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mohamadfs12 's review for:
The Return of the King
by J.R.R. Tolkien
Feels strange giving this 3 stars because I do genuinely think there's a lot of good in it, and that Tolkien is immensely talented in world building and in writing some of the most profound things I've ever read but there's a lot of drawbacks. I found the parts concerning the members of the fellowship outside of Frodo and Sam (aka book 3 and book 5) to be easily the worst parts of LOTR – there is just absolutely no tension in the parts where there should be the most tension. These parts feel more like reading a listing of events you'd find in a summary of the lord of the rings, especially in parts such as battles.
It is considered to be a pretty shallow take my Tolkien fans that the 'battles aren't epic,' with the main excuse being that it wasn't Tolkien's intention to write epic battles and that he finds them to be largely dull. I can understand this and in all honesty, the parts I enjoyed the most were just when the characters were talking and exploring middle-earth. It is why by the end of reading this that I am fully certain that Fellowship of the Ring, especially book 1, is my favourite of the volumes, because it fully focuses on Tolkien's strengths, whereas Two Towers and Return of the King highlight his weaknesses. My favourite part of the Two Towers was actually the Treebeard chapter and my favourite part of this book was everything after the ring gets destroyed. I deeply appreciate the chapters where Tolkien writes about Middle-Earth in a way that flows with the novel, rather than the parts where the characters suddenly yap for a few pages about a piece of middle-earth's history that in my opinion never feels natural.
Back to the battle scenes that I found to be immensely disappointing; again, the excuse is Tolkien finds writing battles dull. I ask you, is that a good excuse or is it just an excuse for bad writing? If I wrote a romance novel (I'm somebody who pretty much dislikes romance as a genre unless it's really really really really good) and it's written pretty well, the plot makes sense, the characters are pretty good but every scene between the two romantic leads is summarised into 1-2 paragraphs, have I succeeded in making a good romance novel? No, I have not because I haven't given you a reason to believe that these two characters have any sort of chemistry, much like Tolkien failed to convince me of the grand scale of this war during the parts where it was at the forefront.
Again, Fellowship of the Ring elicited such a strong sense of tension in the Council of Elrond chapter but when it actually gets to the parts where you see the war, it is just wholly unconvincing to me. I don’t need epic battle scenes but I think Tolkien took the most underwhelming and uninteresting route to convey what happened. I don’t take issue with just the battles, as there were a lot more parts throughout that I feel like this about aswell, but it was these parts I remember most feeling disappointed about. I quite enjoyed the chapter 'the Scouring of the Shire' though to be fair. I think I'd have enjoyed Two Towers and Return of the Ring a lot more if it just concerned the perspective of Frodo and Sam, with maybe a few chapters dedicated to Merry and Pippin's perspective. Hate to say it, but I easily like the movie better, a thousand times more.
Side-note, Aragorn is easily the least interesting character in this whole thing and I sort of dreaded any part with him, especially how nobody ever challenges anything he says and how everyone is up his ass the whole time. His peak was in Fellowship of the Ring. Have I mentioned how much I like Fellowship?
Like I said, there is still a lot to like. You can always expect an absolute banger of a line from a character or even from Tolkien as a narrator atleast once a chapter. Gandalf especially (and expectedly) has some insanely good quotes. Tolkien is a wordsmith and out of every writer out there, I'm definitely most impressed with the fantasy world he created. It has an entire history and lore to rival real life's own, and discovering more about it was the best part. It sucks that I didn’t like the book that much, because I really did want to but it's just not for me, I suppose.
It is considered to be a pretty shallow take my Tolkien fans that the 'battles aren't epic,' with the main excuse being that it wasn't Tolkien's intention to write epic battles and that he finds them to be largely dull. I can understand this and in all honesty, the parts I enjoyed the most were just when the characters were talking and exploring middle-earth. It is why by the end of reading this that I am fully certain that Fellowship of the Ring, especially book 1, is my favourite of the volumes, because it fully focuses on Tolkien's strengths, whereas Two Towers and Return of the King highlight his weaknesses. My favourite part of the Two Towers was actually the Treebeard chapter and my favourite part of this book was everything after the ring gets destroyed. I deeply appreciate the chapters where Tolkien writes about Middle-Earth in a way that flows with the novel, rather than the parts where the characters suddenly yap for a few pages about a piece of middle-earth's history that in my opinion never feels natural.
Back to the battle scenes that I found to be immensely disappointing; again, the excuse is Tolkien finds writing battles dull. I ask you, is that a good excuse or is it just an excuse for bad writing? If I wrote a romance novel (I'm somebody who pretty much dislikes romance as a genre unless it's really really really really good) and it's written pretty well, the plot makes sense, the characters are pretty good but every scene between the two romantic leads is summarised into 1-2 paragraphs, have I succeeded in making a good romance novel? No, I have not because I haven't given you a reason to believe that these two characters have any sort of chemistry, much like Tolkien failed to convince me of the grand scale of this war during the parts where it was at the forefront.
Again, Fellowship of the Ring elicited such a strong sense of tension in the Council of Elrond chapter but when it actually gets to the parts where you see the war, it is just wholly unconvincing to me. I don’t need epic battle scenes but I think Tolkien took the most underwhelming and uninteresting route to convey what happened. I don’t take issue with just the battles, as there were a lot more parts throughout that I feel like this about aswell, but it was these parts I remember most feeling disappointed about. I quite enjoyed the chapter 'the Scouring of the Shire' though to be fair. I think I'd have enjoyed Two Towers and Return of the Ring a lot more if it just concerned the perspective of Frodo and Sam, with maybe a few chapters dedicated to Merry and Pippin's perspective. Hate to say it, but I easily like the movie better, a thousand times more.
Side-note, Aragorn is easily the least interesting character in this whole thing and I sort of dreaded any part with him, especially how nobody ever challenges anything he says and how everyone is up his ass the whole time. His peak was in Fellowship of the Ring. Have I mentioned how much I like Fellowship?
Like I said, there is still a lot to like. You can always expect an absolute banger of a line from a character or even from Tolkien as a narrator atleast once a chapter. Gandalf especially (and expectedly) has some insanely good quotes. Tolkien is a wordsmith and out of every writer out there, I'm definitely most impressed with the fantasy world he created. It has an entire history and lore to rival real life's own, and discovering more about it was the best part. It sucks that I didn’t like the book that much, because I really did want to but it's just not for me, I suppose.