I love Sam! He’s such an endearing character. Even Frodo is less weak and annoying in the books than he comes off in the films.
Aside from the order in which the story is told, Two Towers is really quite similar to the film. Not much to say about it, but like with The Fellowship of the Ring, mostly what I appreciate is the atmosphere of the story. It’s such a well-imagined world. You can easily get lost in it.
My rating: ****
Political content: none (it’s a classic)
Sexual content: none
Language: none
Violence: present but minor
Review of The Return of the King:
One of the most satisfying endings ever.
While The Return of the King is just as meandering and verbose as the first two, and I could still tune out for awhile and come back without missing much of anything, I still just love how this series makes me feel. All the description and detail is just the best. Also, I love Sam!!! He’s just so stout-hearted and good and selfless and simple. Easily my favorite character.
One thing I think the movies did better was the relationship between Aragorn and Arwen. It was just nonexistent in the book. She was mentioned in passing in the Fellowship of the Ring, and then she shows up dressed for the wedding one day at the end of Return of the King. That’s it; that’s all we got. I was happy to know (or remember) that Eowyn marries Faromir, though. She’s sitting next to him at the end of the film version but we never got any details on that story. I still kind of think Aragorn should have ended up with her, though. She’s such a badass.
I appreciated how the final installment wrapped up ALL the loose ends… there were hours left of the book after the climax, some of which I probably could have done without, and some of which the filmmakers did decide to cut. I always thought it was sad how Frodo ends up sailing away at the end and leaves Sam, Merry and Pippin behind, but it’s a realistic look at how life probably is for anyone who has a truly grand adventure. Where do you go from there? It sort of spoils everyday life for you, I’d imagine. Not for Sam, though; he finds joy again. He would, though: he’s just that sort of character.
Periodically when I heard similarities between the Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles and Narnia, I pictured C.S. Lewis and Tolkien as Tolkien read his manuscript aloud, and Lewis would say, “Oh, you should do this!” I wish I knew which parts were his ideas.
Such a great read.
My rating: *****
Political content: none (it’s a classic)
Sexual content: none
Language: none
Violence: present but minor
Everybody needs a Samwise Gamgee and a Billy (from the movie Big) in their life.