The Return of The King (1955)

Brilliant - what more can i say that others havent already said that does it justice... ( )

Absolutely love this trilogy. Can’t believe it’s taken me so long to get to it! ( )

2nd read; 1st read finished mid-to-end 2000 (rated 4 stars then) ( )

Lifetime read #2 (also listened this time). Too long, but I still love them - even if I can't completely say why. The book equivalent of comfort food :) ( )

"And the ship went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West, until at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise." (pp377-8)

I had intended to start this review with the same disclaimer that I used in my review of The Two Towers, the second book of The Lord of the Rings. There, I wrote that, because The Lord of the Rings can be considered one long book, it was hard to say anything new from what I wrote in review of Fellowship. Whilst that's also true of this third book, The Return of the King, which has many of the same qualities and flaws as the first two books, I decided not to blithely use the same disclaimer. Because I finished The Return of the King with a sense that it was definitely the least of the three books.

When The Fellowship of the Ring opened in Hobbiton, with its happy, homely style, it felt almost like a children's book. But nevertheless, there was a consistency of voice throughout, which evolved and was carried into The Two Towers. The prose style of Return, however, felt rather more classical and bloodless. The fulfilment of prophecies and the recitation of battles and lineages felt like an attempt to imitate the Bible ("And soon the word had gone out from the House that the king was indeed come among them" (pg. 162)) and the Iliad ("The axes hewed Forlong as he fought alone and unhorsed… Neither Hirluin the fair would return to Pinnath Gelin, nor Grimbold to Grimslade, nor Halbarad to the Northlands" (pg. 139)). As much as I like those books, the attempt was jarring here. For substantial segments, Return doesn't feel like an adventure best read in front of a fire, which is the winning vibe the first two books of the trilogy gave off.

Certainly, though the book follows the first two in being a true feat of storytelling – the Ride of the Rohirrim, the madness of Denethor, the fall of the Witch-King of Angmar, and, ultimately, his Master too – it struggles to maintain its pace. As with Two Towers, Return splits the narrative in two, with one half of the book following Aragorn, Gandalf and the like in the War of the Ring, and then the second half following Frodo and Sam on their journey through Mordor. It was certainly interesting to note that Tolkien doesn't shuffle it up to maintain a page-turning quality, as a modern novel, pandering to ADHD pop-culture, would do. But interesting does not necessarily mean better, and some of the tension of the story is bled out of the story by Tolkien's more methodical approach. The sense of our heroes being in desperate straits is not always there, and moments like the horn-blowing of the Rohirrim, or 'the eagles are coming!' (which ends Part One), don't feel as exciting or triumphant.

Once again, I found myself relying on my experience of the films as a crutch. In my review of Fellowship, I wrote that it was now impossible for the books to escape the shadow that the films, in their popularity and brilliance, have cast. But I've also come to realise – and acknowledged in my review of Two Towers – that the films often make better storytelling decisions in general than their source material. I'm not necessarily talking about the more egregious stuff, like the frequent breaking into song, or the Eagles (which can talk in the book). Nor am I talking about the Scouring of the Shire, where Treebeard has "let him [Saruman] go" (pg. 311) because *shrugs shoulders*, and Saruman, now called Sharkey, has decided to stir up some provincial shit in the Shire.

That stuff was quietly dropped for the films, and rightly so, but when I talk of better decisions, I'm instead referring to storyboarding which maintain the pace and tension, and decisions of character development. Aragorn in particular is improved on film; his love interest Arwen is almost entirely absent from the three books of The Lord of the Rings, appearing only at the end for the wedding (she speaks once, to Frodo). It's rather surprising to learn that, as far as Tolkien was concerned, their courtship is only worthy of being addressed in the appendices to the book. It's also notable how much more catharsis Aragorn's rise to the kingship provides in the film. The books had seen Aragorn accept the claim – and the reforged sword that goes with it – early on in Fellowship, with few doubts as to his righteousness. The films instead decided Aragorn should be reluctant to claim the title, and because the audience had followed his journey of doubt and eventual acceptance, by the end we really felt the relief and sense of victory at the return of the King. Which is, after all, what it's all about.

Again, as I was at pains to point out in my two previous reviews, none of these comparisons to the films are meant to discredit or demean Tolkien's source. Much of the praise for the films has to go to Tolkien, as the original creator, and the books remain excellent. This third book sees The Lord of the Rings continue to be a vividly imaginative adventure with ingeniously epic events. World-building is not a substitute for storytelling, as some of Tolkien's lesser imitators have assumed, but it's a powerful addition to something which is already a wealth of treasures. If I have struggled to convey my appreciation for Tolkien's creation here, it is only because what is great about it is a continuation of what I wrote about in my reviews of Fellowship and Two Towers. Perhaps I did need that disclaimer after all.

I wrote in my Fellowship review that, re-reading the three Lord of the Rings books for the first time since I was a teenager in 2004, I both did and did not have the same experience. Certainly, I've found it a fascinating repeat, seeing what has aged well for me and what hasn't, which is also why I draw so heavily on the films for comparison. One thing I have noticed is that, as I've gotten older, my tastes have switched. As a kid, I thought (for the films, and less so for the books) that Fellowship was great, Two Towers was better (it had that awesome Helm's Deep battle) and The Return of the King (with its stirring charge of the Rohirrim onto the fields of the Pelennor) was best.

But now, I would reverse this: Return (particularly the book) feels overlong, Two Towers is a good bridge, but Fellowship is ultimately the most rewarding. For all the great battles, stirring speeches and epic happenings of the subsequent books, Fellowship is proper fantasy adventure of the sort you become nostalgic for as you age. It has a small band of heroes travelling through forgotten lands: surprisingly, whenever I've thought of Middle-earth in the last ten years or so, it's been the image of the two great statues of the Argonath in the hinterland which comes to mind, not the more prominent epic battles. And it speaks to what both the books and films are: a triumph of both world-building and storytelling. There's a sense of serenity at the end (the quote with which I opened this review comes from Frodo's final experience of passing across the great Sea with the Elves) and, for all their differences, the books ultimately end as the films do: with a great pang from the reader at leaving it all. I rarely ever re-read the books I've read, but I'm glad that I re-read The Lord of the Rings, and that I had both the same and a completely different experience than I did as a teenager.

"'Well, one can't be everywhere at once, I suppose,' he said. 'But I missed a lot, seemingly.'" (pg. 281) ( )