I don't care about Tom Bombadil and I don't understand those who do.
The Best: The Return of the King
The Worst: The Silmarillion
The Lord of the Rings is perhaps the cornerstone of modern fantasy storytelling, but it took me a long time to get around to it. I was terrified of tackling such a thick and dense piece of literature, and given that there were plenty of other shorter unread novels on my shelf, I put it off for as long as I could. Now that I'm through it, I'm really glad that I put the work in - but this is no easy task. You have to commit to a journey like this, and what follows is the fruit of my labours.
The Hobbit
I was on my way out of high school, I think, when I started reading the Hobbit. Though it was a long time ago, I still remember it very well and I’d definitely say it’s one of my favourite books. Bilbo is a really fun character – all throughout the story he’s missing home and wondering when he can head back. I tried reading “The Fellowship of the Ring” around the same time and found it brutally difficult to get into, but The Hobbit was no problem. It’s definitely a much easier read. It’s charming and exciting and every new challenge is a lot of fun. The movies were unfortunately a poor representation of Tolkien's original classic, but Martin Freeman was the highlight for sure. If you like fantasy but are intimidated by the length and size of Tolkien's "Ring" trilogy, this is a great book to test the waters.
Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
I read The Hobbit when I was in high school and had little trouble getting through it. But when I tried tackling The Fellowship of the Ring, I found it a brutally slow-moving book that I could never seem to get through. I finally finished it after well over a year, but I skipped parts and ended up not remembering most of it.
Since getting married I’ve been doing a lot more reading, and though I knew I had to give Lord of the Rings another chance, I avoided it for as long as I could, reading other shorter books. But this past April of 2018, I finally got into it.
The prologue is still brutal even after all these years. It’s a bunch of exposition with names and dates and events that you’ve never heard about but apparently really need to know to understand what’s about to take place. Take my advice if you’re tackling these books for the first time – skip the prologue. Just do it.
Once you get past that, the book is still slow. That said, once you get accustomed to the pace, you can really start to enjoy it. I remember one time my mom and sister asked me to sit down to watch an episode of the new “Sherlock” series starring Benedict Cumberbatch, so I sat down expecting a 30-45 minute viewing experience. Because it was an hour and a half, I ended up bored out of my mind, thinking “How long IS this thing?”. It wasn’t until I started looking at the Sherlock series as a movie series that I was able to start appreciating it the way it was meant to be. It’s the same with Lord of the Rings. You have to go in expecting a long story, yes, but also a long story told slowly. And it’s worth it.
Having watched the Peter Jackson adaptation of this book, it was helpful for me having faces in my head to match the characters, so as not to get confused between Galadriel and Glorfindel, for example. It was also interesting to see what scenes got cut, like all of “Tom Bombadil”, the Warg attack on the Fellowship, and so on.
Okay, so to sum up my feelings on the book, it was worth reading for sure, but a lot of work. One does not simply sit down to read this, as Boromir might say. That said, I loved the character of Gandalf just as much as I did in the film. I found Aragorn more lighthearted and ready to accept the throne than he was in the film. The hobbits were all great. Overall, I think this book really works hard to make you take a deep breath and just enjoy the journey that the fellowship is going on. You really take in how much work the team is all putting in to make it all happen.
Here's hoping the second and third books pick up the pace a little, though, otherwise I’m gonna be reading this well into next year.
Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
The Two Towers was a delight to get into compared to Fellowship. Whereas last time around I had to learn a bunch of history and names and stuff before the story even got started, Towers kicked off right away with our characters in action. That was a relief. What was interesting was the differences between the order Tolkien and Peter Jackson presented the events. In Jackson’s film, we jump back and forth between the adventures of Sam & Frodo and the rest of the Fellowship, never lingering too long on one or the other. Towers is split into two books, with the first book focusing exclusively on Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, and the others, and the second book focusing on Sam, Frodo, and Gollum. And whereas the battle with Shelob happens early on in Jackson’s “Return of the King”, it serves as Frodo and Sam’s climax in Tolkien’s “Two Towers”. I think this worked really well for Tolkien. He has a real way of describing objects of incredible size – Shelob in particular. I found reading about both Shelob and the Ents in this book a visceral experience, with his descriptions hammering home just how colossal and powerful these beings are. To that end, Shelob was absolutely a fitting climax to this book. Tolkien ends the book on much more of a cliffhanger than Jackson’s film did, leaving us to wonder how on earth Sam is going to rescue Frodo. He also lets the reader linger on the possibility of Frodo’s death for some time. You and I know that Frodo is going to make it, but I wonder if Tolkien actually succeeded in fooling anyone when this book was first released.
Getting back to the Ents, I actually think reading about them is just as awe-inspiring as seeing them in motion picture format. There’s a bit in the book where the hobbits have to clamp their hands over their ears to withstand the crazy blast of the Ent’s roars that made me think “Wow, these things are a big deal”. He really did a great job of making you understand their scope and power.
The Battle of Helm’s Deep was the climax of Jackson’s film, but for Tolkien it was in the first third of the book. Although I was happy to see it, it made me wonder “Well, what is the rest of the book going to be about?” When Frodo and Sam finally came along, I thought, “Oh yeah, I totally forgot about them.”
I also thought it was interesting that Sam and Frodo faced Shelob together, whereas Jackson had Frodo go it alone. I think either way was effective – in this book, having Frodo and Sam realize Gollum’s deception together was exciting and climactic.
All in all, I definitely enjoyed this one more than Fellowship, and I’m really looking forward to Return of the King.
Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
The first thing I wanted to say about the epic conclusion to Tolkien’s Trilogy was that the dramatic weight is so heavy it’s almost palpable. When Sam and Frodo are walking through Mordor, you feel it. Maybe it’s the fact that it had been nearly ten months since I first began this journey, or maybe it was just the fact that I knew I was close to the finish line, or maybe it was just Tolkien’s writing style. Whichever, the situation felt incredibly bleak and tense. Frodo and Sam were so worn out, and neither of them had much hope of completing their task, let alone getting home afterwards. I kept thinking “man, just get there already,” but not out of boredom – out of genuine pity for the characters.
The second thing I wanted to say was that when Frodo and Sam finally do complete their quest, I was a little confused to find that I had only reached the halfway point of the book.
“You did it!” I thought. “Why isn’t this over?”
Much like Peter Jackson’s cinematic interpretation of Tolkien’s books, the final chapter lingers far longer than you’d expect. It doesn’t get frustrating, though. It’s actually nice to slowly say goodbye to the characters one by one, seeing them part ways. We witness a coronation, a wedding, a road trip…oh yeah, and “The Scouring of the Shire”. This final battle cannot be found in Jackson’s films, and I totally understand why he got rid of it. For Jackson, the destroying of the One Ring was all the climax he needed. And long before I reached this chapter, I felt like I pre-emptively agreed with Jackson. Once the Ring’s gone, why would you introduce a new conflict? What possible trial could be intimidating for the Hobbits in the face of everything they’d gone through?
Here’s why I think the Scouring of the Shire was a worthwhile chapter. In the movie, Frodo and the others come home to find the Shire just as they left it – virtually untouched by the events of the War of the Ring. They get to go back to their lives as usual, albeit carrying a few treasures from their travels. In the book, the Shire has dramatically changed, and it’s up to them to save it. What’s neat is that this change was more or less inevitable – no actions on the part of our Hobbits could have prevented it. One way or another, this invasion at the hands of Saruman was going to happen. So if Frodo, Sam, Merry, and Pippin had never gotten wrapped up in the quest to destroy the One Ring, this misfortune still would’ve come – and in that scenario, they would have been enslaved just like everyone else. It was only because of their earlier decision to fight for “someone else’s war” that they were prepared to free their people. I like that! It was the trials and turmoil that the Hobbits experienced that enabled them to save what they treasured most. For Tolkien, the Shire isn’t this untouchable paradise too far from the action and too insignificant to be meaningful to anyone but those who inhabit it. It’s a part of Middle-Earth, and as a result it faces the same danger as the rest of the world.
I still agree with Jackson’s decision to cut it from his film (for the sake of length if nothing else), but I think it was a nice final battle for the book because it showed us how far the Hobbits had come and how the growth they’d experienced over the course of the story had changed them.
I’ll be honest – I skipped 90% of the Appendices. The moment I started reading them, the narrative momentum disappeared as though it had been sucked out of existence. I read the one bit about Aragorn and Arwen (by the way, she plays a way bigger role in the movies than she does in the books), but other than that I found I just didn’t care about events and things that didn’t continue the narrative I had just completed. I know many people would disagree with me on that, but I really figured that if there was ever a time I’d enjoy reading these, it’d be right after finishing the trilogy. And that wasn’t the case.
So that’s it! I finally got through the Lord of the Rings Trilogy! It took me about as long as I expected, but it was definitely worth it and I’m glad I did it. While reading this I picked up a copy of “The Silmarillion”, but I expect that to be my last foray into the world of Middle Earth. So until then…guren níniatha n'i lû n'i a-govenitham!
The Silmarillion
It may be hard to believe that I read through this entire thing in one week, but it’s the truth. I attribute my success to the fact that I was on vacation and spent at least an hour every day reading by the pool, but even then, this was no easy task.
First, let me say that this is absolutely non-essential reading. You do not have to read this. If you read Lord of the Rings, you don’t have to read this. If you’re looking for something fun to do with your time, I probably wouldn’t recommend this book. If you really liked the Lord of the Rings movies, that is absolutely not a guarantee that this book will be enjoyable to you in the slightest.
If it feels like I’m trying to tell you not to read the book, it’s because I almost definitely am. There’s few people who I think would genuinely enjoy this book...but for those few, here’s what I liked about it.
As someone who is developing their own fantasy world, I really enjoyed reading the letter from J.R.R. Tolkien to his publisher. In this letter, Tolkien describes his writing process and why he feels his work is important. That was really cool, because it was kind of like listening to a director’s commentary on their own film. We don’t have commentary like that from the author of the Iliad. I also really enjoyed the creation story that Tolkien wrote. That part’s short enough and interesting enough for me to recommend it to the casual Lord of the Rings fan. The way Tolkien used music as the central element of the creation of the world was really fascinating, and though his opening letter expressed his disdain for allegory, I found much in his work that reminded me of a decidedly Christian worldview and understanding. There were also a few stories strewn throughout this book that were exciting. Beren and Luthien’s tale was fun, as was the story of how Melkor/Morgoth/The-Big-Bad-Guy-With-A-Lot-Of-Names enlisted the help of the biggest grossest giant spider you’ve ever seen in your life in order to suck the magic juice out of two really big trees. Oh, and the story of how the dwarves came about was very interesting too.
I have to be honest, though. A lot of this book is just plain dry. I skipped one chapter entirely out of sheer boredom, and there were moments where I found that I had read through several pages and not really been engaged for a single second of it. I wrote that in “Fellowship of the Ring”, the reader needs to slow down and take a deep breath before they can get used to Tolkien’s writing style. In “Silmarillion”, I don’t know how you could slow down enough to fully take it in without your heart stopping altogether.
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