Graham Downs reviewed The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Review of 'The Fellowship of the Ring' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
This is another one of those books I started and put away unfinished many times when I was in school. Now, after discovering Goodreads, I found the motivation to finish it.
I'm glad I finally did. It's good... but it's not as outstanding, jaw-dropping, eye-popping-ly good as everyone makes it out to be. I'd give it 3.5 stars.
One thing I can say about Tolkien is that he absolutely could write! His talent for describing in excruciating detail every single leaf on every single tree is admirable - but it gets a bit much. The book took me just less than two months to read, and if I were to hazard a guess, I probably took in... 60% of it. Tops. I have a tendency to "zone out" while I'm reading, and have been known to read twenty pages or more and have no recollection of what I've just read. That happened a lot with this book.
It's a good story, though. As other reviewers have mentioned, a lot of the things in this book can be interpreted as being clichéd, but you need to understand that they're only clichés NOW, because Tolkien invented them! And that's how I tried to read this book. I read it for the HISTORY of the fantasy genre, the history of wargaming, of Dungeons & Dragons and just about every fantasy role-playing game, story or movie that has come since.
For people interested in the history of the genre, or people with loads and loads of time to read, I highly recommend this book. Will I be reading the other two parts? Probably - I wouldn't be able to stop myself!