As I wrote previously, my relationship with The Lord of the Rings dates back several years and includes many start-stops of the series and a couple read-throughs of The Hobbit. Every time I attempted to venture into Tolkien’s vast world that is Middle-Earth, I felt like I was missing the point. Never was I in love with the sensationalized descriptions of landscapes or awed by the clashes of warring cavalries in battle. I’ve only just now finished the final installment, The Return of the King, and this was an ordeal that took me two and a half months. the time I spent reading The Lord of the Rings lengthened between the books, and the final, shortest volume in the series took over a month itself. Now that I’m done, I can speak with some authority (whatever you, my wonderful audience, wish to bestow upon me, at least) on The Lord of the Rings as a whole. If I could sum it up in a sentence or two, I’d say: Though the influence of LOTR for the fantasy genre cannot be overstated and is perhaps understated by today’s standards, the books/novel itself is, undoubtedly, overrated; the reverence with which we hold The Lord of the Rings stems mostly from its generic implications and the Peter Jackson films, and not from the text itself. The adventures of Frodo & company are epic, but the themes of the book are juvenile, the prose is dry and dull, and there are so many unnecessary plot digressions that draw the story out much longer than it needs to be.  Continue reading →