The Fellowship of the Ring

2021 review:

I've returned to Middle-earth (once again, after a six-year absence, in winter).

This time round I did what I have long desired, and outlined the whole damn book. I can now report that Fellowship has five-act structure (I suspect the individual books also have five-act structure, but don't quote me on that). All this pedantry helped me understand the shape of this novel and the operation of five-act structure itself, which can be opaque to those of us who have learned to write novels as if they were films. (The interminable chapters at Rivendell are themselves the third act. Lothlórien is not an afterthought, but integral to the denouement of the story.)

I admired the construction of each chapter and how Tolkien avoids show more writing an episodic story by continually looking backward or forward. In countless scenes, the characters are looking back at landscapes they've crossed, or listening to Aragorn describe the trek they're about to make in loving geological detail. This attention to setting knits each section of the story to those before and after and grounds the characters in their journey; we have a visceral sense of distance crossed, time passed, vistas we will never see again.

The attention to landscape also supports the guiding themes of the novel - the inevitability of change and loss, and our possible responses to it. I have more thoughts that I hope to get down about reading this novel during a long moment when time has gone melty and fear (of death, change, loss of power) is the presiding mood. Suffice it to say, there's something almost Daoist about the narrative's insistence on the inevitability of conflict and the generative nature of loss, smallness, refusal of power (though of course Tolkien's guiding theology is Christian, of a distinctly non-American bent).

There are so many passages here that sound uncanny echoes of our present world, though Tolkien's reliance on and propagation of racist and classist tropes continuously undercut the themes of his story. A recent podcast episode on Orientalism in fantasy fiction made me frantically scribble MORIA~ZIONISM? on the envelope I was using as a bookmark. It's hard not to read Aragorn's fated restoration, a counterpoint to lost kingdoms and failing magic, as conservative wish-fulfillment. Yet my speculation that the Dunlanders represent a Celtic remnant only led to the discovery that Tolkien favored Irish independence - the politics of Middle-earth are incoherent in the way that most stories about Dark Lords are bound to be.

I got pretty teary when Galadriel gives Sam his box of earth. May 2021 be the year when a beautiful woman promises us that someday we will return home, however unfamiliar that place may be, and plant a garden.

2015 review:

This is a good book to read every five years in the heart of winter.

I've read LotR too many times to count, but this time it felt like a wholly new book. I appreciated the clarity of the prose and Tolkien's deftness at creating suspense, horror, and wonder. Middle-earth and its inhabitants are painted in very few strokes and thus have the vividness of dreams.

(For that reason, the eternal fan dithering about Balrog wings and Legolas' hair color totally misses the point—you, the reader, decide what color Legolas' hair is. As a younger person, I absolutely read these novels with a fannish impatience, wanting to know details that are beyond the scope of Tolkien's prose. Now I have learned to be patient and trust my own imagination.)

(But just to be clear, Balrogs definitely do not have wings.)

Once more, the Shire was awesome and charming. I love how it is simply and unequivocally a pre-industrial England that never was (and which certainly does not belong in this quasi-medieval world). I suspect that Pippin may be an Oxford undergraduate. I have an image of him and Merry boating on the Isis and eating cucumber sandwiches.

December 2009 review:

This was, I think, my first time actually reading LotR directly after The Hobbit. It was a weird experience! The first half of Fellowship really is still in the world of The Hobbit, which reflects the experiences of the hobbits themselves, but also of course is the legacy of Tolkien's writing process. In many ways he used the actual process of creating the novel to structure the novel.

Some thoughts, from the point-of-view of someone who has read this book way too many times:

Everything set in the Shire is just totally awesome and charming. This allows the Shire to be a tangible presence through the rest of the novel. Bilbo is also a great character - Tolkien took the last scene of The Hobbit where Bilbo composes his first poem, and just ran with it.

Everything from Frodo's departure until Bree feels very episodic and Hobbit-y. Which does work, but I'm still not sure about Tom Bombadil. Tom Bombadil stops the novel. He knows this. He laughs in the face of plot. Would it have been better for Tolkien to have put something else there? Not sure. Tom Bombadil is the first one to tell them stories about the past, and it's there that Frodo has his dream of Tol Eressea. So Tolkien thought he was important to the larger whole at least, even once the novel had grown past his initial conception of The Hobbit II.

Aragorn is a lot of fun. I like how he can converse at the level of the hobbits and of the Elves. People who complain about Arwen being a non-character need to go back and reread Aragorn telling the story of Luthien and Beren. There is so much emotion on the page there.

Moria is awesome but in some ways has nothing to do with the larger story, besides a convenient place to kill Gandalf. We learn a bunch about Dwarves that is interesting if you've read The Hobbit but will never come up again. But that's Lord of the Rings for you. Soon after that we hear the Amroth and Nimrodel story which is cool and sad but also unrelated to anything, except to illustrate that Bad Things Happen To Elves.

I believe it was Peter Jackson who said in the film commentary that if you were writing Lord of the Rings as an original screenplay you would never put in Lothlorien and Galadriel. This shows that screenwriting is a silly business, because everything of importance in Fellowship pretty much happens in Lothlorien. Okay, slight exaggeration, but it's there that we really understand what the Ring is and what it will do to Middle-earth, and get our first metaphorical glimpse at the ship that will bear Frodo and Galadriel away at the end. Once Frodo offers Galadriel the Ring and is refused, he is set on his course to Mordor.

I also really liked the fording of the river Nimrodel to signal their entrance into Lothlorien - a symbol of purification that I hadn't noticed before.

This used to be my favorite book of the trilogy, but of course Tolkien never wanted it split up as a trilogy, and rereading it I can't help but look forward to the more substantial, less Tom Bombadil-y bits that come later! show less

This is the first book I've read in 2020, the year I have the goal of reading longer books and those that intimidate me. I've read the Hobbit twice, once in fifth grade and then again last year, and I think it's a fun story, but I've never read the Lord of the Rings and haven't read much high fantasy.

I read this front to back, including the foreward and prologue - this made me very concerned that this book would be incredibly dry. It is noted that the trilogy is an attempt at "a really long story that would hold the attention of readers." Thankfully the meat of the story is usually not very dry.

I feel it reads well going into it thinking it will read like a DnD campaign rather than a "typical" novel - there are long journeys, battles, show more moments of rest, and I can imagine the successes, twists and turns, and failures as being controlled by a roll of the dice. (I'm not sure how typical this is for fantasy.)

There are slow moments, a lot of songs, and a lot of names of places and people, but I really enjoyed the importance of nature and the merging of human-like beings with the natural world.

Maybe it's just my current priorities in life that have colored my reading, but there were strong themes of stewardship of the land and immersion into nature. Nature is neither good nor evil in this text, rather it's shaped by the people around it. When nurtured and tended to such as Tom Bombadil and Galadriel have done, the land is abundant and nuturing back. In other regions, there is no steward for the land, and it is wild and is neither kind nor harsh.

The corrupt and imperialistc forces destory the natural world. Sam has visions of trees being felled in the Shire and smoke pouring out from a new brick building and he wishes to be home to protect it. Sam is also the character who is gifted soil with which he can garden when his journey is over. (And presumably rebuild.)

I wasn't really expecting the strength of this message of the goodness of working with the land to create bounty rather than its neglect and/or exploitation for one's personal power and gain. This message was a nice surprise because it isn't very well conveyed in the movies.

Overall, a different type of reading experience, but I enjoyed it. show less

I haven't read Lord Of The Rings since, oooh, College at least, long dim days lost in the mist of times, but once upon a time it was a veritable pillar of my life. I certainly wouldn't have survived my teenage years without it. When the films came out, of course, I thought about rereading them but somehow never got around to it. Here I am then, middle aged and pudgy as a hobbit with a family of my own, convinced that such adventures as I have had are all well behind me. My weary feet don't pursue the road very far and when my eyes turn to far-off hills, I wonder if I can get there by the motorway, and whether there's a cafe nearby.
So why would I crack open those old worn and torn and sellotaped paperbacks Mum got for me when I was in show more hospital that year having my appendix out? (I distinctly remember the soldier with the helmet full of water washing Wormtongue's spit from the steps while I sat in the waiting room. Pardon me, but could you put the book down while we perform abdominal surgery on you? Thanks.) Why would you revisit that and remind yourself of all the things you lost and left behind, all the things you did wrong?
Because in the end, that's what The Lord Of The Rings is about. Things lost and gone away and barely remembered. Suffused with the sadness of beautiful things passing; yet there is joy in the remembering, if you can bear it. Well, I can, and that's no bad thing.

Dec 2021 - Listened to the Rob Ingles audio version. Enchanting.

Dec 2023 - listened again show less

Considering that the depths of winter is usually considered my peak time for reading Tolkien, it feels almost strange to revisit the beginning of the Lord of the Rings trilogy as we take our first real steps towards spring. But when the Orlando Bloom bookmark comes up in the shuffle, and the winds of wanderlust beckon, there really is no better time to follow the Fellowship as they also take their first steps on their quest out of the Shire and towards Mount Doom. Like the early days of spring (before we get bogged down in mud season), the first book in the trilogy has a distinctly hopeful feel. Tolkien’s luscious imagery paints a rich portrait of Middle Earth, so we get to discover this new land alongside the sheltered hobbits; and show more while they face the first of their foes and lose their first companion, their quest has yet to feel the full burden and desperation that will come to overshadow the later novels. In this specific edition, we are also treated to Alan Lee’s gorgeous watercolour paintings which do so wonderfully bring the tale even further off the pages into our minds. My usual complaint of wanting evermore content still stands (lol), but it was decidedly lovely to rest our eyes from the dense text and focus instead on his intricate illustrations. I am sorely tempted to pick up the journey where we leave off here (Tolkien did mean for the tale to be one long volume rather than three distinct novels), and I may just yet polish off the trilogy over the summer. But for now we must leave Frodo and Samwise on their boat floating away from the Fellowship, and venture to other literary lands in search of different adventures. show less

I doubt if there is much point in me saying too much about such a well known and loved book. Suffice it to say that I enjoyed rereading this for the first time in many years, having forgotten just how wonderful Tolkien’s prose is, and the marvellous cadences he creates. I will admit to skipping the chapters featuring Tom Bombadil – even the first time I read the book, probably about fifty years ago, I found him an intensely irritating character, and one whose creation is so greatly at odds with the tone of the rest of the book.

It is very noticeable now how the first chapter acts as an effective bridge from [The Hobbit], clearly a children’s book, to this much darker work, an effect that Tolkien achieves effortlessly with the party show more designed for Bilbo’s ‘eleventy-first’ birthday/ The second chapter, ’The Shadow of the Past’ immediately moves us into a darker, more threatening world, and completely grips the reader’s attention/

I feel that there have been so many attempts to imitate Tolkien’s style and his world, but none have managed to replicate the grandeur of his language or the manner in which the created history underpinning Middle Earth percolates through the whole work. show less

I feel reluctant to review a classic like LOTR, because others have such strong opinions surrounding it; to say anything other than praiseworthy can bring about the scorn of dedicated fans. Still, there’s no other way for me to remember what I thought about The Fellowship of the Ring than by documenting it.

First, I want to make clear my understanding that the Lord of the Rings has had a profound impact on fiction, and in my opinion, defined the genre of fantasy. It is incredibly intricate and fully realized, even to a point of being tedious. At times its almost like reading an encyclopaedia or a travel guide.

I will also admit that I saw the movies first, and so going in, I already had expectations and biases. Strangely, though, I show more think seeing the movies kept a lot of the momentum going. I wanted to know where Peter Jackson got his muse from. I wanted to see how different Tolkien’s world was.

I’m going to say it. I don’t think that J.R.R. Tolkien is as great a writer as everyone thinks he is.


That isn’t to say that he isn’t creative or a master of plot. The mythology, rings, and monsters are genius. I do have some problems with his writing style, though. Sometimes the suspense is there, but often it is so bogged down with tedious things like poetry, lineage, and the lovely shape of grass blades that the momentum is nearly lost. I do understand, however, that the genre wasn’t really a thing before Tolkien came around, and so I get that he was establishing the beginnings of what fantasy is today. But fiction still needs things like ongoing suspense and a strong sense of the protagonist’s voice.

I’m going to say something else that to many will sound traitorous to fantasy. I hate Frodo.

He’s whiny, snivelling, and annoying. If I hear him say something about how heavy the ring is one more time, I swear, I’ll summon a Balrog. It seems odd to me that the ring bearer is the character whose personality is the least definable. Sam, Gandalf, and Aragorn, for example, seem much more concrete and easy to visualize. And more likeable, for that matter.

Despite my qualms, I did enjoy the first third of this (very) long novel. A lot of this rating is given to the impact that the story has had, and there is an element of respect I have to Tolkien.

4 stars. show less

Wow, five stars to this? Betcha didn't see that one coming ...

You know, it's really great that the LotR movies exist, not because I would not be as big a fan of the books without them or because they're particularly good, but because whenever I'm wondering what I'm gonna listen to while reading the book ... the answer is right there. The soundtrack. Of course.

I used to think that every time I reread them I got a new fave character, and while that isn't really true, I tend to appreciate different characters every time. A couple of years back I started to really love Pippin (mostly because of the line "thinking? At breakfast? Good heavens!"), but this time it's all Sam.

Now, of course, I love Sam as much as anyone (and EVERYONE loves Sam), show more but I've always thought he was a bit of a dork too. Suddenly I find myself really enjoying his dorkiness, almost relating to it. I definitely relate to all his love of plants, and I think he got the best gift from Galadriel tbh, even better than both Frodo's and Gimli's. Galadriel just gets him, I guess.

Oh well, reading this book is like coming home, in the best of ways. show less