The Fellowship of the Ring - JRR Tolkein

Things have been a bit crazy in life lately so haven't had as much time for reading as I would have liked. I have also chosen to read a rather difficult book so its taken a bit longer than I first thought. Sorry for my silence but there you have it, life happens sometimes and you can't help but get swept up in it.



This book is a classic! There can be no other word for it. I once read the set when I was in my early teens and cannot remember much of it. I have watched the films countless times and seeing how I enjoyed The Hobbit I thought I would give them another bash. Maybe I would enjoy them more with 'older' eyes. I did!

Tolkien may be a plagiarising numpty (for want of a better word) but that man can write a decent story in a fantastical world. There are elements that everyone will recognise, for instance, the naming of a river 'Wetwang' is familiar to me. Not as a childhood insult you immature lot, but as a village located near where I live. There are many sources of inspiration in the novel and some of them you can't help but notice. I found some of these a little jarring to read, it jolts you out of the world at times and leaves the reader feeling a bit jilted. However, the world Tolkien has created is rich and diverse and it soon stops being an issue.

The best part of this novel, for me, was discovering the characters all over again. There is so much more detail in the books about the individual characters and how they interact. The Frodo in the book has so much more spirit and fire than the version in the film and is much more likable. Sam is also more fun and invokes more interest from the reader. I would go so far to say that the characters Peter Jackson has made are a watered down version of the ones in the novel, a lot was lost in translation from book to film.

I will say this however, the book is a tough read. The word order in some places make the meaning hard to grasp and at times, it can be a bit of a slog. I don't know whether Tolkien did this in purpose - it does give the words a sort of ethereal quality - or whether it is a product of the time it was written in. Either way, this novel is not for the feint-hearted but for those that want to see what the father of all fantasy novels is like.