The Lord of the Rings (Novel)

By J. R. R. Tolkien

Catholic-ometer: 5 of 5

Enjoyability: 4.5 of 5

I'm essentially writing this review to summarize my thoughts on the series as a whole, and its overall quality.

I was very pleased with it; the heroic main characters, the veiled allegory for sin embodied by the ring, and the fights and struggles, which, while they sometimes seemed a bit slow, and sometimes seemed to skim right over the important parts, were, in just enough cases (like the Shelob fight,) exciting and well-done, and delivered a very thrilling experience.

I'm not as enamored with scenes of armies of men fighting as Tolkien seems to be, but I appreciate a good fantasy epic as much as the next guy, and that's what this story really is.  Too many men for its own good, in my mind, but still just enough presence by wizards, orcs, elves, dwarves, and especially hobbits to keep it all interesting and involving, despite some dry bits.

I can't really see much of anything about this story that would give people moral problems.  Even those with very extreme religious hang-ups (such as myself) will have a hard time finding anything to raise issue with.  There's magic in the story, but not in the "strongest guy wins" sense, which makes many modern pieces so problematic.  There's great evil, but it's always rendered as just as vile and repulsive as evil really is.  The main characters are small and weak, which only increases the excitement over how things turn out in the end.  After all, beating an enemy isn't all that exciting if he's weaker than you are.  Nobody likes a bully.

The minor issues that I do raise with this story primarily have to do with the very slow pacing of the story overall, and the way the narrative seems to lose its focus somewhat during most battles.  I think that Tolkien's main point during a large part of this story was to encourage people to see the beauty of this world he's created, which is an effort I can't raise issue with, though it ramps down the excitement somewhat.  I feel the movies struck a slightly better balance between beauty and excitement in their pacing, but the books were still a lot of fun to read, and I reccomend them very strongly to anyone who still believes in the fight between good and evil.