Monday, March 26, 2018

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King




Isengard has fallen and the Riders of Rohan make ready to ride for Gondor, where the Dark Lord Sauron’s next hammer-stroke will fall. Aragorn, the long-lost heir to the throne of Gondor, prepares to fulfill his destiny. The Ringbearer Frodo lies poisoned and captured, with only his faithful Sam to rescue him from a tower full of Orcs. Mount Doom, the end of the Quest, is in sight, but Sauron’s power and menace is vast and overwhelming. Will Frodo and Sam be able to destroy the Ring? Can Gondor stand against the onslaught of Sauron?

This is the third and final chapter of The Lord of the Rings, and it’s far and away the hardest to get through, even for a superfan like me. There is perhaps an excessive focus on locations – even though I’ve read this many times, I had a finger ready to flip to the maps at the back of the book, to find Dol Amroth, the Stone of Erech, or the road through Mordor. And, it must be said, the pacing is difficult – the book goes on long after you expect it should end (the infamous Scouring of the Shire, though critically important to Tolkien’s purpose, can feel interminable, especially if the reader is not expecting it). All that being said though, I very much enjoyed The Return of the King. Tolkien’s sense of humor is more subdued in this volume than in the previous ones, but his writing is still rich and deep with unexpected beauty.

I’ve read The Lord of the Rings probably over ten times since I was a child, and this is the first time I’ve read the entirety of the Appendices included at the end of The Return of the King, which probably bear mentioning. Tolkien was an obsessive linguist, and he included an immensely detailed section about his various languages and scripts invented for the book, which was rather over my head but somewhat intriguing nonetheless. The Appendices are not necessary for a casual reader’s enjoyment of the book (in fact, they would certainly not appeal to someone who struggled with Tolkien’s occasional dry pedantry), but one wanting to know more about the events of the distant past alluded to in passing would find their wishes satisfied by the in-depth exploration of the history of Middle-Earth presented here.

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