The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Never before a watcher of The Lord of the Rings movies, I felt guilty of that title being in New Zealand, where, as you may know, the trilogy was shot. But first my predilection of reading the book before the movie had to be appeased. And, alas! now that I have both read and watched The Fellowship of the Ring, I must, for the first time ever, admit that I liked the movie better than the book.

After doing a little research on the series in New Zealand, it is by far the most popular book and movie in this country. The book appeared at the top of NZ readers’ 100 favorite books of all time. Also, at the small, local library that didn’t contain a single Nabokov novel, I found many different editions of LOTR: a few tomes containing the whole trilogy and also multiple books of each individual story.

Many Christians could be forgiven for not ever reading the entire Bible, but the same could not be said of true fantasy fans and this book. I’ve never really gotten into much fantasy but the genius of Tolkien can easily be seen in this book. The writing is top-notch, and for this genre, I think it is the standard. The fact that Tolkien was so engrossed in every facet of this make-believe world is what sets it apart. The intricately detailed maps, development of languages, and creation of poetic songs are all part of the story and it’s easy to see why the trilogy has risen to such popularity.

In this book, set up by The Hobbit, Frodo, a small hobbit is tapped by Gandalf to carry the one omnipotent ring that rules all rings into the dark lands of Mordor, where the ring was created and now must be destroyed in order to restore tranquility. After escaping a few hiccups on the first leg of his journey, Frodo meets with representatives of other races—the elves, dwarves, men—who commit to help Frodo take the ring to Mount Doom. The story is mostly linear—a little bit of travel, some turmoil, turmoil assuage, travel again. Not many plot twists or truly exciting parts. Despite the fine writing, I found myself constantly drifting away from the text. Descriptions of landscapes and back-stories are described down to the minutest detail and are incessant throughout the book. Unfortunately, only a few times was I completely gripped by the story. This book, which may be indicative of the entire genre for me, was a trying experience.

On the other hand, the movie conveyed the story very well. Whereas many movie adaptations tend to dilute the original story, I thought this was a particularly strong production that concentrated the story. Although it is incredible that an entire lore of Middle Earth was created, I think a reader has to be actually fascinated by the lineages and histories to love the books; whereas the movie highlights the major points of the plot and smartly skips the finer points. In the end, the movie made me appreciate the book twofold and made me more interested in how the rest of the story will play out. And as I wake up each day with Mt Hutt on the horizon, I surely must be the last person in NZ to not know how it ends.

Additional: The cover picture I included is an actual photo of the ridiculously sweet 1967 edition of the series that I nabbed off ebay.