(Note: review based on one of numerous rereading of the book.)

What started out as a request for another story about hobbits (after the success of "The Hobbit") grew in the telling until it became an epic tale about the quest to destroy the One Ring of Sauron; and how it was the 'least of heroes', unlooked-for even by the wise, would prove to be one to fulfil the quest and free Middle-Earth from domination by the Dark Lord.

This book has been released in many editions and in many forms over the years. The one I read was a one-volume edition that celebrates the birth of J.R.R. Tolkien and includes fifty paintings specially commissioned from artist Alan Lee.

Reading it now after watching the Peter Jackson films, it is easy to put the actors in the film into the scenes from the book, modified by the illustrations of Alan Lee of the various places in Middle-Earth. And after all these years, the words in the book still have the 'power' to bring the reader to Middle-Earth and put you in the footsteps of the Fellowship of the Ring as they strive to do what they can to thwart the plans of Sauron and distract him for the peril that is slowly entering his stronghold on hobbit feet.