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A review by dark_reader
The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
5.0
So fucking epic.
Seriously. Almost every chapter is phenomenal. I can understand why some people muse that Tolkien actually visited Middle-Earth. This is where modern fantasy was born.
Boromir's last stand. The Riders of Rohan. Fangorn. Theoden. Wormtongue. Helm's Deep. Orthanc and Saruman. Every scene and movement involving these is laden with the weight of ages, and this is only the first half of the book. Merry, Pippin, Gimli, and Sam in particular are better expressed than in [b:The Fellowship of the Ring|3263607|The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486871542l/3263607._SY75_.jpg|3204327]; I feel like I am finally getting to know them. There was still excessive description of flora at times, but in all I enjoyed every step of the journey. I had chills near the end, at the approach to Shelob's lair . . . [shudder]
The structure of this part of Lord of the Rings illustrates well how it was never meant to be a trilogy. Can you imagine a contemporary fantasy novel getting away with telling one story in one half, then another separate story in the second half, no matter how related?
This is such a tremendous and eternally deserving classic that I feel cheap even bringing up the film version, but the film nailed it for the most part. Peter Jackson changed just a little around with the process of getting the Ents motivated to move on Isengard, the outcome of Saruman's confrontation, and the difficulty level for Faramir to let Frodo go, and added some Gollum-induced conflict between Sam and Frodo, but otherwise it was spot on, so much so that given that I have seen the films so many times since I last read the books that I thought the grandeur had to be exaggerated. It was not; it's all there in the text, noble and glorious as fuck.
The book has one particular advantage over the movie, as faithful as the latter was: the reader is reminded of the existence of the phial from Galadriel very organically, in more than one place, prior to the need for its appearance late in the book. In the screen version, it was just pulled out, practically forgotten after a single mention three quarters of the way through the prior film.
Seriously. Almost every chapter is phenomenal. I can understand why some people muse that Tolkien actually visited Middle-Earth. This is where modern fantasy was born.
Boromir's last stand. The Riders of Rohan. Fangorn. Theoden. Wormtongue. Helm's Deep. Orthanc and Saruman. Every scene and movement involving these is laden with the weight of ages, and this is only the first half of the book. Merry, Pippin, Gimli, and Sam in particular are better expressed than in [b:The Fellowship of the Ring|3263607|The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, #1)|J.R.R. Tolkien|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1486871542l/3263607._SY75_.jpg|3204327]; I feel like I am finally getting to know them. There was still excessive description of flora at times, but in all I enjoyed every step of the journey. I had chills near the end, at the approach to Shelob's lair . . . [shudder]
The structure of this part of Lord of the Rings illustrates well how it was never meant to be a trilogy. Can you imagine a contemporary fantasy novel getting away with telling one story in one half, then another separate story in the second half, no matter how related?
This is such a tremendous and eternally deserving classic that I feel cheap even bringing up the film version, but the film nailed it for the most part. Peter Jackson changed just a little around with the process of getting the Ents motivated to move on Isengard, the outcome of Saruman's confrontation, and the difficulty level for Faramir to let Frodo go, and added some Gollum-induced conflict between Sam and Frodo, but otherwise it was spot on, so much so that given that I have seen the films so many times since I last read the books that I thought the grandeur had to be exaggerated. It was not; it's all there in the text, noble and glorious as fuck.
The book has one particular advantage over the movie, as faithful as the latter was: the reader is reminded of the existence of the phial from Galadriel very organically, in more than one place, prior to the need for its appearance late in the book. In the screen version, it was just pulled out, practically forgotten after a single mention three quarters of the way through the prior film.