De Twee Torens (1954)

awesome! ( )

I think this was full read #3 in my life (this time I actually listened to it). Despite Tolkien saying his one criticism of the trilogy is that they are too short - I disagree. Too long. ( )

It's one of the oldest fantasy books I've read and It's writing style is interesting and kind of hard to read, but once you get through to the action parts of the books. It get easier to read. Tolkien created a fantastic world that is very detailed. ( )

I genuinely enjoy reading about the adventures that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli embark on. Book 3 flies by for me. Then, we get to Book 4, which starts off slowly--Gollum is a painfully tedious character, though important--and then crescendos to one of the most suspenseful cliffhangers I've ever read. Well done, J.R.R. Tolkien. Even though I know how it all ends, the surprise of Book 4's ending gets me every single time. ( )

"One who passed in and came at length out of the echoing tunnel, beheld a plain, a great circle, somewhat hollowed like a vast shallow bowl… Once it had been green and filled with avenues, and groves of fruitful trees, watered by streams that flowed from the mountains to a lake. But no green thing grew there in the latter days of Saruman. The roads were paved with stone-flags, dark and hard…" (pg. 191)

As the three volumes of The Lord of the Rings can be considered one long book, it is hard to write a review of its second volume, The Two Towers, that says anything new from what I said in my review of the first. Consequently, this review should properly be considered an extension of my first, as those points also apply here.

As with Fellowship, The Two Towers is a great imaginative adventure though lacking in deeper literary presence, and it struggles to escape the shadow of the films (with the films generally displaying better storytelling decisions). The world-building is excellent (there's a reason 'Tolkien-esque' has become a byword for it), with Rohan in particular being brought to life. There's plenty of merry singing still, which is good news for the three or four people in the world who like it, but in general it's more restrained than Fellowship, which is good news for the rest of us.

The action is drier in Two Towers, perhaps because we're not following a band of heroes into intimate skirmishes anymore, as with the Fellowship in Moria, but instead armies on plains and in castles. The Battle of Helm's Deep is a disappointment; this is particularly glaring as it was done so well on film, but even without that reference point I imagine I would be puzzled by how it develops in Tolkien's story. The build-up to the battle lacks foreboding, the siege lacks tension, and the cavalry that rides in to save the day is led by some random rather than by Éomer. The pace is just off, and the battle is dealt with rather quickly (I remember this disappointment vividly from when I first read the book as a teenager around 2004). Surprisingly, so is Saruman's fall. The awakening of the Ents is an engaging storyline (you can mark that one for the books over the films) but ironically – considering it's Treebeard – it seems hasty. "Night lies over Isengard," Treebeard declares, only a hundred pages in to the story (pg. 103).

Of course, the dramatic ebb and flow of The Two Towers would seem disorienting to fans of the films, because the films' storyboarding begins to diverge markedly from Tolkien's. Whereas Fellowship was a linear quest adventure following one group of characters and was followed very faithfully by its film adaptation, The Two Towers has seen the Fellowship broken and scattered. Most notably, Part One of the book deals with the 'War' (Aragorn, Rohan, Helm's Deep, Gandalf, etc.) and Part Two focuses solely on Frodo and Sam's journey towards Mordor. The film's concurrent approach retains pace and focus, and is undoubtedly better for its medium (though, arguably, it could be better for the book too). Both parts of the book end deep into what fans of the films would consider to be The Return of the King's domain (Pippin looking into the Palantír ends Part One, whereas it opens the third film, while the battle against Shelob ends Part Two).

I don't say this to grumble as an uncultured film fan, as was the case when I read the book as a teenager. Instead, I would make the argument now that Tolkien's storyboarding decisions rob some key scenes of their power, and I'd like to think I'd have made this observation even if there weren't already films for comparison to highlight the matter. In particular, the Redemption of Boromir, who dies nobly as a sort of Horatius at the Bridge while protecting the hobbits from the Uruk-hai attack, is anti-climactic in print. This scene, delivered impressively at the end of the Fellowship film, is in the first few pages of the first chapter of the Two Towers book. It jars, both in pace and emotion, even if the underlying idea is compelling.

And this, ultimately, is the key point to make when reviewing Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, even if I made the same point in my Fellowship review: these are impressive underlying ideas, and the fact that the films delivered them better is not a mark against Tolkien, but a credit to his imagination. Boromir's tragic redemption, Gandalf being reborn, Théoden being reborn (so to speak), the desperate stand at Helm's Deep, the march of the Ents, the introduction of Gollum: these are all great feats of storytelling, any one of which would make a lesser writer's reputation. As with the first book, many of the great lines from the screen come from Tolkien, not the screenwriters, even if the screenplays are great at repurposing some of them (the slow-talking Ents getting no further than 'Good Morning' being one good example (pg. 94)).

There are some oddities (Sauron says 'dainty' when speaking to Pippin through the Palantír (pg. 242), which probably embarrassed the Dark Lord when he played the conversation back to himself), but it's a question of priorities. You wouldn't complain about getting a splinter from a chest filled with treasures, and even though my review has focused on the flaws, it's only because that stuff emerges more readily when you're reading, while the good stuff quietly works its magic in the background. For example, I had something to say about the plainness of some of Tolkien's writing, particularly in the second part of the book when Frodo and Sam are travelling. Tolkien seems to spend paragraphs just to move them (and Gollum) another non-descript kilometre. But then, in their parting from Faramir, Gondor's captain gestures to the landscape – "On your west is an edge where the land falls into the great vales, sometimes suddenly and sheer, sometimes in long hillsides" (pg. 377) – and you can believe it. And I realised, rather shamefacedly, what a land Tolkien has prepared for us to roam in.

"They walked on in silence for a while, passing like grey and green shadows under the old trees, their feet making no sound; above them many birds sang, and the sun glistened on the polished roof of dark leaves in the evergreen woods of Ithilien." (pg. 347) ( )