The Lord of the Rings

If you are in need of a thoughtful, well written review of the three books constituting the Lord of the Rings trilogy, please look elsewhere. I decided to reread J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" for the fist time since I read the trilogy of books when I was in Junior High School some forty years ago. The blue, green and red paperback books purchased from a Scholastic Book Fair that first I read did not survive my many house moves in the intervening years. Much later, I had purchased a copy of the 1991 Special Edition beautifully illustrated by Alan Lee which sat on a bookshelf for several years until recently unread. When I finally did pull the heavy single volume down, I found it almost too heavy to hold in my lap to read. So I went out to my local used book store (Recycled Books in San Jose) and bought the slightly smaller, hardcover movie tie-in edition that is the subject of this review. Because this edition of the LotR trilogy was first printed in 1994, the only evidence of the Peter Jackson film adaptation is limited to the graphic design of the dust jacket. The plates used to print the book I read were apparently worn and left some blemishes which rendered one or two letters illegible on a few of he pages, but the text overall was perfectly comprehensible. The Lord of the Rings trilogy of books was originally published in the middle of the previous century and has been read by millions of readers in several languages around the world. Consequently, the books have been extensively reviewed by many professional journalists over the decades. The purpose of this review is to encourage readers of the LotR trilogy to not stop reading at the apparent climax of the story that occurs in the middle of "Book Six". I found the closing chapters to be a necessary and rewarding "cool-down" from the world-ending consequence, action and questing of the preceding 930 or so pages. The penultimate chapter was particularly fun to read as battle-hardened heroes return from their quest to find their home in disarray and must rally fellow villagers to set things right.

This one is like Beatles songs: You notice how they sound kinda similar but "simpler" to other pop songs, until you think about, how they built the whole genre. Everyone after them builds on their formula and this is why they sound similar, but they still have their uniqueness to them.

The Lord of the Rings is the same: Every conversation is a big speech and they don't sound like people would, if they actually just talk to one another. Big descriptions of how the world looks like. Many weird names of places and people (but Tolkien just throws around names like he's paid for the amount of them) and many other things.

But it still has its own story. It's filled with songs, which is an understatement. It seems like people in middle earth are just eager to sing as often as they can. Tolkien tries to make decisions believable and real.

All together a fantastic book, obviously a must read for every fantasy fan, but it's not totally my cup of tea. Most conversations felt a bit stiff. They seem like everyone is talking in front of a camera and are nervous about it, because every dialog is unnecessarily big and it seems like they always try too hard. The whole Saruman plot is weird. Without getting into spoilers, he seemed like this wise and mighty wizard in the movie, but in the book, he's like this stupid coward. How could this person be the "chief of the wizard order" ?

Still, if you like fantasy, give it a read, I still enjoyed reading it!