I am sure my opinion of this series is not going to be popular. The books themselves seem to go almost nowhere until closer to the end.
Book 1 which showed the people after Bilbo from the Hobbit had a long life and was moving on. The book deals with a small group of friends and while it had some great parts there were issues.
The party where Bilbo leaves is the most boring part and is not really needed. It adds over 50 pages where nothing really happens. Whenever I read the books I always skip this.
The fleeing of the Shire was very good and it showed the fear and suspense that they all must have been feeling. It showed a lot of intricacies that made this one of the best parts.
The parts with Tom Bombadil were ludicrous and while as a teen I loved this part. As I got older I saw how much a waste this was and that it really took away from the story. Now if and when I reread the book this part also gets skipped.
I found the rest of the book was good for the most part but just got to the point where I can’t enjoy the story as I get caught up in the smaller and more annoying parts.
The second book faired no better. The riders of Rohan were interesting but I found that a lot of the story just seemed to drag on. The rest of this book just wasn’t what I was hoping for. There was so much with Rohan and Gondor that could have been accomplished and it just fell short.
The third book I found the first half boring and just didn’t draw my attention. The second half is what the whole series should have been. It had a lot of emotion and the writing was where I needed it to be.
For me the series I loved it when I was younger but have grown to find that it doesn’t stand the test of time as you go from young adult and teen into adulthood. I will probably never pick the series up again having read them more than 30 times. Just doesn’t hold the interest that it once did.
While this series brought and influenced many authors including myself with the sheer amount of world building that the author did. It has a lot of great characters which is good but I found it was sometimes harder to track as you always seemed to have to figure out which character to follow.
Crazy Canadian Writing 