Review: The Return of the King

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I regret not finishing these books before the films came out (almost two decades ago, wow).

That said, I probably would've rated them higher back then had I finished them, except for maybe parts of Fellowship (ugh Tom Bombadil). But finishing these books also made me revisit the movies and realize that they weren't really as good as I remembered either, except for maybe parts of Fellowship again lol. But when you're young and impressionable and experiencing the fantasy genre for the first time through this, it's bound to leave an impression.

As far as the books themselves go, the writing's all right, although it tends to plod at times. And in spite of that, I mean: the film trilogy would lead you to believe that LOTR is an action series... but it really isn't. Some of the best moments in the books are in the slower moments, such as when Tolkien is building on the details of his fantasy world in places like Moria, Isengard, Minas Tirith/Morgul, etc, or in the dialogue-heavy confrontations with the likes of Saruman and Gollum (and boy, do I love Gollum’s dialogue in these books).

But at the same time, there’s decent amount of extraneous detail in the midst of the main storyline that doesn’t really contribute a whole lot to the final result otherwise, unless your ultimate goal in reading is just to become more lost in this world than anything else. Bombadil is probably the most egregious example cause he literally kills the pacing where he’s at, but even some of the random songs and genealogies and constant references to people and places that aren’t directly relevant to the main plot— I mean, it’s nice to have backstory, but after a certain point you want to avoid the pitfall of having backstory just to have backstory.

Sure, I get that Tolkien was trying to make his world feel alive and full in the way some of the biggest historical epics were, but after a certain point—and this may just be my age/time consciousness speaking— I really just don’t care as much anymore? Self-contained stories like the fall of Numenor are still interesting, but outside of those, I can’t really be bothered to keep track of all of the results of Tolkien’s intellectual exercise (like the nuances of Elvish grammar...). But at least the overly expansive exposition is nowhere near as bad as some of Tolkien's successors who kinda miss the point of how he achieved all this.

All that to say, the real strength of this series (arguably) is in its ideas/themes and plotting, even while the execution of those things can sway one way or another in quality. We can have a whole other debate on the actual value of some those ideas-- I mean, apart from the aforementioned Saruman/Gollum and maybe Denethor, all of the other antagonists are pretty one-dimensional by nature; and his negative impact on the fantasy genre is a whole other story.

But generally speaking, the themes and characters themselves are worth examining: the corrupting influence of power (Boromir/the Nazgul); coping with despair (Theoden/Eowyn/Denethor); personal courage and humility (Faramir/Sam); the nature of ‘heroism’ (Gollum/Sam/Frodo), among other things. I surprisingly found myself enjoying Frodo and Sam’s journey in the books more than than anything else here, compared to the movies where I was mostly into the big battles (Minas Tirith/Pelennor Fields!... didn't care much for Helm's Deep in either version lol).

All in all, I’m glad I finally finished this. There’s a lot of things that the movies miss tonally speaking that you probably wouldn’t really get until reading this, in spite of the number of elements that they do improve on pacing-wise. But if you can go in without having your impressions already heavily-colored by those adaptations, the better.