The Return of the King; Book 1

By J. R. R. Tolkien

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4 of 5

This is the third book of the Lord of the Rings, and like the first two, is divided into two "books."  Spoilers for the next three paragraphs.

The first book chronicles how Pippin and Gandalf ride to Gondor, and Theoden of Rohan does the same with his army, responding to Gondor's call for aid.  Aragorn and his friends head for Gondor as well, but they take a different and more dangerous route; known as the Paths of the Dead.

Pippin becomes a guardsman of Gondor, and soon finds that Denethor; the steward of Gondor, has gone mad with despair, and ordered the execution of both his son Faramir and himself.  With the help of Gandalf, he moves to rescue Faramir from the mad steward.

Arriving in time for battle, King Theoden is slain, and his daughter Eowyn; disguised as a horseman, faces off against the Nazgul king; the second in command of Mordor.  Aragorn moves in with reinforcements, but even when they win the battle for Gondor's gates, they still have to make one last, suicidal attack against Mordor if they want to distract Sauron from the real prize; the ring of power.

The characters and meanings to be found within them are numerous and intriguing.  I could spend an hour discussing the meaning of Denethor's madness, Eowyn's motives, Aragorn's plans, Gimli's shame and the role of Gandalf in it all.  It's a beautiful story with a lot of very strong plot points.  However, for enjoyability, I can't give it a perfect score, and there are two reasons for this.

The first is that, as I've said, I'd rather be reading a story about fantastic things and strange beings.  This half of the book is largely concerned with the actions of men and armies, and the deployment of troops, which isn't as much my thing as the battle at Helm's Deep was.  This is a purely personal issue, however.

The real problem is that the book drops too many names, and uses them too often, not really assigning substantial characters to most of them.  Some characters, like Beregond; have interesting stories told about them, but just weren't considered important enough to be in the movie, while others, like Halbarad, Ghan-Buri-Ghan, Imrahil and about a dozen others are essentially names without any clear stories behind them, except to fill up space in lists of names of warriors who defended Gondor valliantly.  Certainly, real historical records might take this tack, but in fiction, it's acceptable, and expected, to stick to the story in question.  I felt that this weakened the narrative, rather than strengthening it.  These are the only reasons, in my mind, for taking issue with the first half of the book, however.  On the whole, I really enjoyed it.