Series Review - The Lord of the Rings

JRR Tolkien

1220 Page or 55 Hours of Audiobook

+ Authors Notes

Started August 20 2015

Finished September 21 2016 
(1 year, 1 month and 1 day)

9 Stars

Hard Read

Epic Fantasy/ Classic/ Film/ Fiction/ 

The Fellowship of the Ring
The Two Towers
The Return of the King

It is such an accomplishment to have finally finished this series.  I have picked up these novels so many times, only to put the books down again as I was unable to get into the writing. It is however a classic and the father of so many epic fantasies, I just couldn't take it off my TBR list.  After visiting New Zealand  - where the movies where made although I didn't get a chance to do the set tour like I had hoped, I did however get to go for a tour with the horses and the trainer from the movies, Steve Olds was the best advertisement for the movies and the books. -  I decided to give the series another try and picked up the audiobooks hoping that would make following along with the book easier. It didn't take me long to give up on the novel and just listen to the tapes. But I am so glad that I got the audiobooks!
Even with the audio books this has taken me more than a year to get through the trilogy. I have listened to the Fellowship and Two Towers, twice over completely; because I felt like I missed so many things the first time around. The last few chapters of The Two Towers I must have listened too half a dozen times over, I just couldn't get the names straight... It just felt like I was missing parts over and over. So anyways it took me a year to get through the first two books, and only a month to get through the final book. The Return of the King was a perfect finale, it brought everything together in such an amazing way...words cannot describe how wonderful it is, I am speechless trying to convey how I feel about it. I have the biggest book hangover.

My only critical points are that; I can't say that I am a fan of the writing style,  I am not against it but I would never manage to get through physical copies and that makes me a little sad (although I have scene a hardcover large print 7 novel split on amazon that makes me want to try).
While Middle Earth is brought to life by Tolkien's beautiful detailed descriptions - from the Shire to Mt Doom you know exactly what the landscape is, the atmosphere, nothing is overlooked - this quality also (unfortunately) makes the work very wordy and very slow. The story (even though I know the story) was still almost lost among the rest of the information, I found at times there was a lot of confusion. A neutral point being the timeline of the novel, we jump forward and backwards, from character to character and while I know the timeline (Frodo's journey taking him a year) I had no sense of the time at most points.

I am looking forward to starting The Hobbit (probably not until the new year) and possibly some of Tolkien's other writings.

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