The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
J.R.R. Tolkien has a well-deserved place in lists of most beautiful prose, and Two Towers offers a strong recommendation on its own. It’s beautifully constructed (if a bit different from modern novel styles), and is enchanting. It has a way of sweeping the reader up and into a grandiose world of the mind—it’s really, really magical.
But it’s also slow in parts. All those lingering descriptions are great for a lazy afternoon but terrible if you’re waiting in line at the bank and just snatching a few sentences at a time. It’s mostly my fault it took me a month and a half to read, but the long, languishing paragraphs aren’t a lot of help in the speed department. So approach with time to linger.
This book is divided into two separate stories, and unlike the Peter Jackson movie, the stories are utterly separate, without switching back and forth. Though the Fellowship of the Ring ended with Frodo and Sam paddling off alone, you start out The Two Towers with the remainder of the fellowship, Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas. They’re off on a race to find the two kidnapped hobbits, Merry and Pippin, and it’s an exciting action-packed adventure.
But then that storyline resolves half of the way through the book, with the remainder dedicated to the dreary, exhausting toil of Sam and Frodo (and sometimes Smeagol). It’s really rough to get through those parts sometimes, honestly, because it’s just such a death march. A well-written, beautifully rendered death march, but exhausting to try to drag yourself through.
(BTW, Sam is definitely the most heroic and honorable character in this series. He does not get enough credit.)
The book is wonderful. I want to go back and pick out all my favorite lines and treasure them. But I’m also grateful that I’m done with the book for now, and ready to move on to other things. Read when you have time.
M.E. Kinkade 