The Fellowship of the Ring (The Lord of the Rings, Book 1)

I've given a lot of good reviews on Amazon--generally, I don't review books I don't like because I don't finish them--but The Fellowship of the Ring is the absolute crown jewel of fantasy novels. In Tolkien's original plan, this was merely the first part of a single, enormous book: The Lord of the Rings. The afore-mentioned superlative could apply to the entire series, but being quite large enough on its own without the added weight of its successors, Fellowship is the all-time classic.

I feel sorry for anyone who saw the movie before reading this book. I have two reasons for this: firstly, all those moviegoers, even if they read the book now, will be tempted to superimpose imagery from the film in their brains as they read, cancelling out the imaginative power of Tolkien himself. Secondly, these newer readers will be unprepared for Chapters 3-8, which are comprised entirely of matter omitted from the movie. Such readers are likely to find the story slow-starting, or even boring.

Tolkien spends a lot of time working up his hobbit characters, establishing their peaceful and essentially inconsequential existence in a larger world. Only Gandalf the wizard seems to care for them at all ... until it becomes clear that one special hobbit has come into possession of an especially dangerous and powerful artifact, the Dark Lord's omnipotent ring, within which he has invested his hold on life and the potential to enslave the world.

In Book I of The Fellowship, we travel with Frodo and his three hobbit companions into exile, "from danger towards danger, drawing it after me." In Book II (the one from which the movie was largely drawn), representatives from the societies of men, elves, and dwarves accompany these hobbits at the start of an impossible mission towards the fabled Mount Doom, where alone the ring may be destroyed.

Tolkien takes his time in his prose, establishing every character and setting with such talent and such a love for the language, that those of us who loves these things will be instantly and forever enchanted. Impatient readers, however, are likely to become quickly bored--and that is too bad, because the payoffs in the action scenes are worth the price of the book unto themselves.

It's the best--period.

(This review has been posted by Marcus Damanda, author of the vampire fantasy "Teeth".)

When you spend too much time in the Shire you become a short fat hobbit. That is what this book did in the beginning by taking up too much time for the adventure to start. It does get better once they have finally started the real adventure of taking the ring to it's destruction. Now that we are ¾ through the book we only get a small showing of how good a Tolkien book can be. Overall it is a good book and everyone has to read it. I think this will be one of the rare books that are portrayed better as a movie.

I have to say that Tolkien is one of my top authors, period. The extensive work that he put into his literature is astounding. The man was a genius.

I have to say, though, that the first 100 pages were hard to press through... and I couldn't get the characters from the movie out of my head. Anyway, after the first pages, the story really takes off.

I literally could not put it down, which I don't do. I cannot wait to get the next two to read.

Tolkien purposely made his stories without allegory, unlike his companion C.S.Lewis. He wanted people to draw many things from his stories, and not forced to comply to one story. However, there are a lot of lesson to be drawn from them.

For instance, Borimere's state of weakness for betraying the fellowship that resulted from his personal lusts. However, he was redeemed and had his honor restored before his death.

Against all odds good overcomes evil in a struggle for middle Earth. Frodo is the ring bearer, he carries the all powerful ring. He is being hunted by the evil Sauramon, the creator of the ring. Frodo's goal is to destroy the ring in Mt. Doom, the only place the ring can be destroyed. The only problem is everyone is turning evil, and they are al after Frodo. Can Frodo and his companions make it to Mt Doom. In this book I had many favorite parts. My favorite part is when they are traveling through the mines of Moria. This is my favorite part because that would be really cool if the mines were real. There are many themes that you can get from this book. The theme I got is never give up on what you are trying to do. In the book Frodo is going to make it to Mt Doom at all costs. There are many things that I like about this book. The main thing that I like is how descriptive the author is. The author describes things so well that it makes a vivid picture in your head. The only thing that I would change about this book is the reading level. He should lower the reading level and make the book easier to read. I would recommend this book to anyone that loves to read a good adventure book.

This book is the first part of a trilogy chronicling the journey of one hobbit named Frodo and his friends. Frodo is the nephew of Bilbo, and has lived a fairly quiet life with his uncle in a hobbit-hole in a small village. Bilbo is famous in the village because once years ago he went away on a long journey and returned rich. No one is quite sure exactly what happened. And no one except those who were on the journey with him knows about the magical ring he brought back with him, that can make him invisible.

Bilbo has decided that he wishes to leave his village and get away. So he throws a huge party and at the end of it he simply disappears. He leaves Frodo as his heir and leaves him everything, including the magic ring.

Years later Frodo is visited by the wizard Gandalf, who was the one who sent Bilbo on his journey so long ago. Gandalf has news that the ring Frodo has inherited is very dangerous--it was forged by an evil wizard a long time ago, and it has incredible power. Frodo must take it to be destroyed where it was forged, and he must do it immediately. Bad things are beginning to waken all over the place, and Frodo must not let this ring get into the wrong hands. Thus his journey starts. This book tells the story of the first part of Frodo's journey to destroy the ring.

This book has a bit more character development than "The Hobbit," but it is still hard to get a grip on exactly what the characters are like. It was difficult for me to accept that things in this story were so urgent, yet Frodo and his companions spent long stretches of time not moving. It seems that the dark riders would have been upon them if they waited like they did in this story. Overall, there just wan't much action and not enough reasons to care about the characters.