The Two Towers

See my review of The Return of the King

The Lord of the Rings is my favorite book, and The Two Towers might be my favorite volume of it.

ORIGINALLY POSTED AT Fantasy Literature.
Refers to entire series:

J.R.R. Tolkien was the master of fantasy, and that's not just because he was the first to write a very popular modern epic.

What makes Tolkien superior was how he used his extensive knowledge of mythology and linguistics to create his own complex world. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford, a fellow of Pembroke College, and a fellow of Merton College where he studied and taught the linguistics of early English. Over many years he created his own elvish language with a complex syntax and grammar, and a complete history and mythology of Middle Earth (see the twelve volumes of The Histories of Middle-Earth below.) This gives his works so much complexity and texture that when you read them, you feel like you've dropped into the middle of a real civilization.

Besides the amazing world-building, Tolkien builds excellent characters and uses them to explore such heavy human themes as friendship, love, greed, power, redemption, gender-roles, self-sacrifice, and death. This is not a light epic for a Sunday afternoon. This is intense, bone-chilling, goose-bump raising stuff. You can feel the weight of the world on the shoulders of Frodo and his companions. And, though there's a happy ending, it comes with much suffering and loss.

And all the while, Tolkien's writing is beautiful and poignant. In my opinion, the only writers I've read who even begin to compare are Ursula LeGuin, Susanna Clarke, and perhaps Lois McMaster Bujold.
Read more J.R.R. Tolkien book reviews at Fantasy literature.