The Two Towers (The Lord of the Rings, #2) in The Nerd Herd

Jul 27, 2021 Belisarius Carstairs rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-fantasy, novels-books, author-tolkien-j-r-r

Supplemental – The Two Towers
I started to listen to the audio book about halfway through this one. Aragorn’s trio had some thrilling moments, everyone else was taking an exceptionally long time to get anywhere with the plot. Frodo and Sam were just a bore.

The Lord of the Rings
Lord of the Rings has built up a formidable reputation among fantasy readers, who consider this book the ultimate expression of the fantasy genre. They often consider Tolkien to be the father of fantasy. Does Tolkien dese ...more

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Oct 26, 2017 mels rated it it was amazing

Shelves: amazing, made-me-laugh, made-me-cry, i-own-it, read-over-and-over-again, read-again

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I'm not entirely sure I can fully articulate my thoughts on this book. I remember, as a kid, being annoyed about the first half of the book and the second half of the book being completely separate and all of the "action" being in the first half. I loved Merry and Pippin (still do), and to me, the first half was so much more exciting. There were chases and epic battles and wizards and everything of that sort. In the second half? Walking, Frodo, and Gollum.

Even the presence of Sam in that latter I'm not entirely sure I can fully articulate my thoughts on this book. I remember, as a kid, being annoyed about the first half of the book and the second half of the book being completely separate and all of the "action" being in the first half. I loved Merry and Pippin (still do), and to me, the first half was so much more exciting. There were chases and epic battles and wizards and everything of that sort. In the second half? Walking, Frodo, and Gollum.

Even the presence of Sam in that latter half was not enough to redeem it for me. I found that it lacked the humour of the earlier half, lacked all the characters I had grown to love so much. I wanted to know what would happen when Pippin made it to Minas Tirath, not how long it took for Frodo and Sam to trek through a bog or climb a mountain.

My love for the first half of the book has not lessened over the years. It has actually increased, in many ways. I still adore the characters of Merry and Pippin and found my love for them strengthened as I reread the book. I loved watching Gimli and Legolas's characters become a bit more fleshed out and watching their friendship grow. And, of course, I loved Aragorn.

But I also found that there were many quiet moments I had not noticed as a kid in that first half, and I loved them even more than the epic battle of Helm's Deep. Moments like Legolas and Gimli pledging to return to Fangorn and the caverns of Helm's Deep together, or Merry and Pippin showing their merit in difficult situation after situation.

And the second half? My opinion on that has changed entirely. I cried reading it. Watching their slow journey to Mordor, seeing Frodo's hopelessness and quiet resolve, and knowing what Gollum's fate would be, it was heartbreaking to read. There are no epic battles or long chases in the second half of the book, and it's all the better for it. It's supposed to be a slow trudge to Mordor, with the ring getting ever heavy and the heros' hearts growing all the more hopeless. That's the point.

And I find that I love Frodo more than I ever did before. I'll admit that Elijah Wood's constant scream and agonized expression may have shaped my perception of Frodo more than I'd like to admit, but I loved him more than I ever had before on this reread. I even felt sympathy for Gollum, who I'd despised on every other occasion. And Sam, of course, was splendid.

I'd forgotten that Faramir was in this book and it was a very pleasant surprise to see one of my favourite characters show up and be reminded of why I loved him so very much.

There are so many deeper levels to these books that I never grasped as a kid. I was bored by all the walking, wished Frodo would just die already so another, more interesting character could take the lead.

My biggest complaint about the Two Towers as a kid was that I wished that the chapters could be more interspersed so that the boring bits could be more spread out among the more exciting first half. But now I see why Tolkien wrote it the way he did: the story happens so quickly in the first half that it would be dreadful trying to remember what had happened after two chapters of Frodo and Sam climbing stairs. It moves along at a breathneck pace, barely stopping for air. And the moment where it does switch quickly from one story to the other, before the Ents take Isengard, is jarring. And it's meant to be, of course. It's a cliffhanger, of sorts, leaving us to catch up with Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas while we wonder what's happening with Merry and Pippin. And the latter half has a much more contemplative tone because of the lack of action interspersed. The quandries faced by Frodo and Sam are of a much more mental variety than those of the other characters, and that is shown by the shift in tone between the two halves.

I cannot remember if Return of the King follows this same structure, and I look forward to finding out. ...more

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Aug 02, 2013 mels rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: amazing, made-me-laugh, made-me-cry, i-own-it, read-over-and-over-again, read-again, classic, winter, colourful-covers

Always absolutely magical. These books make me laugh, cry, and be filled with emotion every time.
And every time there's that one little thing that you never noticed before, and changes everything. Magical.
...more

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