I have a whole lot of nostalgia for these books, having been read them by my dad when I couldn't read, and having watched the movies a good hundred times (especially the 1977 Hobbit, which, incidentally, remains the best Tolkien adaptation ever). So after a fair gap of time, I felt I was ready to revisit the classic series which changed much of how fantasy literature is written. Does it remain the ultimate epic of the genre, or is it overrated?
The plot is one most everyone knows: a hobbit named Frodo is given a magical ring that must be cast into the fire of Mt. Doom to defeat the dark lord Sauron, whose life force is held within the ring. assisting him in his efforts are Gandalf the wizard, Aragorn the ranger/king, Legolas the elf, Gimli the dwarf, Boromir the fighting man of Gondor, Sam the gardener, and Merry & Pippin, comedic hobbit duo. They go through many adventures and whatnot while slowly making their way to Morodor. Now that is a desperately condensed summary, but if you want to know more, go read the Wikipedia page, or, heaven forbid, the book.
What I feel has always separated Tolkien from the other great fantasy writers (Zelazny, Vance, Leiber, Ashton Smith) is his world building. No one before or since has ever matched this. Essentially, what Tolkien does here is not create a book, but create an entire mythology which runs this world. He does this through the tales, the songs, the characters, and the settings; in no other work of fantasy I have read has their been this much effort into creating a believable world, and Tolkien pulls this feat off quite well.
Unfortunately, this is a quality of Tolkien I can appreciate more than I actually like. I can see the monumental work he has done and I am quite impressed by it, but I do not fell I really needed to know the history of every race. It is neat stuff, but any time there is a long and lengthy explanation of some aspect of the world, it just bogs down the story. While things such as the Shire, the Council of Elrond and Tom Bombadil are interesting, they bring the story to a screeching halt and seem like an unnecessary detour.
I will say this is more my preference than anything. Some people regard this world building as being the most important aspect of a story, whereas I think the most important things are character and story. The reason The Dying Earth and Lord of Light remain my favorite works in the genre is because they have edge of your seat storytelling and characters that you can root for and enjoy. While Tolkien's story and characters are good, they feel almost incidental, more of a vehicle for him to show off his world than anything else. The former two works are certainly not as detailed about their world as Tolkien is, but they provide enough detail to give the reader a good sense of place and then use that as a way to tell interesting and compelling stories.
From all of this, it may sound as though I do not like the book, which would be quite a false impression. I do enjoy the book as the parts of the story that work do work quite well. The trip through the Mines of Moria remains one of the best sequences in all of Fantasy Literature and the characters do play off one another nicely, even if they are a tad simplistic at times. The language is beautiful and descriptive, working splendidly as the steed through which we are shown the world.
The Fellowship of the Ring is a hard book for me to review. For my taste it has major story telling problems, such as spending far to much time in the Shire at the beginning, to many strange and pointless detours. The world building is phenomenal, but a lot of it is unnecessary in my opinion. Yet the whole thing still rather works in spite of these flaws and it remains a good book. Perhaps undeserving of its title of greatest fantasy book ever written, yet nevertheless, good. This opinion might not be popular, but then again, neither am I.
Note: I listened to the audiobook version of this read by Rob Ingles. It was competently done, though nothing spectacular. Then again I was measuring him against Christopher Lee's version of Children of Hurin, so that was a hard standard.
Overall: 6/10
-Captain Joshua
Next Time: The Two Towers
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