The Two Towers

This book gets four stars from me for the sole reason that I absolutely adored the last half of the book. The LOTR trilogy FINALLY met my expectations.

It's funny, in the movies, I skip past the parts with Frodo, Sam, and Gollum because I find those scenes boring. However, to my complete shock, I found the parts with Aragorn and Co. the boring parts in the novel instead!!!!! It's completely backwards!

As a whole, the LOTR reads much differently from The Hobbit. I absolutely adore The Hobbit (maybe I just prefer “Bilbo's” penmanship over “Frodo's”), so I've been struggling to enjoy the LOTR. However, I did sense that magical feeling that I got from reading The Hobbit return as I read the chapter when Merry and Pippin encountered Treebeard. It was a breath of fresh air for me, but it unfortunately didn't last long.

I think the problem is that Tolkien (for the first half) was “telling” me what's going on mostly, and there were some scenes I found “unnecessary”. Like the part where The hobbits reunite with Aragorn and Co. and they're going back and forth about telling each other's tales (because they don't want to discuss it and instead find every excuse not to by eating and smoking). Perhaps I'm just impatient, but the first book of the trilogy and the first half of this book I found very boring (not including the parts with Boromir and the Ents).

Before I began reading the second half with Frodo and Co., I was filled with dread, but I quickly got into the story for the first time, much to my excitement! Faramir didn't disappoint! I absolutely love his character, and Sam too! Frodo was a badass as well when he confronted Shelob in her lair and spoke Elvish through Galadriel! That chapter was certainly exciting! The imagery it invoked prevented me from putting the book down and I stayed awake most of the night to read it.

For the first time, I'm truly enjoying the LOTR. I'm looking forward to the final book and crossing my fingers that the excitement from this book carries to the next!