The Fellowship of the Ring Book Review

Video Review

The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien - Book Review on YouTube

Written Review

GOOD GRIEF! This was absolutely amazing. I am impressed. I've always loved the Lord of the Rings movies, of course who doesn't?! But I'd never read the books, and I was expecting an absolutely perfect book with no issues at all here. The hype was VERY real with this book and the whole series for that matter. So, that was going to be difficult to reach... but, DID IT EVER REACH THAT HYPE! WOW WOW WOW!

Review Score

Dear Lord, this was so so so good! There was a chapter in this book that was, technically, an info dump. And geez, was it PERFECT! I was not bored by reading it, and I was smiling ear to ear the entire time! That doesn't discount the beginning of this book, because the first 150 pages took a lot out of me, I nearly stopped reading.. I talked to a few people on a few discord servers and I kept on. And wow, am I happy that I kept on!

Total score: 4.6/5 and we round up 'round here! 5 out of 5!

Emotional Impact	5
I smiled through most of this book. My mind was blown multiple times. My heart raced at places. I also wanted to stop reading this book. But... the last two-thirds of the book made up for the beginning for me! WOO!

Characters	5
Love these characters. The names were a bit confusing in the beginning, but as we got out of the Shire, that seemed to resolve.

Plot	4
AMAZING Plot. I loved it! As I keep saying, I struggled in the first third of this book so.. 4.

Dialogue / Prose	4
I struggled with the beginning of the book, and it picked up, but the prose seemed to be lacking a little for me. I have favorites like Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. Those are both different from each other, but I wanted a little more from J.R.R. Tolkien in this book. I was confused a lot with the descriptions of a lot of locations and the dialogue has a lot of singing.. you may like that, but I am not a huge fan of that.

Dialogue / Prose

I struggled with the beginning of the book, and it picked up, but the prose seemed to be lacking a little for me. I have favorites like Brandon Sanderson and Robert Jordan. Those are both different from each other, but I wanted a little more from J.R.R. Tolkien in this book. I was confused a lot with the descriptions of a lot of locations and the dialogue has a lot of singing.. you may like that, but I am not a huge fan of that.

Cinematography / World Building	5
I cannot even begin to explain how amazing this book is - specifically for World Building. I am writing this with a smile that is hurting my cheeks. SO SO GOOD!

Time for spoilers

A lot of fun here.

Spoilers

Questions

Okay, that had been my question - the use of the One Ring. As I've read... oh wow did I find out!

Apparently the wearer can control all living things. Nice! But wearing it, you get corrupted by it's power. War to get the Ring back! Here we go!

Magic System

Lord of the Rings actually has both a hard magic system and a soft magic system. Gandalf's magic is obviously soft - who knows what he can do? But the way the one ring works is a fairly hard magic system. It:

Turns you invisible when you put it on.
Extends your lifespan, and eventually turns you into a Gollum-like creature.
Corrupts people in its vicinity, such that people lust for it, and it's very difficult to give away.
Brings you into the spirit world when you put it on, such that you can be sensed by Sauron and his Ringwraiths.
Is a supreme and destructive weapon in the hands of someone powerful like Sauron or Gandalf (this is the softer aspect).

120 Pages In

I AM STRUGGLING THROUGH THIS.

Maybe I'm struggling with the hype from everyone is talking about with The Lord of the Rings, and possibly, the story will get better after a time. However, I'm struggling. I'm bored and I just feel like there are things that are capitalized at complete random. I want to love this so much, because I love the movies - they're so much fun and so intriguing, but this is so slow. Let's see if it gets any better.

200 Pages In

Fellowship Ch 9 At the Sign of the Prancing Pony, Alright, I see now. THIS IS GREAT! Really enjoying it all now. I guess I was having a gloomy day when I was reading before. Years ago I added the audiobook to my library so now I am listening as I'm working today and whoa! THIS IS GREAT! The book and the audiobook. I'm understanding now. Also, yes - I love a hard magic system. This *soft* magic system is nice, I just like a lot of explanation lol. Still having a blast now!

The book has certainly picked up. I was struggling because the company hadn't been out of the Shire, or at least very close with everything just going slowly. Now I think we're catching the wind!

The ending of book 1

Wow! Amazing. Exciting!

The Council of Elrond

Good grief, has there ever been a better info dump than this?! Wow. This was really amazing. Amazing world building and character development and a lot of progress in the story. Beautiful, amazing, I am happy.

Fly You Fools!

Oh wow, this was amazing! It's great on screen and it's even better on the page... wow! I'm so happy!

My Pages Fell Out

The edition that I had, I bought from Books-A-Million and it was only $8.99, and it was the same design as the cover for the Hobbit that I had (check out my review)! However, this edition had pages that FELL OUT! I have had to be careful with the book and I even had to use a binder clip to keep the pages from falling out as I read. Not great, but that won't effect my review score.

Pages that lost glue

Binder Clip on Book

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Book Review