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What's New
Review Features
S - Science Fiction
F - Fantasy
H - Horror
Complete Listing
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Adams, Douglas (S)
Asher, Neal (S)
Aylett, Steve (S)
Banks, Iain M (S)
Barclay, James (F)
Barker, Clive (H)
Baxter, Stephen (S)
Brin, David (S)
Bury, Stephen (S)
Card, Orson Scott (S)
Cherryh, CJ (S/F)
Clute, John (S)
Cockayne, Steve (F)
Cook, Glen (F)
Danielewski, Mark (H)
Dick, Philip K (S)
Egan, Greg (S)
Feist, Raymond (F)
Gaiman, Neil (F)
Gibson, William (S)
Goodkind, Terry (F)
Grimwood, Jon C (S)
Hamilton, Peter (S)
Jeter, K.W. (S)
Jordan, Robert (F)
Lethem, Jonathan (S)
McAuley, Paul (S)
MacLeod, Ken (S)
Martin, George RR (F)
McMullen, Sean (S)
Miéville, China (S)
Moran, Daniel K (S)
Morgan, Richard K (S)
Nagata, Linda (S)
Niven, Larry (S)
Noon, Jeff (S)
Robinson, Kim S. (S)
Rucker, Rudy (S)
Simmons, Dan (S)
Smith, Michael Marshall (S)
Stephenson, Neal (S)
Sterling, Bruce (S)
Vinge, Vernor (S)
Westerfeld, Scott (S)
Williams, Sean (S)
Williams, Tad (S/F)
Collections (S/F)
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| The Classics |
Bradbury, Ray (S/H)
Burgess, Anthony (S)
Tolkien, JRR (F) |
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| J.R.R. Tolkien |
| Author Information |
Reviewed Books |
Other Books |
| Notes: (L) - Lord of the Rings Series |
The Hobbit
Fellowship of the Rings (L) |
Two Towers (L)
Return of the King (L)
The Silmarillion
The Adventures of Tom Bombadil |
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Our Ranking The Hobbit and the subsequent
Lord of the Rings series based off of the same world, is simply the defining
series within the fantasy genre. Rarely do you see a novel that shapes and entire
genre of writing. In science fiction you have stories that spawn off a direction
and maybe start a new kind of style like Neuromancer did for cyberpunk, but there
is no one novel that defines science fiction as a whole. This series defines fantasy.
First off is the setting. Tolkien creates such an incredibly complete world that
you can't help but be taken into it. For Tolkien a setting isn't just a series
of towns the characters visit on the way to their destination. For Tolkien it
is everything, world politics, legends dating back eons for each nation or party,
massivly different races of creatures, each complete with their own politics and
legends, even whole languages are created. Middle Earth is simply the most complete
fantasy world ever conceived and written. When reading the Hobbit you feel as
if you are reading about Earth, it is just that intimate. Tolkien spends so much
time on the details that is just seems that it has to be real.
The same goes for his creatures. Elves, dwarves, hobbits, orcs, dragons, spiders,
all of them are here and not just described as a simple monster or a crisis for
the characters to tackle. For Tolkien these are living and breathing beings that
all have a history and a culture. You learn of the long centuries of war between
the elves and the dwarves and come to sympathize with each of their beliefs. You
find yourself understanding their hatreds for each other. You actually feel as
if the dragon is hundreds of years old after reading the tales of its terrifying
reign of terror throughout its life. Even with the hobbits, you can't help but
find yourself appealed to their simple life style. I think the biggest testament
to the races Tolkien creates is that nearly all fantasy books after incorporated
some aspect of them into their novels. Other authors always seem to try and spin
them a bit differently but you always find yourself thinking this is how Tolkein
had it.
Now, based in this incredible world place an absolutely fascinating tale of adventure.
I remember as a child reading this, being completely enthralled and breathless
as the band of adventurers took me from one scene to the next. Even now, over
15 years since I last read it and the scenes are still plastered into my mind.
It is truly a novel that influenced my imagination (probably my writing a great
deal as well). The characters are simply outstanding. There are a vast amount
of characters in this ranging from the main band of 13 dwarves, Bilbo and Gandalf
to the more minor characters like the Dragon itself and the other folks they run
into on the way. Each one is developed with terrific detail. There are no side
characters for Tolkien. Each one has a history that is spelled out for you. In
respect to the main band of adventurers, you will find yourself constantly changing
your opinion of them as they progress and Bilbo learns more of them and bonds
with them. I remember the first time I read this actually crying at the end when
some of the dwarves didn't make it out of the finale. Gandalf left me with sheer
wonder.
If you haven't read this book, you absolutely need to. Any fiction fan should
read this. Any fantasy or science fiction fan had better already have read it.
I think I've read it 4 or 5 times and having actually been trying to get hold
of a copy on eBay to read it again. Also, if you have young children who would
appreciate this, read it to them. Expand their minds with this incredibly imaginative
tale. |
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| Our RankingThe Fellowship of the Ring
is the incredible first book of the classic Lord of the Rings series that is based
off of Tolkien's The Hobbit. I've actually read this book 4 times now, the most
recent in a mad rush to finish it before I saw the movie so that I could compare
the two. Due to the movie being out, I'm going to do something a little different
with this review. I'm basically going to compare it to the movie a bit, make this
more of a movie review and assume you've read the book. If you haven't read it
already, stop right now. Do yourself a favor and go do it. There really is nothing
I can say to do this series justice. It's amazing. It's a classic. It is just
downright incredible. On to the movie. I'd like to focus more on how the movie
compares to the book then the movie itself. I'll let other people write movie
reviews about the acting and stuff. However, real quick, this movie was mind blowing.
Special effects were amazing. The acting was great. The fight scenes just left
you sitting there in stunned awe. No matter what I say about how it treated the
book, you need, absouletly need to go see this. Alright, so here it is. To begin
with, I thought the movie did a fantastic job taking an amazingly detailed book
of 400 pages and smashing it into a movie length film. Granted, at 3 and a half
hours it was long, but still, that's a pretty big achievement. Also, as we all
know, this isn't your ordinary 400 page book. It assumes you read the Hobbit (which
the movie can't really do) and it also is packed with history told through tales
by the characters (which in a movie would probably be a bit boring). The movie
basically straddled the line a bit. It gave quite a bit of history of both the
very long ago history (the original battle with Sauron over the ring) and a bit
of the Hobbit in an breath taking introduction at the beginning. In addition,
they also dropped a bit of the story itself, especially from the beginning half.
Basically, I think the easiest way to describe what they did was, if it didn't
have anything to do directly with the ring, it was removed from the movie. This
means that a lot of the journey to Rivendale was removed, like the old forest
and Tom Bombadil. While I am a little bummed this was removed, looking at this
whole project realistically, I think they made the right decision. Something had
to be dropped to fit it in. For the most part (98% say) the movie stayed true
to the book, however the movie did make some tweaks to the story and characters.
Some of which were incredibly minor, others of which were somewhat big, a bunch
of which in my opinion were also not necessary. They messed a bit with the time
table of when Frodo actually leaves/ Gandalf getting captured. I guess this wasn't
too big of a deal, but by doing it, they messed with how Pippin and Merry actually
wound up in the adventure. Minor and no biggie. As I mentioned above, the whole
trip to Rivendale was messed with to make room, so all those changes (including
the scene in Bree) I suppose can be attributed to that and not as actual plot
changes. They really expanded Arwen's character way beyond what she was in the
book. I heard this was done to try and create some more female roles for the movie.
Yeah, I guess, but I still think it was a waste and added nothing to the movie.
An annoying change but once again nothing major. A couple of the real big changes
involved the ring itself. During the meeting in Rivendale, Grimli actually hit
the ring with his hammer. Also, at one point, Boromir actually touches the ring.
Neither of these had any impact on the movie, so my question really is why did
they make the changes? There are a bunch of other minor changes (like who of the
Fellowship wanted to go into Moria) but these I think were the big ones. All in
all nothing too bad. I was impressed at how true the did stay. One other change
though, is to make the movie more dramatic, they bring the first chapter of The
Two Towers into it to end it. As for the main characters, this was one of the
most impressive things about the movie. They were all dead on. With the exception
of Grimli (who just looked pretty lame) all of the characters seemed like they'd
just launched out of the book. Especially Legolas (who with every fight scene
just looked awesome firing that bow), Gandalf and the Hobbits. I was very impressed
with this and whoever cast this movie should get some kind of reward. Looking
forward to seeing how they handle the next to books, especially the Two Towers
which can crawl at times. I'm curious if they can stay true to the book for that
one, especially since they already used one of the more dramatic scenes to end
the Fellowship. Overall, though, I think fans of the book are in for a huge treat
with this movie. Feel free to email me your thoughts or other things I might have
missed. A quick side note, I've read that for the DVD they are offering a rated
R version that shows more gruesome fight scenes. That will be a must buy.
Oh yeah, finally, Balrogs can't fly Dan. They are like chickens.
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