If you are a rabid foaming at the mouth Tolkien fan, this review is for you. I haven’t yet ’read’ LOTR. The first time I found it too boring and didnt get past the first book. Now I am somewhere in the Two Towers and plan to be there for some time. In plain words, I think the books are badly written. To give JRR credit he does create a great world one that is at once both tortured and enlivened by the kind of legacies it inherits, by the tales that lurk in its dark corners by the unseen forms that seem to guide things along by their very presence. A beautiful mysterious world whose charm is heightened by the brief peeks JRR lets us have into its past. Now think that and think frodo and co. and you have on your hands a recipe for disaster. It’s not just that frodo is a bad or irritating character. It’s just that half the time I can barely restrain myself from reaching and choking frodo’s pompous, self introspective ’’why me why me’’ guts out. Sam gamgee dont even get me started on that slavish waste of hobbit blood. With a whole troop of idiotic comrades who talk such childish rubbish when all they should really be doing is getting rid of the ring fast, it’s no surprise that halfway through you start wishing somebody would kill the two hobbits so you could see what happens to the rings in peace. In some sense ’’The hobbit’’ was probably a better book cause it stuck to the facts and there was enough of a story going on in the background. In LOTR however things take a mawkish turn for the worse and everybody is either in awe of themselves or the ring. Don’t kill me for this but ’what has it got in its pocketses’ googol is probably my favourite character especially since it doesn’t waste its time going all misty eyed about what a better world we might have at our disposal if not for the tiny matter of the ring. The ring is another splendid bit of literature and JRR invests it with an aura and a menace and a sense of inevitability that is simply unmatched. But then every story is only as good as the shoulders that carry it and LOTR leaves much to be desired there.