The Fellowship of the Ring

This is only the second time I read this series, including The Hobbit, which I read over the holidays. For some reason, I seem to gravitate to classic fantasy or science fiction during the holidays. I first read this back in 2003 when I was in college. At that time, the 3rd movie was about to come out and I wanted to read the books before watching the movies. The trailers had hooked me.

So, I started reading my first fantasy series with The Hobbit. It was my first fantasy novel if you don’t count any of Stephen King’s stuff. So reading The Fellowship of the Ring back then felt like a huge and difficult novel. I was not used to so many strange names and places and found it a bit hard to read. Then, I watched the first movie. And then I read The Two Towers and watched the movie. However, I ended up never reading The Return of the King and just watched the movie instead.

This time around, I told myself I’d read all 4 books. On this second read-through of The Fellowship of the Ring, I found it too simple! Maybe it’s the prose. It felt… dry? It felt more like a young adult book. I found myself being bored, probably because I knew the story so well from the movies. So, I’m giving this 4 stars this time around.