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A review by trigonomitron
The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
5.0
I'm less of a fan of the Jackson films after reading these books. He told just part of one of the many threads of story that happened. In The Return of the King, he ends the movie 1/3 of the way through the book! So much more happens! Literally almost none of it had to do with people in a battle.
But then there's the last third of the book. The Appendices. It's like Tolkien had a page count he needed to pad out to in order to fulfill some arbitrary requirement. You get a bunch of names and places with no context and often no actual prose. A literal history book would be less dry and more interesting to read. I'm pretty sure he was paid by the word, because by the end, it's mostly random words, and most of those were made up.
But before that, it's great. His writing for this one for some reason becomes more ridiculous. I don't remember such absurdly lofty language in the first two books. It's like he drifts off farther and farther into some misty fantasy cloud as he goes. The hallmark detail fades away and the brush strokes become more vague and broad.
If he spent half as much time developing his characters as he did his world... could you imagine? But as it is, most of the Fell0wship members are flat and feel unnecessary. I mean, it works. But like all of his writing, it could have been better.
It took me literally 40 years of trying to read this series to actually finish it because of the way he veers off into paragraphs that are basically descriptions of his own hikes around Europe and England. It puts your mind to sleep and you wake up pages later and wonder what you missed. But if you can just stay awake and visualize the scenery he's describing, it's actually pretty great stuff. It took lot's of backtracking to where I think I stopped paying attention and just let my eyes start moving over the words without reading them.
Overall, I loved it.
But then there's the last third of the book. The Appendices. It's like Tolkien had a page count he needed to pad out to in order to fulfill some arbitrary requirement. You get a bunch of names and places with no context and often no actual prose. A literal history book would be less dry and more interesting to read. I'm pretty sure he was paid by the word, because by the end, it's mostly random words, and most of those were made up.
But before that, it's great. His writing for this one for some reason becomes more ridiculous. I don't remember such absurdly lofty language in the first two books. It's like he drifts off farther and farther into some misty fantasy cloud as he goes. The hallmark detail fades away and the brush strokes become more vague and broad.
If he spent half as much time developing his characters as he did his world... could you imagine? But as it is, most of the Fell0wship members are flat and feel unnecessary. I mean, it works. But like all of his writing, it could have been better.
It took me literally 40 years of trying to read this series to actually finish it because of the way he veers off into paragraphs that are basically descriptions of his own hikes around Europe and England. It puts your mind to sleep and you wake up pages later and wonder what you missed. But if you can just stay awake and visualize the scenery he's describing, it's actually pretty great stuff. It took lot's of backtracking to where I think I stopped paying attention and just let my eyes start moving over the words without reading them.
Overall, I loved it.