Y me zúa loh cohone. Qué ganas tenía de esta reseña.
Por donde empezar... porque el principio no hay muchas ganas. 500 páginas de la más absoluta nada. No vemos ni a los personajes. Ir del punto A, al B, al C y así hasta dar 70 vueltas al abecedario. Me la suda que el libro se escribiera en 1950, la imaginación de Tolkien, o la gastó en El Hobbit (que ni he leído ni tengo intención) o es un invento de la agenda 2030.
Vladimir Propp escribió en 1928 laMorfología del cuento, pero no fue hasta que TOLKIEN J R R se sentó delante de una máquina de escribir que los clichés y los estereotipos fueron ejemplificados como era debido. Historia genérica como no podría hacerse ni queriendo, en la que no pasa nada nunca, pero por alguna razón todo el mundo está siempre diciendo que han pasado cosas.
Los primeros dos libros (la primera peli) se siente como que estén hablando todo el rato de una fiesta a la que no te invitaron. Es más, se siente como entrar en el Tivoli en 2025, imaginas (o quieres hacerlo) que en algún momento estuvo chulo, pero solo quedan señales gastadas y actores mal pagados que están por hacer bulto.
Hablemos de la lucha entre el bien y el mal. Los buenos son buenos porque van de blanco y los malos, porque van de negro. Esto es literalmente así durante todo el libro. Sauron, el principal villano, que amenaza todo el continente, NO APARECE. Literalmente solo se le menciona, pero termina la obra y resulta que todo este tiempo estuvo de vacaciones o algo. Que también me podéis decir cómo tirar un Anillo que él no tenía a una raja en la tierra le hace perder todo el poder que sí tenía. ¿Por qué los orcos le seguían? Bueno, si tienen dudas de algo, lo hizo un mago. ¿Qué poderes tenía? Pues malos, supongo. Porque vivía en una torre negra. O eso dicen, tampoco se llega a entrar.
Y eso por no hablar de Frodo, el protagonista que menos puntos de vista tiene para él. Y tambi´ne el que menos sangre. Los personajes son malos de cojones, pero lo de Frodo es otro nivel. Este intento de embajador de la ONU nepobaby pjipi me pone negro. No hace absolutamente nada y a veces da la sensación de que un escritor normal insertaría en algún pasaje un capítulo suyo. Pero no.
Ah bueno, y siempre cuenta las cosas a posteriori. Tolkien ve mucho mejor contarme en capítulos sueltos, cuando ya ha pasado y no tiene nada que ver, los background de los peresonajes que podrían aportarle un mínimo de carisma. La historia de amor de Aragorn siendo un MILF hunter habría estado bien en algún punto de las 1050 páginas en las que aparece, no en un epílogo al final del libro donde me cuentas 200 años en 3 páginas.
Porque bueno. Hablemos de los tiempos, de las batallas y los puntos de inflexión. El crítico que dijo por primera vez que esto era fantasía épica, que me digan donde está enterrao porque voy a cagarle en la lápida. Las "grandes batallas" duran 2 páginas, tirando a lo mucho, eso si no las omite para que luego las cuente un personaje en un parrafito de diálogo. Que no pasa nada si estabas traumatizado por la guerra y no querías escribir violencia, pero en ese caso habértelo pensado antes de escribir una historia de guerra del fin del mundo, vamos, digo yo. El final del anillo NO LLEGA A LA PÁGINA. Y sin embargo la charla intrascendente de los personajes indiferenciables, fotocopias unos de los otros, se extiende páginas y páginas. La llegada de Aragorn (épica en teoría porque nadie lo esperaba) fueron 2 párrafos, la retahíla de príncipes del chichinabo hablando con sirvientes irrelevantes diciendo LO MISMO se extendió por QUINCE PÁGINAS.
Si no me aprendí la lista de los reyes visigodos, qué te hace creer que me voy a poner a memorizar los reyes con todos sus putos muertos (literalmente, lo llaman por su nombre y el de sus ancestros), para que encima, tanto sus países como su comportamiento sea... el mismo. Literalmente el mismo, son el mismo personaje pero con un nombre fruto de aporrear el teclado con un objeto diferente.
No voy a hablar de las mujeres. Me reservo el tema para el vídeo y el 8M. Pero vamos, que me has enseñado decenas de criaturas mitológicas, pero parece que la más rara de encontrar son las hembras. Sólo aparecen Galadriel, cuyo cometido es ser mona y dar souvenirs, y Eowyn, cuyo cometido es hacer la de Mulan pero mal y hacer que un hombre se conforme con ser el segundo plato.
Decepción absoluta, no entiendo la veneración a este sujetapuertas. No dudo que en el cine sea mejor, sólo vi 1 peli y no me pareció aburrida, pero creo que si alguien dice que El Señor de los Anillos es su saga preferida está a la altura de que venga un alparnawi a decirme que sólo lee libros de desarrollo personal. Las dos estrellas se las puse porque me hace gracia que sea un libro de boyslove donde yo personalmente creo que 6 de 9 de los de la Compañía del anillo se detonaban entre ellos cuando acampaban y eso los hacía más chulos.

The total ringasm united

All reviews of the whole series combined for your convenience and to help me lazy procrastinator create another review copy and paste style

The fellowship of the ring

Founding a genre like a boss

Stealing everything possible from mythology and the, maybe sometimes a tiny bit boring, old, classics.
The beloved tradition of using others' ideas to create something new is big here, especially because Tolkien had the perfect background to milk everything from wherever he could find inspirations, from ancient to medieval and, at the time, modern works. It would especially be interesting to read or reread LotR with a focus on how he let the classics mutate to new forms, transformed oldfashioned tropes to fit for a modern audience, and especially made it a compelling, well written, and suspenseful pageturner. Don´t be angry, good old classics, it´s not your fault, your poor creators just had no creative writing courses available or were hunted by the inquisition, or it were total monopolies to that their works were the only ones available, and thereby never cared about royalties, book signing tours, or target audiences.

Black, white, and the most important grey
The pure, camouflages fascistic, evil, is of course as noir as possible, but especially the sexy seductiveness of the mind penetrating psi magic of the distilled badassery, is one of the main driving engines of the groundbreaking epic journey, because good old almightiness totally corrupts. It´s just normal that everyone is struggling with the whispering of the dark side with all its attractive options and the real life implications of this are, well, terrible, frustrating, and daunting. Throw money at close to everyone and she/he will get corrupted, especially if the alternative is to get eaten by orcs while the family is raped by Uruk hais and Balrogs.

Establishing cliffhangery ends of single parts
One just can´t stop, this damn, evil tendency of the genre to stop at the most suspenseful part and let the reader hanging to wait for felt eternities. As if Sauron wasn´t bad enough, this vicious cycle continues with each new, far too multi k page series and eats away the lives of poor, innocent humans, not to speak of their tormented souls that can´t find peace over these nauseating periods of despair and regret to have been relapsing. Again! I´m not sure if Tolkien should be praised or damned for having laid the foundations for things like Sandersons´, Jordans´, Eriksons´, etc. amazingly exhausting and immersive monster series. I´m ashamed to admit it, but I have the whole, good old second hand paperback, Wheel of time series ‚(and the new ones) lying around and I am afraid to restart reading the whole thing (not just the first few parts like a few years ago), because I fear that it could trigger reading and rereading other series and finally Wheel of time again until 2027 or something, not just having lost contact to reality (not much difference to the present reality https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...
), but, much more problematic, to all other genres for half a decade or something. Thanks for that, J.R.R!

Being attacked by the bigoted academic society of the time
That´s just ridiculous, Tolkien had to hide and vindicate his amazing work, because it wasn´t highbrow enough for his snobbish, elitist, and old, boring, so called quality literature prone, colleagues and a bigoted, conservative society that wasn´t ready for something new. Better stay with theater texts as books or whatever can be used for patriotic „our writer“ idiocy. Just bad luck that there aren´t enough good, if any, old writers for each country to fuel feelings of literary supremacy. However, it´s one more of these examples of how parochial even seemingly well educated and sophisticated people can be as soon as it comes to close to their cognitive dissonances and socioeconomic status hierarchy overkill.

Putting in meta, connotations, and social criticism
Tolkien was heavily influenced and inspired by war, and the atrocities humans so much love to do to each other until nasty nukes eliminated the option of more WW action, and put the real life implications everywhere in his work. Not just in the form of the big, bad government cooperating with war industry, propaganda machines, and black magic, but with

Corrupted blood
The banality of evil, the attractiveness of the dark side is, as mentioned in „Black, white, and…“ above, is one of the driving forces of the saga and without Tolkiens´experiences, it might have stayed much more superficial and have never reached that deep level of human soul and psyche vivisection. The same with love, without his lifelong, deep bound to this adored wife, he wasn´t allowed to see until reaching full age, the importance of emotions maybe wouldn´t have unfolded and played such an essential role in the work. Expanding this whole, philosophical, psychological somewhat assumptions to his profession as a philologist and, for the standards of the time, mad professor, would go a bit too far, but let´s just say that his expertise might have helped him create both Silmarillion and Lord of the Rings.

Is it outdated?
Very objective thing, even if not including the sociocultural, immense literary impact, Tolkien invested a bit more than the usual fantasy writer in her/his third or fourth series with a new one each new year. Just take the mentioned Silmarillion, the immense details of the world, all the links to the cultural heritage, and the sheer scale and size, and, on top of that, close to everyone agrees that it´s a timeless, genre founding, ingenious masterpiece that will stand the test of not just time, but eternity. Sure, it´s not as accessible as the average, new, overhyped world bestseller, but that´s the same as with Lem, Lovecraft, etc., authors just were used to write in that wacky, overcomplicated, intricate, and difficult to digest language, because they were no narcissistic, lazy, self aggrandizing, god complexed hedonists. I won´t excuse for that, I´m one myself and have N word privileges.
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Comparing and contrasting fantasy with other genres
Horror, Sci-Fi, or crime had no similar big bangs (fringe theory, by the way, to provoke and insult even more additional people than with just the human degeneration gag above lol) but different founders, prodigies, and subgenres, while fantasy was, stayed, and will be very genre compliant, not to say a bit inflexible in contrast to other genres with much vaster differences, especially sci fi, my bread and peanut butter. So one could say that close to every, no matter if grimdark, YA, high, epic, romantic, etc. fantasy, is always quite the same with some variations of magic systems, the balance of focus on protagonists or antagonists, tone, and the rare establishment of the one or other sub sub genre.

The endless evolution
Close to all human mythology, faith, myths, etc. is fantasy and I see one of its biggest potentials in a fusion to science fantasy, because it opens up all options including any horror or psychothriller crime plot. Without Tolkien, this amazing development couldn´t have taken place
so soon and it would have probably needed much longer to establish the (I´m a sci-fi head, sorry) second best genre to subjugate and enslave them all.

The two towers

Bromancing to Mordor while Middle Earth falls to pieces

Split personality overkill
Golluming through life is a hard task, especially if it´s that freaking long. Too many different psychological, sociological, etc implications to name them all, but poor Smeagols' quest towards looking freaking emo zombie style could easily be seen as the decision between happiness and sadness, the seductive potential of power, or simply the easygoing simplicity of evil. It could also be seen as the perverting energy of power, with the good old saying that total perversion totally corrupts, that good people get nasty as soon as they get money, influence, or a fancy invisible mindpenetrating bling bling, that would also be a fantastic bluetooth fingerset to always stay in touch with your evil overlord.

Planning and preparation is everything
After everything has been established in the first part, the whole scenery can lift off, get far darker and hopeless, introduce new friends, foes, and people not sure which to choose, and in general create the outline for the genre itself. I assume that the mysticism, nerdgasms, and glorification around Tolkiens´ work and its immense impact make it (subjectively for me too, not even mentioning the nostalgic touch) one of the most fertile cornerstones of the maybe biggest popular fictional genre.

Sarumans´  new brand of evil with a touch of übersoldier breeding program
Another milestone,  the evil fractions cannibalizing another  leads to even more suspense and includes the always and forever important rule of warfare of pimping ones´ killer machines to let them Chuck the heck out of every enemy. At least until automatization and robotization of warfare sets in and lets each soft bloodbag fall into pieces miles away from the unbeatable killer machines. Except the fantasy fractions have magic and mind controlling psi-powers. However, this dynamic leads to an even more suspenseful and action loaded plot than just one evil fraction united in darkening the world forever.

A full picture of the world.
Now the reader can enjoy so many different settings, cultures, traditions, and even a bit of political power balance, that it feels kind of relaxing to switch to Sam and Frodo from time to time for some good, old fight for survival without complicated following the big picture actions.
It may be appropriate to read the Silmarillion too to get even more out of this. It´s as difficult to read as the classics that inspired Tolkien and that were adapted by him, but directly linked to the backstory and history of the actions, so maybe the better and not as dry alternative. Still just something for the really hardcore fangirl/boy enthusiasts out there.

No banality of evil
Nearly all antagonists have no grey areas, no moral dilemmas, no option to change towards the better, and that may be one of the biggest differences in contrast to modern fantasy, where these eclectic evildoers often have backstory, tragedy, depth, etc. explaining what made them the creatures they are. Not giving excuses for what they do, but making them feel more human/inhuman if they´re fantasy creatures (bad wordplay), and their actions comprehensible and not just evil. In the good old times, it was clear which was the team to promote, but meanwhile, it has become a tricky, ethical dilemma with far too many implications, innuendos, and stuff.

Preparing for the endfight
As in many great series, everything is interconnected and the whole thing accelerates towards a great cliffhanger, letting one ask what might both meta and personally happen to all those freaking fascinating fantasy fighters. Classy “ buy the next part to know how it will go on“ dynamic, something that has stolen estimated hundreds of millions of days of lifetime of poor, addicted, fantasy readers.
Must read the Wheel of time series….
Thanks for that, JRR!

Establishing fantasy supertropes
Na matter if it are the fractions, superhuman elves, monster orcs, grumpy dwarfs, wise wizards, brave halflings, etc, the heroes journey, the switching between fast and slow pace, the cuts between meta fights, battles and the preparation of these and the personal, emotional scenes and the big, epic scenes including all characters, Tolkien defined the genre in a way maybe nobody else may ever have the influence to do. He not just inspired so many great fantasy authors, but indirectly helped creating so many sub-genres that are more and more expanding to subsubs, and I can remember hearing rumors about something like a subsubsub somewhere in the regions of dark science fantasy, but I don´t really trust the alien succubus who whispered it in my ear and assume that it was just a cheap trick to get me laid where she wanted me to go for a quest. But not again, honey!

The Return of the King

I´ll just wear the ring one more, last, short time, and then really go to rehab

Letting the established storylines collide in an epic culmination
That´s what most fantasy, no matter if high, science, or dark, series keep doing, no matter if it are 3, 5, or 10 parts. Tolkien accelerates the story engine towards an end that has already been prepared and enabled in the first 2 parts of the series, letting it feel like one, big piece. Another genre milestone that escalates to ridiculous lengths and perfection in many fantasy series and makes them so addictive.

The big longtime impact is uncomparable to other genres
Of course, sci fi and horror have their prodigies and milestones too, but they can go and splitter in many different subgenres, focus on psychological elements with characterization, or just epic battle and splatter, but fantasy is extremely genre standard focused regarding what to deliver and hasn´t that much room for experiments, kind of traditional in what it should deliver. And Tolkien set the standards for it, showed how to do it, and helped to inspire the production of dozens of great series, hundreds of average ones, and an innumerable amount of fanfiction. Of course, his inspiration came from the millennia of storytelling that formed the works he took for his reinterpretations, so any aspiring fantasy author could see her/himself as an ancestor of a tradition to not just pass the stories themselves. But the much more important part, the ability to tell them, to use tropes and creative writing to hypnotize readers and eat away their lifetime with multi k behemoths of fantasy series.

Bromance gets tragic
The, some may say a bit too intense gaytrix style, Frodo Sam relationships gets tragic, because as so often with substance abuse, both body and soul get ruined by it and the ones who suffer are family and friends. One could go one more meta step and say that it´s not just addiction, but ideological contamination too, that extremism and faith poison the minds of normally friendly people who carry their toxicity home and make living together hell. Because, all in all, it´s

Fascism crushed by united, different fractions that understand that they´re just powerful together as one population of Middle earth, no matter how small and hairy or angular eared they may be.
Another heavy one, the ending can be seen in many different ways, from just a megalomaniac battle overkill to the deeper meanings of the journeys that make the victory of the good ones possible. Or that everyday people don´t understand the power they could have if they would work together against a dictatorship, economic inequality, and grievances. Or that the evil is still lurking in everyone and that it takes a permanent struggle to keep the peace by controlling the inner demons. Endless interpretations until eternity beyond the straight road to Aman.

Tropes show how literature is conceptualized and created and which mixture of elements makes works and genres unique:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...

Okay, I'm going to be rather liberal with the profanity here. LOTR five stars?? Are you people fucking serious?! I've had more entertaining toothaches! The writing is truly appalling. The plot - if you can call some idiot marching across fields and swamps to drop a fucking ring in a volcano a plot - is tedious beyond all definitions of the word. The characters are bland and uninspiring; the dialogue stilted, wooden and ridiculously convoluted. The excessive descriptions make me want to scream until I'm hoarse. I don't need six pages to tell me what a fucking forest looks like. The exposition is a joke; random snippets of Middle-Earth history seemingly deposited at random intervals for no other purpose than pure self indulgence. And the pacing of the wretched thing: It's so slow it's a wonder Frodo managed to drag his candy ass to Mount Doom without collapsing into a boredom induced coma. This book is crap. If you value your youth and sanity, avoid it at all costs!

O primeiro livro de Tolkien que li foi The Hobbit quando tinha 9 anos de idade. Aos 14 comecei com Lord of the Rings e não parei mais. Tenho quase todos os livros. O meu conjunto original da trilogia é da década de 80 edição da Ballentine com as capas de Tolkien. De tanto lê os livros ao longo dos anos, eles estavam já bem batidos. Estava precisando de uma edição nova e de capa dura e resolvi comprar esta. Estou super satisfeita. Os livros são de ótima qualidade, bem feitos e o que mais gostei com um mapa completo de Middle Earth que abre no final do livro. Foi uma ótima compra e adição a minha coleção.

Con el libro sobran las palabras porque es una de las obras más importantes de la literatura universal y la más importante en su género. No quiero extenderme en un punto conocido por todos.

Sobre la versión Kindle: está casi perfecta si no fuera por la ausencia de índice de capítulos. Tiene un índice de libros (las partes mayores en las que se divide la novela), pero teniendo en cuenta que cada libro tiene numerosos capítulos en su interior no llega a ayudar. Una pena ese fallo.

Por lo demás poco más que decir. A todos los niños de 11-12 años, o en plena adolescencia, deberían regalarle un ejemplar de "El hobbit", y una vez terminado hacer lo propio con la trilogía de "El Señor de los Anillos", el libro que todo joven lector (o no tan joven) debería leer. Además de lo buena que es la historia, creo que destila unos valores como el amor por la naturaleza y la vida sencilla, la hermandad y la fuerza de la amistad, la valentía y el honor, que harían mucho bien a la sociedad actual. Imprescindible.

"The Lord of the Rings" is usually found in a single volume, or in three volumes: 1) "The Fellowship of the Ring", 2) "The Two Towers", and 3) "The Return of the King". My recommended reading age is 13+ years old, and I recommend reading "The Hobbit" first.
When I was 15 years old in high school, I had to read "The Hobbit" for an English class. After reading that book, the teacher then let us borrow "The Lord of the Rings". Before I had started "The Return of the King", I had bought my own set of books. After I had read both books, I actually liked "The Hobbit" better than "The Lord of the Rings" at first - because the "The Hobbit" was brighter: a fun, grand adventure with more humor, whereas "The Lord of the Rings" was darker: a serious, grim life and death struggle for world survival. But by the time I was about 16, the historical significance of "The Lord of the Rings" began to appeal more to me. This is especially true if you read Appendices A and B of "The Lord of the Rings", and also read the "The Silmarillion". You begin to understand the rich history of Tolkien's Middle-Earth/ Beleriand creation. How the "The Silmarillion" brings out the significant events of the First and Second Ages, while the events in "The Lord of the Rings" are the culmination of the Third Age...each Age lasting thousands of years and ending with an immensely significant event.
It was 25 years before I read "The Lord of the Rings" again, but Bilbo, Frodo, Sam, Gandalf, Aragorn, Galadriel, Legolas, Gimli, and many more had become household names! I had matured over those years, and my tastes changed. I was no longer a big fantasy/science-fiction reader: instead I was reading military history. I didn't expect to still love "The Lord of the Rings" the way I did as a teenager. I was happily wrong! This is still an exciting book, but I discovered what I really love...it is allegory-type stories. J. R. R. Tolkien himself has said that "The Lord of the Rings" is not allegory, because he hated allegory where he felt the author is dictating to the reader what is in their story...and that any other interpretation is incorrect. Tolkien wanted a reader to apply their own experiences and tastes to influence what they were reading. OK, but in real history one can still get allegory if their own experiences and tastes allow it. How many can learn about World War II and not apply the basic allegorical interpretation that good triumphs over evil? I've heard of, and can understand, several allegorical interpretations of "The Lord of the Rings". Frodo is like Jesus Christ: bearing the greatest of burdens for world salvation while being tempted to stray from his purpose, and the weight of the ring is similar to Christ's cross . The One Ring is like the atomic bomb: the ultimate weapon that corrupts whoever uses it, despite even good intentions, into a power-hungry creature of evil. There's an ecological message with the Ents trying to protect trees; and also the natural beauty of various places throughout Middle-Earth, while evil beings try to destroy it all (including the use of mechanical and polluting progress). I also get out of "The Lord of the Rings" a sense of a military mission: that Frodo & Sam are behind enemy lines on a mission that could end a war, and that Frodo realizes that getting back home or even staying alive doesn't matter - just completion of the mission...that's also sacrifice, perseverance, & camaraderie so prevalent in the military history I've read. There's prejudice with years of animosity between elves and dwarves, and how small, kind gestures can begin to erase all those blighted years...also, how people or races can put aside differences to solve a common problem. There's the recognition of the small, common people (citizen soldiers) that perform the greatest, toughest, and most necessary duty in any war. There's world peace in peril and that something needs to be done before it's too late. There's avoiding the easier way out, and facing one's problems and seeing them through to a conclusion despite severe hardships.
I feel that Tolkien saw a little bit of himself in many of the good races of his world. The hobbits are like Tolkien because they love food, company, and talking about family. The ents are like Tolkien because of their unbounded love of trees. Gandalf the wizard is like Tolkien because of his exceptional intelligence and purpose of guiding others along the right path. Some men are like Tolkien because of their inner strength and gallantry, while other men show weakness by succumbing to evil...very realistic. But I believe he saw the beauty and enchantment of the elves in his wife, and why he loved both most dearly: that's why on their gravestone Luthien appears after his wife's name, and Beren appears after his name. The dwarves don't seem to resemble Tolkien, but they are present in much folklore, which is linked to his personal love of medieval languages.
"The Lord of the Rings" is a masterpiece in my opinion, and it's size (over 1000 pages in any printed format) is pretty daunting, but give it a shot! It'll be time well spent. And get ready for adventure, terror, excitement, love, treachery, devotion, monumental historic events, unforgettable battles, military strategy, exotic languages & culture, etc. See what you get out of the book! I think most people will enjoy it and/or be moved by it. And who knows, maybe it'll become your favorite book too!

Llegaron en perfectas condiciones, han sido mis acompañantes en varios viajes y aun ahora estan en buen estado. Además se ven bonitos en el librero.

Good quality paper, hard cover is good quality. Overall satisfied

The product is in fantastic condidtion, good size of a font ;) very beautiful covers

One may be tempeted to question the purpose of reading these books in light of the fact that Peter Jackson has just recently graced the world with his towering exploration of them in visual format. The answer to those who would so question is what I have always said, even before the films were made. This book is, I believe, unsurpassed by any other work in human history aside from the Bible. It is impossible to really do the work credit with any sort of brevity, however, for the sake of the reader's patience I will comment on what I believe to be the most important points.

Firstly, if it is of any interest to anyone, in a world full of writers who become immensely popular despite very poor writing, here is a genius. Tolkien's masterpiece is written in somewhat antiquated language, which tends to add to it's mistique and prowess rather than to distract the reader. With a mixture of glowing description, intelligently crafted dialogue, and a combination of genres from narrative, to poetry, to prophecy, The Lord of the Rings will not leave you bored if you are intelligent enough to appreciate the style. When I first read the book I found the descriptions to be somewhat tedious, cutting off the story as they did (I was 15), however, having now read the books four times I have an appetite for good writing, not just an urge to find out what happens next. The dialogue can be rather long as well, as in the chapter, "The Council of Elrond," where upwards of 20 characters speak, the majority of whom you have heard little or nothing about. However, I have come to enjoy that chapter much more as I have grown older because of its hinting at a much greater world than the one we are exposed to.

Secondly, the tale is captivating. It is a story of increasing intensity as the reader progresses and he is drawn in so easily and so fully that he may come out of it half believing that this quest actually happened. You feel Sam's joy and being sent with Frodo; you feel the Hobbit's terror at the Barrow Downs; your hurts are healed with the Fellowship at Lothlorien; you are captivated by the mustering of the Rohirrim; you are petrified by Shelob; you are laughing at Merry and Pippin the whole way. The genius of Tolkien creates a complete empathy on the part of the reader for the characters. I would be interested to know how many other people are actually in tears at any point in the reading of this book. I am at several, I will admit.

Lastly, and I believe, most importantly, it is necessary to uncover some of the timeless thematic elements of this masterpiece. Books like, Finding God in the Lord of the Rings, have failed to do this book justice in their exploration of such themes, unfortunately. I do not wish to comment on all such themes b/c to do so would take far too long. However, I will make bold to say that I believe the overarching theme of the book to be self-sacrifice. Ultimately, self-sacrifice amounts to love, as far as I can see it, b/c it is a giving of one's self in the interest of others w/o expecting any good for one's self to come out of it. Just think, Frodo had no hope of ever making it back from Mordor, but it didn't matter. He had a task to complete  for the saving of the rest of the world. Sam, Merry and Pippin went with Frodo, having no idea what they were going into, and not caring. It did not matter to them; all that mattered was that they could give of themselves to him. And finally, when Aragorn, Gandalf and Prince Imrahil marched with their armies to the black gates and had no hope whatsoever of victory, it was only with the hope that they might provide a lengthy enough distraction to enable two small Hobbits to make it to the Cracks of Doom without being discovered by the Enemy. I wish to comment on one other point before being finished b/c I believe that to those of the Christian Faith it should be encouraging. When Sam and Frodo are going with Gollum through Ithilien they come to the Cross-Roads and there is a statue of a king seated, however his head has been thrown down and there is a big ugly eye, the symbol of Sauron, where his head should be. As they walk there is suddenly a beam of light where the sun manages to search through the darkness, that blazes out upon the head of the king which is lying by the road. A vine of flowers has grown around his head and Sam says, "Look! The King has got a crown again." Such hope have we as well.

I would make a passing remark about this edition. Though the size may make it somewhat difficult to read it lays open nicely so reading it in bed is quite nice if one likes to lay on one's stomach to read. The illustrations are very true to Tolkien's own vision as can be seen in, "Tolkien: Artist and Illustrator."