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I am approximately the last person in the world to read the Lord of the Rings. But it's finally happening!
I mean, I'm about 95% sure that I read the The Fellowship of the Ring once before when I was a preteen, and there’s maybe a 10% chance that I read The Two Towers at that time as well. But I'm absolutely confident I've never read The Return of the King! Look, it's hard to be sure of anything from when I was a preteen, that was so long ago and I have such a bad memory and I don't think that reading 1 or possibly 2 of these books at that time quite counts.
ANYWAY. It feels weird trying to write a book review of something that basically every person who might have the slightest interest in this kind of thing has already read and had opinions about. But here's my preliminary thoughts! (please ignore the way my tenses are all over the place below: I wrote my thoughts down kind of as I went and then at the end couldn't figure out how to straighten everything out tidily)
BOOK ONE
So after reading The Fellowship of the Ring, I was mainly struck by how very infodumpy this book is. Like. I knew that Tolkien's main interest was creating a language and thus building the world that went with the languages he created, but I don't think I'd ever been aware of how....how obvious that fact is on the page. But the undue degrees of focus on telling you things about the world's history actually ends up doing something interesting which I don't see often in fantasy books, which is to very effectively evoke a specific feeling: a pervading feeling of melancholy with a sense of things that are gone and going. This was really cool and not what I was expecting at all, from what I'd gleaned from all the high fantasy tolkien-esque pastiches I have read over the years.
For Tolkien, the world is the most important character, not any of the people in it, and you can tell from the degree to which he attempts to create interesting characterization and a character arc. The world gets all of it; the people inhabiting that world are pretty one-note.
The most interesting characterization-of-a-person moment in the book was the short scene where Galadriel reacts to Frodo offering her the One Ring. I really liked that scene and found it made me far more interested in Galadriel than any other scenes had successfully made me interested in other characters.
(other than Sam, who I care deeply about throughout and also am very mad about how thoroughly he fulfills the classist stereotype of Faithful Servant, ugh, TOLKIEN.)
Anyway maybe the characterization of people gets better of the course of the trilogy, this is still the introduction and Tolkien's very wordy so maybe he's just taking his time. We shall see!
BOOK TWO
Early into The Two Towers I expressed to a couple people that I was finding myself simultaneously bored and riveted by Lord of the Rings, which is quite an impressive trick for Tolkien to manage both at once. I was assured that this is an extremely normal response to the books.
But the further I went into The Two Towers the more I was just riveted and less bored. Though I never became so compelled that I was tempted to stay up late reading it or anything, so you know, still at least a little boring.
I can’t tell if by this book Tolkien had levelled up in his character writing, or if I’ve just gotten used to how he does things, or if it just took me this long of hanging out with the characters to feel like I connect with them -- but at any rate Tolkien’s characters are working far better for me in this book! Like I care about them a Lot.
Tolkien also seems to have backed off from the Doom And Decay theme a little here. I mean it’s still present? But it doesn’t feel nearly so all-pervasive as it did in the first book. Perhaps because this book involves more Actually Doing Things on the part of the characters!
I was also surprised by how little of the book Frodo actually appears in, given that I had been under the impression he’s the main character and all. Like the first two thirds of the book don’t have Frodo appear on-page once!
At any rate: a good book, I enjoyed myself, I’m interested to see what-all is gonna happen in the last book. Other than all the spoilers I’m already well aware of because of information I have gleaned from popular culture, ofc.
BOOK THREE
The Return of the King was back to tedious-but-interesting again: pieces of compelling content mixed into pieces of boringness. SIGH. It didn’t help that the first half of this book is particularly focused on war. But even beyond that it was a bit of a slog.
I don’t know why I didn’t enjoy this trilogy more - it does the thing I’ve always said I particularly value in novels, which is really immersive worldbuilding, and yet...the worldbuilding doesn’t particularly compel me here? Like, the world is fine, but I don’t super care about it. You don’t see me rushing off to read the 100+ pages of appendices at the end of Return of the King to sate myself in extra worldbuilding details! I skipped those without a single qualm.
I do care a lot about the characters in this trilogy, BUT AT WHAT COST? (on that note: SAMWISE GAMGEE IS THE ACTUALFAX BEST FOREVER, but also I’m still very mad about the Faithful Servant stereotype ngl) (Mount Doom is the best chapter in all of LotR btw, I was totally captivated for that entire chapter)
Well, I’m glad in the end to have made the effort to get through this Very Culturally Important Fantasy Series. Overall it was a satisfying read; and I do care about it and see its value, but it’s never going to be one of my top favourites.
I mean, I'm about 95% sure that I read the The Fellowship of the Ring once before when I was a preteen, and there’s maybe a 10% chance that I read The Two Towers at that time as well. But I'm absolutely confident I've never read The Return of the King! Look, it's hard to be sure of anything from when I was a preteen, that was so long ago and I have such a bad memory and I don't think that reading 1 or possibly 2 of these books at that time quite counts.
ANYWAY. It feels weird trying to write a book review of something that basically every person who might have the slightest interest in this kind of thing has already read and had opinions about. But here's my preliminary thoughts! (please ignore the way my tenses are all over the place below: I wrote my thoughts down kind of as I went and then at the end couldn't figure out how to straighten everything out tidily)
BOOK ONE
So after reading The Fellowship of the Ring, I was mainly struck by how very infodumpy this book is. Like. I knew that Tolkien's main interest was creating a language and thus building the world that went with the languages he created, but I don't think I'd ever been aware of how....how obvious that fact is on the page. But the undue degrees of focus on telling you things about the world's history actually ends up doing something interesting which I don't see often in fantasy books, which is to very effectively evoke a specific feeling: a pervading feeling of melancholy with a sense of things that are gone and going. This was really cool and not what I was expecting at all, from what I'd gleaned from all the high fantasy tolkien-esque pastiches I have read over the years.
For Tolkien, the world is the most important character, not any of the people in it, and you can tell from the degree to which he attempts to create interesting characterization and a character arc. The world gets all of it; the people inhabiting that world are pretty one-note.
The most interesting characterization-of-a-person moment in the book was the short scene where Galadriel reacts to Frodo offering her the One Ring. I really liked that scene and found it made me far more interested in Galadriel than any other scenes had successfully made me interested in other characters.
(other than Sam, who I care deeply about throughout and also am very mad about how thoroughly he fulfills the classist stereotype of Faithful Servant, ugh, TOLKIEN.)
Anyway maybe the characterization of people gets better of the course of the trilogy, this is still the introduction and Tolkien's very wordy so maybe he's just taking his time. We shall see!
BOOK TWO
Early into The Two Towers I expressed to a couple people that I was finding myself simultaneously bored and riveted by Lord of the Rings, which is quite an impressive trick for Tolkien to manage both at once. I was assured that this is an extremely normal response to the books.
But the further I went into The Two Towers the more I was just riveted and less bored. Though I never became so compelled that I was tempted to stay up late reading it or anything, so you know, still at least a little boring.
I can’t tell if by this book Tolkien had levelled up in his character writing, or if I’ve just gotten used to how he does things, or if it just took me this long of hanging out with the characters to feel like I connect with them -- but at any rate Tolkien’s characters are working far better for me in this book! Like I care about them a Lot.
Tolkien also seems to have backed off from the Doom And Decay theme a little here. I mean it’s still present? But it doesn’t feel nearly so all-pervasive as it did in the first book. Perhaps because this book involves more Actually Doing Things on the part of the characters!
I was also surprised by how little of the book Frodo actually appears in, given that I had been under the impression he’s the main character and all. Like the first two thirds of the book don’t have Frodo appear on-page once!
At any rate: a good book, I enjoyed myself, I’m interested to see what-all is gonna happen in the last book. Other than all the spoilers I’m already well aware of because of information I have gleaned from popular culture, ofc.
BOOK THREE
The Return of the King was back to tedious-but-interesting again: pieces of compelling content mixed into pieces of boringness. SIGH. It didn’t help that the first half of this book is particularly focused on war. But even beyond that it was a bit of a slog.
I don’t know why I didn’t enjoy this trilogy more - it does the thing I’ve always said I particularly value in novels, which is really immersive worldbuilding, and yet...the worldbuilding doesn’t particularly compel me here? Like, the world is fine, but I don’t super care about it. You don’t see me rushing off to read the 100+ pages of appendices at the end of Return of the King to sate myself in extra worldbuilding details! I skipped those without a single qualm.
I do care a lot about the characters in this trilogy, BUT AT WHAT COST? (on that note: SAMWISE GAMGEE IS THE ACTUALFAX BEST FOREVER, but also I’m still very mad about the Faithful Servant stereotype ngl) (Mount Doom is the best chapter in all of LotR btw, I was totally captivated for that entire chapter)
Well, I’m glad in the end to have made the effort to get through this Very Culturally Important Fantasy Series. Overall it was a satisfying read; and I do care about it and see its value, but it’s never going to be one of my top favourites.
