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Liked It “I was a fan long before the movies came out. If you've only seen the movies, excellent as they are, you're missing out. Tolkien's world-building is first-rate. His fantasy of good vs evil resonates today more than ever.” see full review » see other reviews » |
Didn’t Like It “I give this trilogy credit in the following: |
Newest Reviews
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“the best part of the book is the chapter about the trees, it was the best crazy and funny event in the book.
la mère noelle wrote this review Thursday, July 31 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
and unfortunatly, they didn't keep this part for the movie, BIG ERROR”“I was a fan long before the movies came out. If you've only seen the movies, excellent as they are, you're missing out. Tolkien's world-building is first-rate. His fantasy of good vs evil resonates today more than ever.”
Emilia A wrote this review Monday, February 11 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
“I love it for its beauty and mystery!”
Sophie A wrote this review Thursday, January 17 2008. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No“I give this trilogy credit in the following:
Arconna wrote this review Friday, June 15 2007. ( reply | permalink ) Was this review helpful? Yes | No
--It brought wide spread awareness to the fantasy genre
--It is insanely deep and filled cover to cover with details developed over more than twelve years
--It is a good story.
That's all I can give this book credit for. First off, Tolkien was not a great writer. His prose is dull; characters ramble on and on about stuff that really doesn't matter in context with what is the central theme--destroying the ring. The Council of Elrond is a prime example. I don't care about the back story of where the ring has been, etc. I care about how and why it was created, who created it, and what has to be done to uncreate it. Characters rambling about stuff that really doesn't affect the story is called author intrusion and is one of the biggest no-no's in the literary world today. Gandalf talks far too much too. I love Gandalf, but for a wizard he has a running mouth and seems to go on forever when he could simply say whatever his point is in one concise and perfectly acceptable sentence.
The characters in this novel are also extremely two-dimensional. Even Frodo, the hero of this novel, is 2D. Characters that should play more importance don't, and characters that shouldn't play any importance at all do.
To put it simply, the movies were better because they took all of the things that Tolkien was incapable of doing and did them in film form. Unnecessary detail is lost to be replaced with three-dimensional characters we can connect with. I've read this trilogy once and it was a battle to get to the end. The story just dragged and dragged. From a literary perspective I can see its value and importance in literature--and it is vastly important because of what it has accomplished--however I refuse to say that this book is the best fantasy novel ever written. That would be a lie. It's not. In fact, the novel itself is not purely original as some might want to believe. There's no such thing as original fantasy. Fantasy is derivative, no matter how you look at it, and LOTR is no exception to that. Tolkien was not the first to portray elves as tall and humanlike, nor the first to come up with little people like Hobbits. Orcs and Goblins and the like all existed in mythology before. The archetypes of the story--the battle between good and evil and the destruction of the ring--are not purely original either and rather seem to be modeled off of earlier works in German, Norse, and Celtic mythology.
I enjoyed the films very much, because the story itself is fantastic and entertaining. The novels, however, should be considered as literary classics rather than literature that is considered 'the best ever'.”
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