Hardcover, 1147 pages

English language

Published Aug. 13, 1994 by Houghton Mifflin Company.

ISBN:
978-0-7394-0825-4
Copied ISBN!
OCLC Number:
54432689

View on OpenLibrary

4 stars (58 reviews)

Originally published from 1954 through 1956, J.R.R. Tolkien's richly complex series ushered in a new age of epic adventure storytelling. A philologist and illustrator who took inspiration from his work, Tolkien invented the modern heroic quest novel from the ground up, creating not just a world, but a domain, not just a lexicon, but a language, that would spawn countless imitators and lead to the inception of the epic fantasy genre. Today, THE LORD OF THE RINGS is considered "the most influential fantasy novel ever written." (THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY)

During his travels across Middle-earth, the hobbit Bilbo Baggins had found the Ring. But the simple band of gold was far from ordinary; it was in fact the One Ring - the greatest of the ancient Rings of Power. Sauron, the Dark Lord, had infused it with his own evil magic, and when it was lost, he was forced to …

82 editions

Don't Skip The Final Chapters

5 stars

If you are in need of a thoughtful, well written review of the three books constituting the Lord of the Rings trilogy, please look elsewhere. I decided to reread J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" for the fist time since I read the trilogy of books when I was in Junior High School some forty years ago. The blue, green and red paperback books purchased from a Scholastic Book Fair that first I read did not survive my many house moves in the intervening years. Much later, I had purchased a copy of the 1991 Special Edition beautifully illustrated by Alan Lee which sat on a bookshelf for several years until recently unread. When I finally did pull the heavy single volume down, I found it almost too heavy to hold in my lap to read. So I went out to my local used book store (Recycled Books in …

Review of 'The Lord of the Rings' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

Incredible world building. Incredible story overall. Tolkien needs an editor and needs to take much less inspiration from the KJV Bible. The bad guys in this entire series are two dimensional. The end bit with Saurumon is silly. Sauron remains a mystical almost satanic figure. I knew we didn’t meet him because I’ve seen the movies. But still disappointed.

LotR is great. But very flawed.

Review of 'The Lord of the Rings' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Finally done. Got very distracted by the four major video games that just came out and being best man. So long to finish.

Anyways. Reading this it became radically clear this is supposed to be one big book rather than three.

The split adventure format is fun and a nice alternative to the film’s structure.

IDK what else to say. This is amazing. I still maintain it needed better editing. But incredible shit.

Obviously the typical fantasy book.

4 stars

This one is like Beatles songs: You notice how they sound kinda similar but "simpler" to other pop songs, until you think about, how they built the whole genre. Everyone after them builds on their formula and this is why they sound similar, but they still have their uniqueness to them.

The Lord of the Rings is the same: Every conversation is a big speech and they don't sound like people would, if they actually just talk to one another. Big descriptions of how the world looks like. Many weird names of places and people (but Tolkien just throws around names like he's paid for the amount of them) and many other things.

But it still has its own story. It's filled with songs, which is an understatement. It seems like people in middle earth are just eager to sing as often as they can. Tolkien tries to make decisions …

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