I don't know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve
Rating: 3/5
Spoiler Alert! If you haven’t read the book, this review will contain spoilers so it’s up to you if you continue…
I’ve had The Fellowship of the Rings, in fact, the whole Lord of the Rings series, on my bookshelf for years now. I got through The Hobbit over the summer between finishing school and starting college, but starting the main series has always been so daunting that I’ve been putting it off. After finishing the Harry Potter audiobooks, however, I thought I’ve give Lord of the Rings a go. I never would have finished The Fellowship so quickly if I had been reading the physical book instead of the audiobook, but I came up against the difficulty of following the story properly. I can’t be certain if this was more due to the nature of the storytelling than the audiobook, but it’s something I’m still finding off-putting with audiobooks. Knowing Harry Potter so well made it less of a concern to me, but now I think it's the difference in difficulty that is makes Harry Potter so easy, whilst The Fellowship was a little tricky.
I made some notes as I went but honestly the majority of them are something along the lines of ‘so much exposition’. The reason Lord of the Rings is such a quality book is because of the incredible thoroughness of Tolkien. He created an entire world. Though there are plenty of authors who create their own fictional worlds, I’m not sure any will ever match Tolkien, who created histories not only for relevant characters, but for whole peoples and families that get mentioned only once or twice. You can’t read a chapter without coming up against a history lesson on Middle Earth.
Whilst this is phenomenal, I’m not sure it makes for good storytelling. I really enjoyed the beginning of The Fellowship as it provided some history of the world I was entering, but the further into the book I got, the more my focus drifted. At times, the history really takes away from the narrative and I found it hard to remain invested when there were so many tangents.
Something I really did enjoy was the more explained role of the hobbits. Maybe I’m remembering wrong, but in the film it feels like a bit of a coincidence that they end up going on the journey with Frodo (Merry and Pippin, at least), but the book made it seem like a conscience decision, emphasising their friendship and deep understanding of Frodo. It actually made them more rounded characters to me from the beginning, rather than taking until we see them all in their separate adventures to prove their worth.
To touch on the storyline...well, obviously it’s compelling. Why else would it be such a long-standing, well-loved piece of fiction. I enjoy the adventure narrative and the way it is told through characters who don’t or “shouldn’t” get a long. However, I think it’s frustrating that it has to be a three-part story. You can’t stop reading at the end of The Fellowship. If you do, you are missing the end of the story, there’s no two ways about it. Whilst I always planned to read all three, with the immense amount of detail in just one, it’s a lot to process to read all of them, especially if I actually want to remember the details. I can get away with not paying too much attention because I know the films, but these are difficult books. Extended histories and long tangents ultimately left me emotionally uninvested, and has sadly put me off reading the others for a short while.
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