The Two Towers (Señor de los Anillos) (Lord of the Rings, #2)

by J. R. R. Tolkien

[sa090]

My conquest is now complete!!!! I have now officially finished this classic trilogy and can finally stop feeling guilty that I never read it before :)

───────────────────

The book like it’s prequels is just filled to the brim with overblown descriptions, sometimes it was interesting, but most of the time I kind of wanted to know what happens next and just skim through them. The issue here is that I have seen the films many times before, so I know how it proceeds in them, but I wanted to see the book’s interpretation of them and I like the film version better. For a final war filled with fantasy and how it proceeded, I know that I enjoyed it better in that format.

The thing that surprised me though is that the quest in the book is completely separated into two narratives like the prequels, it’s not entwined at all. I find that somewhat strange because the story is supposed to come together and having a more interlinked narrative will surely help, but I guess Mr. Tolkien had his own thoughts as to why this needs to be done this way.

I do wish that some of the characters were more memorable, namely the new ones that came popping up at some times. It’s not as bad as Mr. Martin’s usage of new characters that ultimately don’t need to be there, but I still had some difficulty at first trying to figure out if I heard their names before or it’s the first time I’m seeing them and such. The similarity in the tones when listening to the audiobook, didn’t make that differentiation that easy, but I do find the audio version to be easier to go through than just the book.

Other than that, I really enjoyed to see how some characters changed when compared to how we started, how the journey changed their perspective on some things and the differences between film and novel. With famous stories like these, where the adaptation has truly done it justice, it’s difficult to try and write elaborately about it because I’m just going to be comparing between the adaptations and no one wants that lol.

I enjoyed my revisit to Middle Earth and I’m surely not ready to leave any time soon, a rewatch of the Return of the King is a must before I move on to the Hobbit and then the lore.

Final rating: a somewhat weakish 3/5