The Return of the King (1955) Book Review

 Hey everyone, how's it going? I'm doing pretty well. Apologies for my absence for the last three weeks, but I've actually been busy. I started playing Dungeons & Dragons last Sunday (April 7th) and I had alot to do to get ready for my first session. But, I'm back and ready for more blog posts. Today I'm reviewing The Return of the King, the final part of The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm probably not going to talk about spoilers in this review, even though the book is 69 years old at this point, but just in case I do include spoilers, this is your spoiler warning. Let's get into it!

Published on the 20th of October, 1955, nearly a full year after The Two Towers was published, The Return of the King is the final book in the trilogy. Even though I saw the movie after it came out in 2003, this was my first time reading the book and I was surprised how action packed it actually is. People often criticize Tolkien for having long descriptions about  everything, but honestly, I only felt that, outside of the Appendices at the end of this book, the long descriptions and lore building exposition are really only limited to The Fellowship of the Ring as not only is it the first book, but when it was originally published in 1954, there was a chance that people hadn't read The Hobbit, and so the book also had to include Bilbo's background as part of the long history of the One Ring.

Like with The Two Towers, The Return of the King divides itself between everything going on in Gondor with Merry, Pippin, Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf and the rest who are fighting the War against Sauron, and Frodo and Sam's quest to destroy the Ring. The second half is further split up between Sam and Frodo's quest, which ends in this book, and the return to the Shire, where Saruman, following his defeat by Gandalf in The Two Towers, has set himself up as the Middle Earth equivalent of a Mob Boss or petty dictator. 

While many people complain that the book has multiple endings, the world of Middle Earth is so complex and dense that a book of this scale needs multiple endings in order to wrap everything up so that there aren't any dangling plot threads left at the end of the story. We also basically know what happened to everybody as a result so that, as the audience, we aren't left wondering, "What happened to Gandalf?" or "What happened to Bilbo?" or "What happened to Frodo, Merry, Pippin, and Sam?" or any other permutations of that "What ever happened to?" question. What Tolkien doesn't do is bog the story down in details about what Aragorn and Arwen were doing after the story. He saved those for the first of the Appendices, Appendix A. 

Speaking of the Appendices, I didn't bother to read all of them, but I did read Appendix A, and found it quite informative. I also read Appendix B, which basically gives a chronology or timeline of all the events that happened in Middle Earth from the First Age, right through to the end of the Third Age, which is when The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place. The others I didn't bother reading as it's way too much information and stuff I didn't need to know to enjoy the story unless I wanted to learn to speak and write the Elf, Dwarf, and Hobbit languages. Which I don't.

Overall, The Return of the King is a great ending to this epic tale. The characters are fantastic, there's humour, there's heart, and the ending of the book is positive and upbeat. Especially after Frodo and his friends save the Shire from Saruman. Honestly, when Tolkien described the Shire in that second to last chapter, where everyone is oppressed and the place had become dark and gloomy, it reminded me of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time when you return to the Kokiri Forest as Adult Link only to find it to be dark and gloomy and completely overrun by enemies like the Deku Babas and Mad Scrubs. But I guess that's what happens when you spent your childhood playing fantasy games, watching children's fantasy shows, and immersing yourself in the realm of geekdom.

Having now finished reading The Lord of the Rings, I certainly have become more of a fan of the trilogy itself. However, apart from The Hobbit, which is still my favourite of Tolkien's work, and one of my favourite books of all time, I have no interest in reading Tolkien's other works. Even the ones set in Middle Earth. The reason being that they do take quite a bit of time to read and, as someone who reviews books on this blog, I'd basically have to stop reading other books altogether and focus my entire attention to reading the works of Tolkien and I don't feel like doing that. Even if I didn't review books on this blog, I'd have to stop reading anything else altogether just to get through everything. As it is it's probably going to be a long time before I read The Lord of the Rings again, but, I will read it again at some point. Maybe it'll be something that I do annually, as I do A Song of Ice and Fire and the Star Wars: X-Wing series. 

I recommend reading the books. Especially if you're a fan of Fantasy and love storytelling in that realm. If you can get past the density and long exposition, this is a great series to read. Especially on those cold winter days or rainy days in the summertime. I'm not sure if I'd classify The Lord of the Rings as a trilogy to read on the beach or by a pool, but it's still a great read. It was definitely much easier to read in the three volume edition than it was in the seven volume edition that I used to have.

Alright my friends, that's going to be it for me for today, but I'll be back soon with more posts. I promise it won't be another three weeks before that next post comes out. So until then, have a great rest of your day and I will talk to you all later. Take care.