Reviews - The Lord of the Rings

3.1k reviews for:

The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien

4.46 AVERAGE

veewillrockyou's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

maraaaa's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous challenging dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Okay. Also. Das world- building war crazy. Ich hätte den Hobbit vorher noch lesen sollen aber es hat auch so geklappt. Es war crazy. Es war so verrückt wie viele verschiedene Wesen er sich ausgedacht hat. Ich liebe die Ents und die Elben und die Hobbits. Es sind unglaublich coole Charactere in der story aufgetaucht. Der Schreibstil war leider nicht so ganz meins, weil es wirklich sehr sachlich geschrieben wurde und somit halt weniger passion erweckt hat. Das hat bei den letzten 10 Seiten funktioniert als der OG Trupp sich dann getrennt hat. Ein mega cooles Buch mit zu vielen Landschaftsbeschreibungen. Aber ich finde super, es mal gelesen zu haben. Es ist eine der Wichtigsten Fantasy Lektüren. Ich bin zwar hin und hergerissen weil es große Teile gab, durch die ich mich auch kämpfen musste, aber ich bin auch begeistert. Frauen wurden sehr einseitig (schön, schlank) dargestellt, das war sehr traurig. Es war häufig das Einzige, was sie ausgemacht hat.

lambnl's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

sailsgoboom's review against another edition

5.0

These books show that there's a time and place for every story, and that when the time is right you'll know. I deliberately avoided reading Lord of the Rings for the longest time, despite that it's a right-of-passage for fantasy bookworms. Now, on the other side of the thick covers, I realize that despite how much I loved the experience (and was surprised by that), I don't regret waiting; for me at least, this is the way I was meant to digest it.

One thing I wasn’t quite prepared for was how *familiar* everything would be. I mean, I of course already know the basic story and characters and some lore, but what I mean is I’m surprised that that has only improved my enjoyment – reading it felt cozy, nostalgic, like settling into a place I once knew but left long ago and now I’m acquainting myself with characters who used to be friends of mine in a different life. I feel like I’m getting in touch with my childhood, with a personal or cultural history I didn’t know I had. Or it’s like myth – stories you’ve heard a million times with the same legendary moments and characters, but retold a hundred times.

And that's the thing -- it *has* been retold a million times. Tolkein's inescapable impact on the fantasy genre was a major reason I stayed away -- over the sixty years since, every piece of his world has been reinvented, subverted, troped, rehashed in so many combinations that what more is there to experience from the original? I expected it to be more of a tedious slog to get through, a novel that has its place in history but nothing new or worthwhile for fresh eyes. However, although it’s slow-moving, it was in a way I relished, that I didn't realize how much I craved. Reading this has been like coming home and I have not been in any rush to leave or hurry through.

What tickles me about all this is how perfectly apt, how utterly thematic this is for the books themselves -- just like the book's place in our "real world", the book itself is about buried legends, how history is reshaped into myth and how this reverberates into the present in unknown ways, how stories become lost to the annuls of archaic lore until the time is right for them to resurface anew, rarely lost forever... and how, in the end, what is worth saving is that cozy scrap of home and the nostalgia for better days.