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vexcrest_113 's review for:
The Hobbit
by J.R.R. Tolkien
adventurous
lighthearted
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:
No
I tried to read a Lord of the Rings book once a few years back and gave up fairly early in because it was so tedious. It was long-winded and pretentious in how it stretched itself for pages describing every mundane thing in great detail. I could never have made it through the whole thing.
Because The Hobbit is so much shorter than the other books, it's easier to endure. Even so, it too is tedious at times. Certainly, cherry-picked scenes are memorable and fantastical, but those moments are squeezed between lengthy stretches of chapters where little of interest happens. The adventure of Bilbo is packed with dull descriptors and snippets of songs that are only sung to fill up page space.
So many songs and very few provide anything of plot importance.
If anything, Tolkien wanted to flex his poetry skills, and I wasn't impressed.
There are too many dwarf characters on this journey and the large cast means none of them make a significant impact. Gandalf and Bilbo are the only protagonists who truly stand out, but Gandalf himself routinely disappears throughout the narrative. Bilbo is at his most interesting at the start when he's uncertain of whether he wants to leave his cozy life behind. As the book goes on, he loses what personality he had and even becomes unlikeable at the very end when he, by all accounts, robs his own friends of their treasure.
The stakes are often not that threatening and only two monsters stood out—those, of course, being Gollum and Smaug. For what it's worth, both of those characters are very entertaining and make for the best scenes in the book. However, the way Smaug is dealt with is surprisingly anticlimactic and that greatly lessens his impact and appeal.
All in all, I didn't enjoy it. The narrator loves to listen to himself talk too much. Still, I will be generous and assume my dislike of it is purely subjective and not a matter of the story being badly written. A 3/5 it is.
Because The Hobbit is so much shorter than the other books, it's easier to endure. Even so, it too is tedious at times. Certainly, cherry-picked scenes are memorable and fantastical, but those moments are squeezed between lengthy stretches of chapters where little of interest happens. The adventure of Bilbo is packed with dull descriptors and snippets of songs that are only sung to fill up page space.
So many songs and very few provide anything of plot importance.
If anything, Tolkien wanted to flex his poetry skills, and I wasn't impressed.
There are too many dwarf characters on this journey and the large cast means none of them make a significant impact. Gandalf and Bilbo are the only protagonists who truly stand out, but Gandalf himself routinely disappears throughout the narrative. Bilbo is at his most interesting at the start when he's uncertain of whether he wants to leave his cozy life behind. As the book goes on, he loses what personality he had and even becomes unlikeable at the very end when he, by all accounts, robs his own friends of their treasure.
The stakes are often not that threatening and only two monsters stood out—those, of course, being Gollum and Smaug. For what it's worth, both of those characters are very entertaining and make for the best scenes in the book. However, the way Smaug is dealt with is surprisingly anticlimactic and that greatly lessens his impact and appeal.
All in all, I didn't enjoy it. The narrator loves to listen to himself talk too much. Still, I will be generous and assume my dislike of it is purely subjective and not a matter of the story being badly written. A 3/5 it is.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Animal death, Death, Violence, Blood, Fire/Fire injury, War