One of the key authors in the creation of modern fantasy is J. R. R. Tolkien. The Fantasy shelves are littered with stories about elves and dwarves and dark lords inspired in no small part by his masterwork, Lord of the Rings.
I'm not sure, but I think I read Lord of the Rings before I read The Hobbit. It was some time after Rankin-Bass's... um... adaptation of The Return of the King. Dad had expressed a disappointment in once more not getting to see Shelob (we'd seen the other Lord of the Ring movie in theaters before that.) I wanted to, at the very least, find out what I was missing.
Well I was fine through Fellowship of the Ring. Had a blast. But I reached Two Towers and it. Was. Just. Dull. Yak, yak, yak, yak. I skipped whole sections and went to the good stuff. Meaning Frodo and the ring.
And Shelob.
And once past Shelob, I read Frodo's stuff right until Mount Doom. When Mount Doom ended, so did I. I put the trilogy up and went on with my life. I felt vaugely disappointed with aspects here and there. Like why the hell did Aragorn pass up on Eowyn? For Arwen? An elf chick who is hardly a presence?
I mean, jeeze. Give me the chick who faced down the Witch King any day.
When the Real Movies came out, I went back to the trilogy and gave it another go. And finished it. Glazed over the Apenddices, but in the main finished it.
And my opinion is...
Well...
My old opinion of Lord of the Ring remains more or less unchanged. Fellowship and Return are great, but Towers is duller than dirt. Long sections where people tell what they did and not showing them doing it. Eowyn being passed over. The songs. (Poerty and I don't mix, despite the fact I write the stuff on occasion). That sort of thing.
I happen to agree with Tolkien, who said that the work should have been longer. At the very least show why Arwen is such a big deal, and not cram her off in some appendix. Or something.
All of this carping about what's "wrong" with the trilogy aside, I have to say that I do not begrudge the Lord of the Rings it's place in the scheme of things. For it's time, it reached heights few reached before or since. I should be so lucky to write something even half as good.
Postscript: I mentioned The Hobbit and passed The Silmarillion entirely. The former is an excellent read that, nevertheless, pales beside the Lord of the Rings. The latter I can never finish. It is just too much for me. I just stick with the good parts.
The Ungoliant parts, naturally...
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I had the same reaction to the three books. Fellowship just flew by, I read that in a matter of days (hated, hated Tom Bombadill though. I could practically smell Robin Williams).
Towers took me about six months. Frodo and Sam stuff great, everyone else duller than I thought possible. "Hey, here are some new characters! Let's learn their life stories and all their geneology! C'mon, it'll be fun!"
Return took less time, because by then I was used to the Good Relevant Stuff/Dull Everyone's Family Tree in Detail stuff and could steel myself.
I still have the image of Tolkien finishing Fellowship, putting pen to paper for Towers and writing, "Well, Frodo and Sam..." then thinking, Hey. I bet I can stretch this out into a trilogy. "Aragorn began pining...."
The less said about The Hobbit the better. I read it years ago, was bored to tears, and decided to pass on the Ring books, it was that bad.
I was never into Tolkien (probably the only one at The Bronx H.S. of Science back in the 70's). However, I did read "The Silmarillion" and enjoyed it quite a bit.
BeckoningChasm: Yeah. Tom Bombadill. What a guy. Did not miss him at all while watching the movie. Missed Old Man Elm (or whatever the tree was called that was eating hobbits in the first book), but not Tom.
Henry: My dad likes the Silmarillion, too. I just can't wade through it.
Mind you, I did better with it than with War and Peace. War and Peace killed me first sentence...
"I'm Tom Bombadill
I'll make you thoroughly ill..."
I also missed whatever creature that was that lived in the ground. Can't remember the name now (a cairn-haunt?), but it was a spooky scene. Only probably was, Tom showed up again.
I think those were the wraiths, where Frodo and Co. picked up their fancy weapons and armor. I missed that, too. But what can you do?
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