It's been two whole months since I posted about a book, and that's because I've been listening to the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in one go.
This was my first time reading/listening to the trilogy and I got the Andy Serkis (mocap/voice of Golum) audiobook version. He does a fantastic job giving each character a voice, and clearly tried to imitate the voices of the actors from the films.
There's not much to say about these books that hasn't been said at this point, so I want to approach this as a review of the differences between the books (specifically this version of the audiobooks) and the films.
-First off, this is a slow trilogy to get through. Books 1 and 3 are very good, but holy hell does the majority of book 2 drag. It consists of party A+L+G tracking Merry and Pippin forever, followed by what seemed like hours of slow-motion ent speech. Effective at generating empathy for Merry and Pippin who need to listen to all that talking, but holy hell.
Second, I've been told by several people that their love of the books is rooted in the imagery conveyed through the writing. Unfortunately I've not got a particularly vivid mind's eye, so a large portion of the locale descriptions was lost on me.
Third, there's story differences (obviously) between the books and movies -- I'm not going to take time highlighting those here as I'm sure there's many forums where these differences are debated.
What I am going to do, is open with a character who was absent from the movies -- one Tom Bombadil. This segment of the books is hotly debated, and I land very squarely in the "what the fuck" camp.
Tom Bombadil is a forest-dwelling, yellow-boot-wearing forest demi-god that the hobbits run into shortly after leaving the Shire. Mr. Serkis blesses the listener with what must be 2 hours of this lunatic screaming his own name in preposterous lyrics about himself as he chills with the boys for a brief time after saving them from a tree.
Now, it's said by many that "Bombadil embodies the wonder and mystery of the unknown powerful beings in Middle Earth", which is great I guess if you're reading the books for the 400th time, but as a first time reader we haven't even seen much of middle earth yet, and don't know the power differential here.
My biggest issue, I think, is how Bombadil is completely unfazed by The Ring. Yeah it's because he's a mega powerful deity-thing, but he shows up at a point in the book where we're not even too sure about the ring, and almost plays down how serious the entire ring ordeal is -- he's then barely ever brought up again.
Just when you think the Bombadil section is over, Frodo and the gang summon him in some Bombadil Ex Machina shit to give you some blue-coated aftertaste and a bit more of his rad lyrics.
On the topic of lyrics, there's a lot of singing in the books. I'm not going to mark this as a pro or a con, but it was sometimes odd in the audiobook format to have the narrator break into song. I can see how it would work as like a little section of italic font, but I definitely found myself occasionally thinking "oh jeeze there's another verse". Andy Serkis does the songs justice, however, when they do come up.
What I found was surprisingly not done justice was Serkis' Gollum voice. I know Serkis is the voice of Gollum and his acting was extremely iconic in the films, but without the visuals or sound mixing I found Gollum's parts extremely jarring in narration form. Perhaps, like the ents, this was intentional to immerse the listener in how awful it was to listen to Gollum speak, but it could have been toned down just a notch.
Again, I think Serkis did a phenomenal job as a narrator! I'm 100% going to eventually listen to his version of The Hobbit, and I just found out he narrates a portion of Small Gods by Terry Pratchett which is very exciting!
Back on task here, I want to highlight 3 characters that were treated severely differently in the films and the books.
First, we've got Faramir. I've seen him called "bargain bin Boromir" online by film fans, while he was my favourite character in book 2! He's wise and brave and thoughtful, he resists the ring, he hates war -- he's the best character in the books! I wish the films had a picked someone more traditionally attractive for the part. That sounds shallow, and no shade on the actor who played the part, but my guy Faramir should have been plastered on the inside of highschool lockers along with Legolas and Aragorn and it's a damn shame he wasn't!
Next up we've got Sam. Book Sam is 10 times the loyal friend Film Sam was! Never once did book Sam falter, and he was honestly a badass, willing to carry Frodo's burden when all seemed lost, breaking into an orc tower, he was amazing!
He was still a huge dick to Gollum, but book Sam is a goddamn hero.
Finally, I want to focus on not Denethor, but on Sauron. He's actually physically present in the films, while in the books he's just a looming menace. We never actually see him fight, we don't even see him die, it's just implied he's out when the ring goes.
I know it's good to keep your monsters vague, but I would have liked to see a scene or two in Sauron's back office. I don't think humanising Sauron would have been valuable to the story, but I'd like to have felt the menace in a more tangible way than just "semi immortal back-office manager".
After the ring had been destroyed and Sauron had been vanquished I was surprised to find there was 9 hours of audio left in Return of the King. Tolkein wanted to make sure he tied up every loose end, clearly, and goes into quite a detailed tale post-climax.
We see things like Aragorn's wedding which comes out of nowhere as the entire story of their romance is a post-script appendix story and Arwen's barely mentioned in the books until the end. We see Legolas and Gimli living out their best bromance lives, and we see the Hobbits returning home.
The hobbits' return home was an excellent piece of fantasy that I think I enjoyed more than the rest of the entire trilogy -- though without the trilogy preceding it there'd be no impact at all. Watching them confidently deal with the arisen problems of the shire, to have returned world-wise as leaders -- it was massively satisfying. I understand leaving this bit out of the movie, but it kinda made getting through the books worth it for me.
After everything concludes and Frodo sails off to elfland we come to the Appendices at the end of book three, where Tolkien decided to put 2 hours of the driest history of middle earth he could conceive. There was admittedly some nuggets of interest in there with the dwarves and Aragorn / Arwen's romance, but most of it was "Jorwen lived from 1290 to 1298, followed by Borwen, son of Jorwen, in 1299".
And with that, it us done. After so many years of being a nerd, I've finally officially read the Lord of the Rings. My nerd homework is done, and I don't have to read it ever again. I didn't hate it, but it didn't stir anything within me like I felt it should have. I may just have a re-watch of the movies sometime soon, however.