The Lord of the Rings, Fellowship of the Ring, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published by Harper Collins, is a third-person, fantasy novel primarily told from the point-of-view of Frodo Baggins, heir to the Baggins family wealth and otherwise good, young chap. The Bagginses are Hobbits, creatures like men but much shorter and with hairy feet from the realm of Middle-Earth that keep to themselves in their own little shire, The Shire, until one day, a ring bestowed upon Frodo by his uncle, Bilbo, is revealed to be a tool for an evil sorcerer, Sauron. Though Sauron died, in theory, Frodo’s friend and confidant, Gandalf, a powerful wizard who once helped Bilbo on his own journey, encourages Frodo to go to Rivendell, a High Eleven outpost, with the ring, to determine the fate of all of Middle-Earth. The ring itself holds many strange powers, though for Frodo, it makes him invisible, but otherwise, it can unlock the physical manifestation of Sauron again and end the world. Encouraged not to use the ring, Frodo depends on those he meets on the way, like his other friends who join him, Sam, Merry, and Pippin, and of course, Gandalf, in addition to a slew of other strange people from mythical backgrounds: Strider, the mysterious ranger; Gimli, the dwarven son of one of Bilbo’s companions; Legolas, a wood elf with remarkable talents; and Boromir, a great human warrior from Minas Tirith. These nine together must overcome Sauron’s minions: powerful black riders serving directly under the dark lord, monstrous orcs hungry for blood, and one ancient demon of fire known only as a balrog. The goal is to cast the ring into the pits of fire from where it was forged, so Frodo and his companions set out as the fellowship of the ring.

This is my second Tolkien book–the first was The Hobbit, Bilbo’s adventure into ancient realms to steal the treasure of Smaug, this asshole dragon. Of course, like The Lord of the Rings, it’s being made into a major motion picture in three parts–which makes a lot more sense for The Lord of the Rings than it does The Hobbit, but we’ll talk about why Peter Jackson is a douche later. In the meantime, The Lord of the Rings has played a very profound role in my life, even for a guy who never read it. My brothers are big role-players, and I don’t mean in the bedroom, though who knows. Maybe. Probably. Either way, having spent the majority of their lives organizing Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, The Lord of the Rings in my splintered household was very much like The Bible in an ordinary, Christian family. It was important for me, in my teenage years without a mother around and living with my brothers alone, to know the difference between an elf and a dwarf, the value of mythril, and just what spells work best against the undead. My older brother, Thomas, owned an arsenal of medieval weaponry, including maces, swords, daggers, flails, and any number of additional weaponry that he hung proudly off the walls of our suburban home. Our library consisted of cheap fantasy novels, role playing compendiums, and franchise books that bordered on fan fiction. It’s no surprise that I too rarely write fantasy, a rebellion against my very upbringing, but you can’t abandon your roots forever.

But I’ve grown older and come to see the value of it. After combing through The Hobbit in anticipation of those films, I discovered how fantastic the journeys in fantasy stories really are, scouring the realms for treasure and some ethical ideal of heroism. My immersion in games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and television shows like Game of Thrones were particularly powerful reminders of the intentions made in my upbringing, so when I saw a trailer for a video game called The Shadows of Mordor, I thought I’d give it a shot. You can read the linked post, but it’s essentially Assassin’s Creed set in The Lord of the Rings. Pretend like that’s not fucking awesome. In any case, I’ve decided to throw myself back into Middle-Earth again as a result.

The Fellowship of the Ring is weak in a lot of places when taken into the context of the recently made film adaptations. As I read these books, I had to remove myself from my expectations of the book based on the film in order to fully understand what the author was doing. That’s not to say that the film is so good, it overshadows the books–quite the contrary, in fact. As I read this novel, I kept finding myself awaiting moments from the film, anticipating things to happen as they did in the films. Halfway through the novel, I began to acknowledge that habit and realized that the film bastardized large portions of the novel, considering how long I waited to see what came next. That’s not to say that the films are bad, but the novel shows a lot more skill.

The thing you have to remember is that in spite of the existence of Sauron, the selfishness of Saruman, and the feverish attacks of the orcs, none of these play a central antagonist in the book. Rather, it’s the ring itself that plays the main villain. Very rarely do you read of an author who uses an object to create both fear and antagonism to move the plot along, a simple item that the characters carry with them which also acts as a plot device because of it’s unusual behaviors. After all, it’s not Sauron that inevitably breaks up the fellowship (God, I hope that’s not a spoiler for you at this point), but the ring itself and how it comes between Frodo and the rest of his party. The dangers that lurk around every corner don’t threaten the fellowship half as much as their own yearning for the ring, as it slowly disseminates our heroes without their knowing. Using an item alone that serves no single purpose to forge a conflict that extends through three novels is feat I can’t imagine will ever again be done quite so well. At the moment, I’d be hard pressed to write a short story with the same kind of conflict, let alone a single goddamn novel about it. However, it’s this same vilification of an object that makes The Lord of the Rings so epic.

The Fellowship of the Ring isn’t about the ring so much though, as it is about building the relationship between the characters of Aragorn and Frodo. When they kick things off, Aragorn is a stern, paranoid ranger that poses as much danger as he does friendship, but over the course of the novel, Frodo begins to trust Aragorn. Tolkien accomplishes this by, essentially, killing off or creating distance between Frodo and those he naturally trusts in the story and forcing Aragorn into their position. As trouble manifests as a result of Frodo’s evil ring, Frodo’s dependence on Aragorn grows through the dissolution of Frodo’s own child-like naivete, represented by the other hobbits in his party. At the same time, Aragorn’s own natural leadership is juxtaposed against the feelings and beliefs of the other surviving party members, especially Boromir who shows nothing but contempt for Frodo being chosen to carry the ring to Mordor. By using other characters to both represent and uniquely define the central characters of this novel, Tolkien encourages communication and relationship evolution between his central characters that ultimately creates a dynamic of genuine friendship, comparable to a romantic kinship in spite of the obvious opposites between the two characters.

The highlight of this novel is its description. It’s no surprise that Tolkien considered himself a poet, because the word choice in every description is downright phenomenal. Everything is colored and portrayed with words to the extent that you can’t help but see the images as beautifully as they appeared in the film. Though his dialogue is a bit stunted, the careful, yet powerful, descriptions, enhanced by their eloquence, make up for whatever we miss as we progress through the novel. Every step of the journey is tracked and every lineage is marked, but it never bored me. I was engaged in spite of how mundane some of these ideas were, because of how skillful Tolkien wrote, avoiding cliches in a day rife with them while building on even the most regular of sights with descriptions enough to make them sound as though they’re the most beautiful, or in some cases most horrible, things that I’ve never before seen. 

It’s more than likely that most audiences have seen the films, but haven’t read the books. I’m not going to tell you what you’re missing–that wouldn’t be any fun, but I will say that Jackson chops out whole sections of the book, shortening things to the point where months in the story feel like mere days. I can understand a bit of heavy cutting in some cases, but what remains isn’t true the novel either. Dialogue is added, most notably humor, as well as events that were never written, meant to emotionally charge the audience. When I think of a film adapted from a book, it’s okay to permit that kind of stuff with what have generally been accepted as lousy books. Who’s to say a book is lousy? I don’t know, I’ll leave that to the general masses who made the film, Drive, into a masterpiece but left the book hinged on, “Eh…” What I like about what Jackson does is that he creates moments of humor that didn’t previously exist in the book to lighten the subject matter. However, he also falls off on various thoughts that Tolkien, I can only imagine, preferred to keep. When Boromir comes striding into Rivendell on a horse, I only thought, “Why would you include that?” After all, in the story, Boromir fucking walked to Rivendell to meet with the council, having lost his horse along the way. That may not be important to you, Mr. Jackson, but that’s important to me, in spite of your efforts to find a villain while overlooking the obvious. My negative feelings on the subject matter of Jackson’s films go beyond just disapproval in the details, considering how he’s stretching The Hobbit, a novel shorter than Fellowship of the Ring, into three separate parts, but a guy has to make money, right? Even if he is a Jabba-the-Hut, Lucas-esque piece of shit. In spite of all that, Jackson makes pretty movies and if I owned his trilogy on Blu-Ray, I may have kinder feelings for him. Too bad that I don’t. As far as my opinion goes, Jackson can eat shit for all the money he’s trying to make off Tolkien.

If you even liked the movie remotely, read the book and enjoy it for what it’s supposed to be. It certainly feels like the beginning of a trilogy, but in-and-of-itself, it’s an epic tale of friendship, discovery, and finding not all good and evil come in tremendous extremes but in the most unexpected of places.

The Riahi Rating:
★★★★★
5/5 stars.

Other reviews of Harper-Collins books:
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley

The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, written by Tolkien and published by Ballantine Books, is the third-person account on the War of the Ring in Middle-Earth, following The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers. With Frodo captured by the orcs on the border of Mordor, it’s up to Sam, Frodo’s trusty gardener, to rescue him–but Sam has Frodo’s evil ring at least, to make him invisible and sneak around unnoticed as a means of saving Frodo. Meanwhile, in the plains of Pelennor outside of Minas Tirith, the war is set in full motion after the army of Sauron beats through Osgiliath to siege the seat of the king. The Rohirrim of Rohan ride forth with a prayer to catch the battle in time as Aragorn and his followers pass through the path of the dead in order to meet Sauron’s fleets on their way to Minas Tirith. The fellowship is splintered–Gandalf fights on the front lines of Minas Tirith while Pippin tries to stop Denethor, the crazed Steward of Gondor. Merry rides forth with Rohan, taken on the steed of a brave soldier with fair features who seems strangely familiar, and the two unwanted warriors ride to the front line of battle. Aragorn, followed by Gimli, Legolas, and his people, the Dunedain, call upon old debts to Isildur with ghosts biting at their heels. Sam, using all the wit and courage he never knew he had, invades an orc tower under the guise of an elven saboteur. And Frodo Baggins, the carrier of the ring held responsible with ending evil in Middle-Earth, waits only for death at the torture by those he once promised to defeat.

This is the final chapter of The Lord of the Rings, though, undoubtedly, not the final book in Middle-Earth that I will be submerged in. The pressure is on and the end is nigh, so at these moments more than ever, I can’t help but reflect upon my experiences with The Lord of the Rings leading up to this point. In my blog on The Two Towers, I discussed the influences that kindled my interest in fantasy from the days of my youth and into adulthood, citing various video games and Japanese animations as source exposure to the worlds of magic, dragons, and, uh, dungeons, I guess. But, in spite of other external forces, I’ve always had a strange relationship with The Lord of the Rings–perhaps because how heavily other fantasy stories are invested in the world created by Tolkien in his magnum opus. After all, dwarves, elves, and dragons weren’t defined into a single, unique genre until Tolkien wrote of it. Prior to his publications, these elements were the subject of operas, folktales, and epic poems of a separate age, though many of these were later related as children’s tales to encourage a sense of exploration. By creating a collective of these elements, Tolkien aided in defining the fantasy genre which went on to become the foundation for roleplaying games and, much later, films, video games, and other books. It was also Tolkien that defined character classes, as we perceive them in modern roleplays. Gandalf is a wizard, Aragorn is a ranger, Bilbo is a thief. These became the foundation of modern day character creation choices, and these elements have bled into other gaming genres. Take Mass Effect, for instance: three base classes with several specializations and cross classes, including soldier (like the warrior), biotic (with unique powers like a wizard), and engineer (akin to the thief, with hacking instead of lockpicking and favoring diversion tactics). Though these base roles existed in all forms of combat throughout history, it was Tolkien in particular that made the specific talents of each individual to a small party of heroes seem both romantic and utilitarian. It’s fair to say that The Lord of the Rings, in spite of the high praise it receives, receives only sufficient appreciation for the influence it has made.

For me, it all began with The Hobbit. I loved the 1977 film as a child–it was probably one of my favorite films, though in a more curious capacity than my other childhood fandoms. Sure, I loved Star Wars and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but The Hobbit, unlike other childhood loves, carried a sense of mysticism about it, both in story and animation. It looked ancient and beautiful and seemed to have sprung out of the depths of imagination itself. Though they made a couple of sequels, including a film of The Return of the King in the same animation, The Hobbit impacted most completely because it was a full story without the necessity of additional components, unlike how each installment of The Lord of the Rings essentially needs the previous installment in order to make any sense. Besides, the animation for The Lord of the Rings original film was disturbing. Either way, the idea of setting out reluctantly on a journey, being the smallest of my party, and yet being the one who overcomes all the obstacles in the end really built my self-esteem, since I was generally the smallest boy, or one of the smallest boys, in school. I related to Bilbo–nay, in my eyes, I always was Bilbo Baggins. To this day, I’d still take Sting over Anduril or Glamdring. 

When I first saw the film for The Return of the King, I goaded my brothers by theorizing that Sam and Frodo were, in fact, in love, in spite of Sam’s marriage to Rosie and Frodo’s departure. The idea was that the bond they shared, the sentiment of their journey, extended beyond the shallow romance that Sam undertook. After all, let’s face it–Sam’s a farm boy, through-and-through. Even if he became the mayor of the goddamn Shire, he still needs to pretend to be whatever the close-minded followers of the Shire deem respectable in order to avoid discrimination. Thus, Frodo leaves the Shire as a result of Sam proclaiming love to another, one less deserving. It sounds plausible, right? My brothers didn’t think so. They found the thought uncomfortable, because they were unsuited yet for an era beyond homophobia. I understood that they wanted the traditional expectation of the characters to hold true because of how much they looked to those characters for inspiration, but part of me knew that my brothers were missing out by not opening their minds to the idea of idolizing a homosexual, even if they are hetero. For me it was easy–at the time, all my favorite musicians were androgynous Japanese rock stars with a strong affinity for fan service, if not gay themselves. While I knew I theorized about the Sam and Frodo -ship just to troll, part of me really wanted my brothers to overcome the old-world ideals on homosexuality and look outside the box. In a lot of ways, I really think they did. In any case, The Return of the King was so strangled with CG, that the real story–the real meat and potatoes (po-ta-toes)–is the exploration of that relationship. In fact, in the book, on many occasions, Frodo and Sam hold hands or hold each other in embrace, though very little of that made it into the film. Though it’s probably not the intended canon ending, I think it’s fair to interpret it either way. Even if you’re not looking for a gay hero, you may find one–and if you do, you may come to realize that he’s no less a hero for it. 

Middle-Earth: Shadows of Mordor isn’t the first The Lord of the Rings game in my repertoire–in fact, in the early years of my drinking binges, my best friend, Jim, and I spent hours playing a game called The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, by Electronic Arts. The plot was fairly negligible, but the game had this great two-player campaign setting where you and a friend could essentially slaughter limitless amounts of orcs to your heart’s content, so long as you don’t make too great an effort to push to the end of the map. Jim and I slayed thousands of orcs at a time with Aragorn and Legolas–we even gave a special title to an attack because of its great use and profound ridiculousness: Aragorn has a sharp, poignant stomp that acts like a kick. The attack is slow, but it provides adequate damage and fends off other nearby enemies while deflecting weak blows. We named it Aragon’s Pimp-Step of Doom. Of all of my memories of The Lord of the Rings prior to actually reading these books, this one is most cherished. While the battle raged on and our drinking binges grew longer and more sad than silly, we still found joy between matches in Halo and playthroughs of Final Fantasy games to kick out a pimp-step. In the fight against Mordor, never forget the hos that Aragorn had to shake down for great justice.

The moment we’ve all been waiting for–a quote from my novel in progress. Though I very rarely do this, I’m on my last draft–so I figured I’d clue you in a little on what it is exactly that I’m writing. Besides, the occasion warrants it. The scene is set around a roleplay gaming table in the basement of our protagonist, Rick. Though there’s more context to the chapter than that, I’ll just go ahead and let you read:

“They didn’t even have condoms back then, Corey. They had mackintoshes,” I explained as I sipped Mountain Dew: Game Fuel from The Lord of the Rings light-up goblet from Burger King. Three other chalices sat around the table, all of them lit red from the bottom, to set the eerie, gaming mood. Mine portrayed Frodo, an especially brave halfling. “So you will not rape the siren, whose wail still echoes over the mountainside.”

Wow, look at all that depth. Tolkien could not have written it better himself, I wager. The purpose of this citation, however, is that I owned those goblets! My brothers and I, in our suburb of Aurora, Illinois, went from Burger King to Burger King in order to collect several collections of these. Though I knew little about The Lord of the Rings, I was interested based on the beauty of these fine beverage containers. Leading up to this little treasure hunt and the following release of the film, I played much Dungeons & Dragons and these more than any manner of decoration (including a small replica of a dragon’s skull I felt great pride for) set the mood at our gaming table. We rolled dice between our beverages and sipped gleefully as our characters feasted on the blood of whatever, who cares. It really kind of made you feel like you were there, but I think that’s what roleplay is all about.

My work aside, there’s plenty to take from The Return of the King and just as much that I’d prefer not to take. While the book is the sum of its many parts, the narrative appears halved by the growing tension building to the climactic ending and the ending itself. In fact, to say that half the book is ending isn’t a far off exaggeration. The first half of the book is the great, immense climb to our epic ending–only the ending drags on forever. In a lot of ways, the ending feels necessary, but it overwhelms the struggle of the War of the Ring itself. Our characters find their resolution and then there’s a ceremony, a funeral, another ceremony, another ceremony, a journey, a post-war clean-up, and so on. Tolkien certainly taught me to treasure the finality of a story, though it comes at some cost. At the very least, he ties up all the loose ends, including those that began in The Hobbit.

As a result of a book that’s all tension and ending, there’s essentially no development. One could argue that character evolution occurred in the previous books in the series, but as a stand-alone novel, The Return of the King is without point or purpose. It is tied to the others in the series with such permanence that I couldn’t imagine enjoying it without having read the three Tolkien novels that led up to it. The difference between Strider from the prior book and Aragorn from this one is so insubstantial, I had a hard time believing he was very kingly and imagined only an old ranger in need of a bath taking the crown for himself. At the very most, the only development that came in the characters is the relief that comes with the series finally ending. On the bright side, at least it finally ended, I guess.

Still, the ending, in spite of how long it is, is necessary in the context of the series as a whole and only because I read the other books of The Lord of the Rings prior to The Return of the King, did I find it suitable. With so many threads left hanging in the wind, I wondered whether Tolkien would answer all the questions as the fellowship progressed to their end. He not only answered everything, including questions I didn’t have, but the narrative structure of the ending in itself had its own beginning, middle, and ending, both tying itself up where it began while finishing the entire series up where it started. Tolkien definitely had some idea of how he expected the series to end too–because of the excellent allusion throughout the rest of the series in regard to this last installment, Tolkien brought an ending that was both entirely complete and poetically just. It’s an ending to end all endings and sufficiently completes an otherwise perfect series.

Now if you’re a big nerd like myself, you’ll find the appendices after the novel’s end just as interesting as the story. These illustrate how carefully Tolkien thought though the series, including the history of the races of Middle-Earth, the origins and pronunciations of the languages of its peoples, and completely original alphabets with pertaining sounds to make those words. It also includes back-story on Aragorn and Arwen, in addition to the other Kings of Gondor, Rohan, and Dale. These not only help readers understand the underlying plots of the series more clearly, but it also bridges gaps in the history of Middle-Earth that you learn from the context of The Lord of the Rings narrative. By failing to read these appendices, you’re missing out on whole eras of the world that Tolkien contrived.

So they made a film of this book, which apparently clean-swept the Oscars. Back to Jackson once more, we get to see his interpretation of The Lord of the Rings and not an accurate depiction of what Tolkien wrote. On the plus side, the story is mostly true to its source material and everything is made much more beautiful by illustrating and elongating short bursts of story into long, epic scenes. However, Jackson takes some liberties that diminish the value of the original story to a degree that damn-near depressed me as I watched the film. For instance, by killing Saruman at the beginning of the film, short of the context of the way Tolkien wrote it, the poetry of the ending was lost in the contrived magnitude of Frodo’s journey. Contrived, even more than originally, because Jackson even invented some new trickery by Gollum to create conflict between Sam and Frodo, adding only shallow drama to a story meant to be powerful. In spite of these changes though, Jackson delivers a lot of action and supplies a fair amount of badassery on the part of our heroes. But on occasion, even if that badassery feels phony–like an army of ghosts on the fields of Pelennor. Come on, man, did you even read the book? I guess that’s the price you pay when you cut integral characters out to make time for Elijah Wood to make gagging faces on screen.

In any case, it was a wonderful ending to a wonderful series. However, compared to his previous works, like The Two Towers and The Hobbit, Tolkien failed to meet the expectations I had for this book. It was a good ending and a great effort, but it pales in comparison to the profound meaning, exploration, and beauty that Tolkien once painted before.

The Riahi Rating:
★★★★☆
4/5 stars.

Other reviews of Ballantine Books:
The Hobbit, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published by Harper Collins, is the third-person account of Frodo Baggins, a halfling carrying an evil ring to its destruction in the second installment following The Fellowship of the Ring. While Frodo and his trusty companion, Sam Gamgee, follow a sickly mutant named Gollum through the mountains, they garner the trust of Faramir, a lord of men’s greatest empire, Gondor, and they face off against an over-sized, evil arachnid, Shelob. The other members of the fellowship, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas, journey through Rohan and the Fangorn Forest to find Frodo’s friends, Merry and Pippin, after the two halflings were kidnapped by orcs. They encounter the king of Rohan and save him from poisoning and brain-washing, via Grima on orders from the vile wizard Saruman, in addition to meeting up with an old friend, risen from the bowels of hell. Meanwhile, Merry and Pippin escape the clutches of orcs who can’t determine exactly where they should take their captives, and meet up with Treebeard and his ent people, a race of tree humanoids older than man himself. These three parties once split up at the apex of their journey continue forward to confront the plight on their land, and though separated, they hold on to the same goal that drove them from their homes in the first place—to keep those homes safe in the coming war against the dark lord, Sauron, and his black army.

You know, I never wrote much fantasy except for a novel that I started with my younger brother when I was ten years old, featuring characters vaguely based on people we knew–like a stout but kind-hearted prince based on our friend, Nick, and other characters constructed from traditional fantasy archetypes. It never went anywhere, as you may have guessed, and I never considered dabbling in fantasy since then. Though I occasionally involved myself with fantasy, my original expectations for the genre grew primarily from fantasy video games available on the Nintendo 64 and Playstation, since my older brother hadn’t yet determined we were old enough to join him in his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns yet–a choice that eventually began my aberration for fantasy as a whole. Somehow, my brother’s D&D friends took the majesty out of fantasy and made it into homage to their drug addictions, sexual depravity, and inept longing bloodlust. As I grew older, I steered away from the genre because it meant so much more to my brothers and, even as we all went together with my older brother’s role-playing group to see the Tolkien films in theaters, my interest in fantasy concepts diminished from considerately listening to their role-play character evolutions to rolling my eyes at the mere thought of commandeering dice to determine the fate of elves and dwarves fighting dragons and shit. I came to prefer stories with more modern, human interest that sometimes dabbled in sci-fi or fantasy, but were otherwise human stories about abstract, emotional truth. Though I found solace in too few fantasy features by the time I was a teenager, my perception of fantasy was nonetheless shaped before I even started playing D&D and still yet after quitting, even in my unwillingness to cooperate with the idea of it when it seemed more important to go out and meet girls.

I have a lot to thank to The Legend of Zelda for building a lush, imaginative fantasy story in my youth. It’s about an elven people in a land called Hyrule, where a boy named Link, joined by a fairy, fights the forces of evil to protect his land in spite of the fact that he grew up with no community or lasting friendships, but only because he knew he must fight. Even if you went into a Zelda game with a strategy guide, the game posed several dungeons and quests that not only felt satisfying upon completion, it encouraged a sense of mystery as you haphazardly stepped into the darkness and stumbled upon a magic chest or listened to the tales of old told by oracles of times past. It was everything I wished Dungeons & Dragons could have been and, with some of my own friends from high school, I even started a roleplaying campaign based on Ocarina of Time, though even that was eventually tainted by my brother’s group when they begged to involve themselves and I was too young to know any better.

Zelda was a solid bridge into Final Fantasy video games that handled real issues veiled behind fictional circumstances, like schizophrenia, depression, and abandonment. They were more science-fiction than fantasy though, and my drive for fantasy was once again deterred but for a few otherwise random exceptions, until arriving at a series called The Elder Scrolls. The most notable title in that series was Skyrim, though I played a couple of its predecessors, and I found the fantasy worlds created by Bethesda Softworks more appealing because never before did a video game offer so much immense, in-depth story-telling while permitting free will to its player, forcing me to deal with the circumstances of my moral decisions. I played Morrowind and Oblivion as much as one person can, and even went on to complete Skyrim to platinum level, according to the Playstaion Network anyway. I’d like to say more, but I’m saving that story for my review of the books written based on The Elder Scrolls, whenever I get the chance to read them.

However, my most powerful fantasy inspiration came not from a video game, but a Japanese animation that originated from a manga. Paired with beautiful, gore-centered aesthetics, Berserk tells the tale of Guts, a wandering mercenary who joins a charismatic leader, Griffith, to take their place among royalty by being the best merc band in the land, until Griffith is driven mad by Guts’s exodus to discover his purpose. Thus, Griffith in his abuse of power is called upon by transcendental demons who bend the will of mortals in order to shape reality as they see fit. Griffith becomes demonic presence in-and-of-himself and it’s up to Guts to stand against him in order to write destiny as he sees fit, because he believes no one is fated but by their enduring will to survive. The story is rife with libertarian propaganda (according to people who question my own political and ethical ideals), but it also deals with complications of battlefield camaraderie, sexual abuse, and corruption in politics, well before Game of Thrones was written. Also, this is not a story where I advise growing attached to your central characters, because George Martin was not the first person to invent a story where everyone you love dies.

Thus, we arrive at The Lord of the Rings, my newest (and arguably oldest) fantasy obsession. Most of the people I’ve spoken to held The Two Towers as being the worst of the trilogy–the way people who only watched the original Star Wars trilogy just once usually consider The Empire Strikes Back the worst of the three. But like Empire, the 2nd installment of The Lord of the Rings is more than meets the eye. The best way to explain it is to hold it up to the failures of The Fellowship of the Ring. Fellowship is buried in exposition, story-in-story, and, more often than not, the narrative gets lost behind Tolkien’s effort to give epic value to his trilogy to be. The Two Towers, on the other hand, is the relief that comes after the storm of information. This novel jumps right into the narrative action and sticks with it, only changing major points of view when he’s focusing on one of the additional story lines in the overall piece. You have to keep in mind, this book has three ongoing stories that are intertwining, so none of them are told chronologically. However, when he starts one, he takes it to the end instead of hitting only one suspenseful note at a time before moving on to a different character to find another climactic turn. He never leaves you hanging, but instead puts you in their journeys, even though all three roads are very different in tone.

Likewise, each of the three stories carries an equal amount of value, but is placed in the overall narrative to escalate this novel from a collection of intertwining novellas to a book of epic proportions. We begin with Aragorn and his buddies, setting out to find the other two hobbits–this is where we get to see our three badasses in their full glory as they take to the plains of Rohan to slay orcs and run in a straight line for days without food or rest, because that’s what badasses are wont to do. When they come so close to finding Merry and Pippin but miss them by only a hair, we find out exactly what happened to the two hobbits, before Tolkien takes us back to Aragorn and his bros in their reuniting with the hobbits, only to end on a note that even though they’ve found each other, the respite is only as sweet as it is short. He sends us miles south east of Rohan to reunite his audience with his main protagonists, Frodo and Samwise. As Tolkien carries us through these characters, he occasionally steps into the role of an overall point-of-view story-teller as opposed to an over-the-shoulder one, in order to remind us of certain events that happened with the other characters in the previous portion of the novel to build further drama by connecting the character paths. The shout of the Nazgul flying overhead? Little do Sam and Frodo know that he’s making his way to Isengard… and so on. Anything anyone ever said about Tolkien masterminding his whole world, to the most minute details, wasn’t lying. This guy keeps a goddamn timeline of every character from open to goddamn close.

The most interesting of Frodo’s portion of the book is the character of Gollum/Smeagol. Tolkien invents two distinct personalities, Slinker and Stinker as Sam likes to refer to them, which argue over the fate of the hobbits throughout the story. The unique part is that, at first, Gollum doesn’t even know who Smeagol is. While prompted to remembering (or at least pretending to remember) by Frodo, he believes that Smeagol is a separate entity and, in their arguments, treats himself (or his alternate persona) as though he’s just another weak accomplice to grasp his precious, Frodo’s ring, again. The unique, Rand-esque quality of Smeagol comes when, at his most comfortable with Frodo, he starts speaking in first-person singular instead the plural “we,” to express a revelation of individuality instead of the self-subordination that we anticipate of Gollum. This minutiae at the slip of a tongue, from Gollum’s own self-ignorance to his self-definition, make him by far one of the most interesting fictional characters I ever had the pleasure of following, and even though Gollum is absent for most of the end novel action, his interactions with Frodo carried the most weight of the first two novels combined.

Pairing Frodo with Sam and Gollum with Smeagol and using their intentions for the ring as variation not only builds on what we already know about the characters, but moves the plot along as Gollum finally manages to ensnare the hobbits and the hobbits grieve and rage in each other’s absence–the journey is given greater suspense and drama by adding an additional character, or voice in Gollum’s case, and raises the stakes of that character’s livelihood–and without a friend, Gollum’s stakes grow with finding out if he shakes off his evil side in time to make the right choice and help the hobbits. To use a ring, a circular piece of jewelry, as a metaphor for the circular, give-and-take nature of friendship and self-identity becomes an examination on the human condition itself, in spite of the fact that there are no humans in these circumstances. Gollum runs in circles trying to figure himself out–Frodo and Sam go back and forth, with and against each other against the grain of their journey, in a way a plain, gold band can twist between the fingers. It may be a very typical lesson to learn in fictional story, but the revelation that friendship is paramount or doom awaits, transpired by the ring as the novel’s events unfold, allow the message to carry that much more weight as we come to the end of this book in moments of tension prior to the final act of Tolkien’s trilogy.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, I have to re-enforce the same thoughts that I had when I reviewed Fellowship’s film. Great visuals? Check. Bastardized story? Check. Here’s a couple of the highlights though: Gollum’s portrayal in Peter Jackson’s The Two Towers is so on spot that I can’t imagine any other manifestation of him when I read the novel. Not only is Gollum’s dialogue and appearance spot-on, the intonations and the character’s duel behavior is expertly captured in a way that’s both unique and true to the original novel. If anything, Jackson’s best move might be to make several Gollum films from now on. It’s his strongest suit. His weakest suit? I would have to say that it’s using any excuse to put Aragorn into romantic situations. Aragorn, while being a brooding, emotional character, has not shown any semblance of romantic affection in either The Fellowship of the Ring or in The Two Towers. In fact, he doesn’t really start spitting game until The Return of the King, and only then, it’s brief. Yet he’s making out with Arwen in the first film and flirting up a goddamn storm with Eowyn in the 2nd film? Jackson even includes a scene where Aragorn almost gets killed by a fucking orc of all things to have a sex dream with Arwen. Why? Who the fuck knows–none of that shit ever happened in this book, that’s for damn sure. I mean–C'mon, bro. You better sheathe Anduril, if you know what I’m sayin’. The addition of the Elves in Helm’s Deep is a weak attempt at introducing more magical elements to a portion of the story that’s exclusively about survival and protecting your loved ones–but all of that gets swept under the rug to make a more entertaining film, but not a more accurate one.

The film aside though, The Two Towers is nothing but strength and, though I enjoyed both The Fellowship of the Ring and The Hobbit, I honestly think that The Two Towers surpasses both to become my favorite fantasy novel. In fact, it’s piqued my interest in writing fantasy again too. I don’t suppose I’ll be able to make it to the end of Sam & Frodo’s journey before I start writing my own…

The Riahi Rating:
★★★★★
5/5 stars.

Other reviews of Harper-Collins books:
Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
The Fellowship of the Ring, by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hobbit, written by J.R.R. Tolkien and published by Ballantine Books, is the third-person account of Bilbo Baggins, a short creature with furry feet known only as a hobbit that lives in a well-decorated hole in the ground. This hobbit lives in a community of other hobbits, known as The Hill, though when a queer wizard, Gandalf, knocks at Bilbo’s door and brings to him a collection of dwarves (thirteen, to be exact), Bilbo sets off on an adventure under the guise of a burglar to steal back the dwarven treasures of The Lonely Mountain from a fierce, red dragon named Smaug. On his journey, Bilbo meets elves and forest-folk, while battling against goblins and giant spiders, and trying to survive the various terrains of the journey, including mountains with stone giants, forests with forgetful rivers, and caves where a strange, flesh-hungry scavenger lies in wait, protecting a magic ring that would inevitably make Bilbo the burglar he was destined to become.

I’ve seen The Lord of the Rings. I’ve even seen two hobbit films (one is a cartoon), but I didn’t quite know what to expect upon picking up this book. I borrowed it from my roommate and read through this one pretty quickly. Fortunately, I’ve been made familiar with just about every fantasy element of this novel because of a brief stint in high school playing Dungeons & Dragons, which is based primarily on Tolkien’s work. I knew a hobbit was a halfling, what a dwarf looked like, how a dragon maintained his hoard, so one can easily say, I’m already damn-near an expert on fantasy, but truth-be-told, I really don’t read a lot of it. In the literary community, literary and fantasy don’t often cross paths–like we’re two separate camps that abide by our specific forms and ideas, without even questioning the thought of crossing over. The majority of my time spent writing has been one secluded to my literary campaigns, but why? It isn’t as if I haven’t enjoyed fantasy films or video games. I mean, I platinum’d The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, after all. So for me, this book turned out to be quite a trip.

As I noted before, I’m already pretty familiar with the way things look and behave in fantasy environments. However, I greatly believe that to enjoy this book, you don’t have to have a familiarity with the trends in fantasy writing. Tolkien describes it all–don’t get me wrong though. Not everything appears in this book as it does in Jackson’s movies, but we’ll save those notes for the end. Early on, Tolkien explains what a hobbit looks like, how a dwarf appears, how a wizard looks and acts. He differentiates the dwarves based on age, weight, and other specific characteristics, though the most prevalent differences come in their personalities. You’d think with thirteen dwarves, most of them would get mixed up an awful lot–truthfully, only a few are forgettable, but the majority stand out. Balin, the lookout, never misses a beat, Bombur is the fat-ass who is often defined as lazy, Thorin is their leader and a man of charisma, standing firm against the wave of unexpected hostility they encounter on their journey. Of course, Bilbo is stout, a little chubby even, with a head full of hair and nitpicking personality. Though we don’t have many other hobbits in the book to draw a comparison to, we don’t need it–Tolkien paints the full picture of the character and the dialogue remains on par with said character throughout the book, though Bilbo, as the protagonist, does grow in some aspects. After all, Bilbo is described as a model-citizen of the hobbit world. His home-body attitude and devotion for handkerchiefs are just a couple of the various model behaviors of hobbits–however, Bilbo’s model of a hobbit, as the book’s only hobbit, makes him that much more interesting as a character, especially as he departs from his old habits and embraces a sense of adventurousness. 

Because it’s fantasy, Tolkien uses the setting to paint a sense of emotional depth through the story. Each different location is synonymous with the character’s emotions–while in the safe-haven of Beorn’s wilderness shelter, they admire the beauty in the flowers and the bees, unafraid that even wild bears frolic happily outside their doors, while in Mirkwood, where food is short and the end of their journey lurks just beyond the forests edge, everything is dark and dreadful and, indeed, it seems as if they’ll die at any moment, being eaten up by spiders or wood-elves or whatever creatures crawl in the darkness. And, in Mirkwood, everything is darkness. Even the end of the journey, in the kingdom beneath the lonely mountain, the gold of Smaug’s treasure has been tainted with his stink and the stone steps and stairs all seem too steep for Bilbo to climb in comfort. Each setting plays a role in developing the drama of the story while enhancing the emotional depth that the characters face. These painful, emotional places that they search the depths of to find another way out are often broken-up with rather warm, cozy places where the characters rest and find food, and these lulls tempt the readers into a sense of relaxation before thrusting us back into significant displeasure again. Using the settings in this fashion keeps the audience on the edge of their seat–often, I’d find myself at the end of one disgusting, dangerous cavern as I stepped off the train while reading the book, wishing to continue reading to make sure that our heroes made it somewhere safe.

That very same element is stimulated by Bilbo himself–moments of courage seem most magical in the context of this story, when Bilbo steps up and does the right thing despite every reason not to, becoming the hero Gandalf thought him to be. Indeed, we hang off Bilbo’s emotions just as much as the setting of the story affects us and for every moment the hobbit is clever, the author is clever too by spinning a twist at the end of every scene of dread to keep his readers hooked. The surprises that unfold as a result of the Bilbo’s wit (and Tolkien’s, might I add), are profound in the meaning of the overall message of the narrative–that even something so small as a hobbit can have significant value to the world, but all the same, he’s just one small hobbit in a much bigger world. 

In conclusion, I expected to hate this book, but I simply couldn’t. I didn’t care much for the Jackson movie, though it’s no surprise upon reading this novel. Peter Jackson has a bad habit of introducing other elements of Middle-Earth into his stories, which do broaden our view of Middle-Earth, yes. At the same time, however, they depart from the actual narrative itself and demean the simple intentions that Tolkien was trying to illustrate with this novel. After all, in writing a fantasy novel, it’s easy to command elves and witches and trolls to entice the readers, but fantasy is no different than literary, in that it depends on the human element to make an anecdote into a story. While Jackson would prefer to dismiss the human element within his films to include more magic, the magic already exists in the words themselves and their beauty as they spring off the page. You can add a harmony to any one of Tolkien’s songs from this book to make it that much fairer to listen to, but in the end, you still have to ask yourself why people are singing to begin with: and in understanding that, there you’ll find the magic that is The Hobbit.

The Riahi Rating:
★★★★★
5/5 stars.

About the publisher:
Ballantine Books used to be very prominent as a publisher, first publishing Brabdury’s Fahrenheit 451 and officially reprinting Tolkien’s novels while he was still alive. Then they were bought by Random House. The end.