HOW GOOD IS LORD OF THE RINGS?

OVERVIEW

Before anything else I want to clearly state that the Lord of the Rings is one complete novel made up of 6 books or 3 volumes. Keeping that in mind overall the Lord of the RIngs is an extremely well written novel. It is harder to read in the beginning but gets easier as you get nearer to the final conflict in the Return of the King.

REVIEW

LoTR is not a book I would recommend to a new reader. That is because it is extremely hard to maintain interest when reading the first volume. The first volume, The Fellowship of the Ring, is basically over 300 pages of world building and character introductions.

However, if you are able to make it to The Two Towers you are more than rewarded for your patience. In The Two Towers the war for Middle Earth begins in earnest. What I enjoyed most was how Tolkien separated the Fellowship and then sent them all in different directions. They remain separated and yet he ties them all into one single narrative at the end.

The best part of the book however is the siege of Minas Tirith. As the siege is laid all of the good guys are separated far and wide. However, Tolkien manages to reunite them all just in time and in a way that seems completely reasonable and unreasonable at the same time.

On a different note, I would recommend LoTR to younger readers who still have an optimistic view of the world. Because much like marvel heroes the good guys in LoTR seem almost invincible at times. Furthermore, the story is narrated entirely from the perspective of the good guys. We never get to experience the narrative from the perspective of Sauron which makes the story extremely black and white with no room for any shades of grey. This is made even more apparent by the fact that Sauron has no dialogue and never assumes any physical form throughout the book. Marvel Villains at least have a backstory but Sauron doesn’t even get one of those.

And because of this all of the characters in the book are either wholly good or wholly bad. For example, the primary protagonist, Frodo Baggins, seems to be more than perfect. And this is why I have trouble relating to him. However, Gollum or Smeagol is the one exception to this rule. Smeagol/Gollum changes a lot throughout the book. He goes from a hungry stalker to trustworthy guide and then back to a wretched creature addicted to the ring. His transformation is why he is the character I enjoyed the most.

So to conclude, if you like the fantasy genre and are a very optimistic person the LoTR is the book for you. The characters are extremely well rooted. And the entire story is held together by these characters. But if you are looking for moral ambiguity and meaningful villains you will have to look elsewhere in the fantasy genre for example ASOIAF (A Song Of Ice And Fire).

Because as Tolkien himself wrote:

"All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us."

And it takes almost 3 months to read the LoTR. So decide carefully.