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I recently finished reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. I've mentioned before that I love the movies and enjoyed the new tv series, so I went into the book knowing the major plot points. Now that I've finished the books, I figured I'd share some of my thoughts. There's going to be plenty of spoilers, but I don't really care with a story this old and popular.
Let's start with the first book. There's a video by Tom Cardy[1] where he makes fun of the fact that first book is mostly about characters walking. Boy howdy was that true. There were so many instances where I truly thought to myself that this story was moving so slowly that if I didn't know where the story was ultimately going, I would likely have stopped reading half way through. I guess I appreciate the attention to detail put into painting a picture of the Hobbits, giving us a thorough history of the ultimate heroes of the entire series. But I found my eyes glazing over through most of this exposition and narration of a birthday party for a guy (Bilbo Baggins) I hardly know.
The story "picks up" when Gandalf tells Frodo he has to take the ring to Rivendell or whatever, but even getting the journey started takes like 3 months! I'll go into this a bit more in regards to the third book, but I felt like the build-up to every climax was so gradual that I hardly recognized the climax itself. It was interesting to meet Tom Bombadil, a character not present in the movies, and that part of the journey through the forest was a cool new piece of the story for me. The pace picks up slightly more as they go through Bree, meet Strider, then make their way to Rivendell. Then it's more sitting and waiting before they head out again with the Fellowship.
The latter half of the book had many moments of excitement and I found myself fully engaged as they moved from one environment to the next, from the snowy mountains, to Moria, then eventually Lothlorien. The scene shifts kept me more engaged than any of the supposed action that occurred. I really started to feel the story read very much like a play. There was a lot of emphasis placed on where each character was standing as they enter a tunnel or moved through a forest, almost as if describing how they would be placed on a stage. Also, I often found a lot of the fights and action took a back seat to characters monologuing at each other, almost as if speaking to a theatre full of people. Maybe I'm completely off base with that assessment, but thinking of the writing through that lens helped me enjoy it more than I likely would have otherwise.
We start the second book with the death of Boromir and Frodo and Sam ditching the rest of the crew. The second book was my favourite of the trilogy by far. There were so much more action, and I felt like the plot was moving through at a faster clip. There was plenty of journeying, but they were straight-up running or galloping on the fastest horse in all the land (my boy Shadowfax ftw). But there was something that started to surface near the end of book 1 and became more apparent in book 2. That thing being the portrayal of good versus evil in stark white and black imagery. I started to feel more icky with every description of an Elf, Rohirrim, or the men of Gondor as these white, proud, intelligent and perfect people, while the orcs and men of the east were dark, "slant-eyed", stupid, snivelling, etc. I don't want to get too in the weeds on it all, and I know this is something people have talked about forever, but I wanted to mention it because I didn't expect it to hit me the way it did even knowing there was that element going in. Going back to the story though, I was thoroughly entertained by the second book and was excited to dive right into the third book after finishing it.
Well, the third book sucked. IT WAS SO BORING! I felt like I got no sense of the scale or significance of any of the battles. Frodo's and Sam's adventure with their buddy Gollum was an utter slog to get through. And the ending was the worst example of the climb to the climax being so sluggish it ruined the climax itself.
Starting with the battles, compared to the battles in the second book which were fun, detailed, and engaging, the third book's big battles were completely lackluster. The Battle at Helm's Deep blew the Battle at Minas Tirith out of the goddamn water. Then after that boring battle they make a boring journey to a boring gate where they have a boring confrontation with a boring villain and that's it. And on top of all that, there was hardly any Legolas and Gimli! These dudes were an important part of the battle at Helm's Deep, but we can't even get a mention of them at Minas Tirith? I was yawning through these set pieces and that sucks.
Moving to the Frodo and Sam of it all, this whole part of the story sucked for me. It took the "the whole book's about walking" so damn literally I lost track of how much time actually passed because they had to stop to camp so goddamn much. Even at the end when they're almost at Mount Doom they're stopping repeatedly to take naps. I get it, distances are huge and they're mortal beings that need sleep. But the whole thing just felt like it took this experience to the worst extreme. Also, Sam was IN LOVE with Frodo in the most romantic way. If they'd explicitly made the Frodo/Sam journey a love story, that added dimension would have made that adventure much more bearable. Sam's pining for Frodo can only go so far until it's like "give me at least _some_ pay-off". And the Gollum of it all was also whatever to me. He's kind of just there to move the plot forward and cap-off the Ring's history. Overall, not a fan of this whole part of the story.
And finally, the ending. Oh man, that ending. When Frodo yeets the ring into the fire and gets saved by the Eagles, wakes up, meets his friends and is honoured by the new king Aragorn, I legitimately looked at the remaining pages and said to myself, "there's still a hundred pages left?" They luxuriate so hard in this conclusion that I had to read it in spurts I was so bored. More travelling, more praise for the better, more superior "west", and then there's the whole Saruman in Hobbiton story tacked to the end. I really didn't like this ending at all and felt like most of it was unnecessary.
Well, I have more thoughts and opinions on this series, but I've already written 1200 words of ranting gibberish no one's actually going to read, so I'll leave it at that. One final thing I will add though is that I'm now extra appreciative of the Amazon series diversifying the races. The lore and history is interesting and deep, but I think allowing it to grow and change with the times in some respect is for the better.
Anyway, if you actually made it this far, kudos to you! And if you want to yell at me about how everything I said is wrong, you can shoot me an email (listed on my index page).