What ruined this book for me was seeing the movies first. When the movies were first released, I was too young to read and appreciate the novels. I LOVED the movies. I saw them multiple times in theaters because I couldn’t get enough of them. Unfortunately, having seen the movies before reading the books I couldn’t fully appreciate the beauty of the writing through the lengthy descriptions.
What I loved most about this book was the vastness of the world. From the first few pages it’s made clear how big this world is and how incredibly depth the lore and history of it is going to be. It surrounds you and you lose yourself within the story. Unfortunately, this is almost undone by the amount of description throughout the book. There are walls of text dedicated to describing the forest, the mountains, the water, etc. The writing is beautiful, however the sheer amount of description makes the novel harder and denser to read for no reason. Sometimes it’s preferable to allow the reader to fill in the blanks when it comes to the surroundings the characters find themselves in.
I also didn’t enjoy the songs throughout the novels. I actually found myself skipping the majority of them. If I were to have listened to the audiobook I would have enjoyed it much more.
Overall, The Fellowship of the Ring is a great novel that I would have an enjoyed more if I had read the book before seeing the movie.
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