2011 Reading #41: The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

[snurri]

Books 1-10.
Books 11-20.
Books 21-30.
Books 31-40.

41. The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien. There are a lot of things I could talk about here--about Pippin at the Gates of Moria mirroring Bilbo at the Battle of Five Armies, about how much better book Eowyn is than film Eowyn (my crush on Miranda Otto notwithstanding), about the fact that when

Comments

[zuma]

a very thoughtful post...

i appreciate your thoughts on war and homefronts.

and those on patience with books.
when i was young, LotR was the first book to task me in that way.

[livia_llewellyn]

Might I suggest Tad Williams Memory, Sorrow & Thorn series? It's a beautifully written trilogy, one of the few epic fantasy series I've been impressed with.

[snurri]

I appreciate the rec! I read Tailchaser's Song about a million year's ago and enjoyed it, but I've never read anything else by Williams.

[livia_llewellyn]

I would also recommend his Otherland quartet, which can only be described as an epic sf/fantasy set in cyberspace. It's one of the best series I've ever read - very complex and incredibly original.

And! I'd also recommend Ricardo Pinto's fantasy trilogy - it's fucking insane. Aztec/Asian influences, a gay protagonist, dinosaurs, empires set in the middle of dead volcanic calderas - it's unbelievable. To be fair, the plot sort of fizzles by the end of the series, but I think it's worth picking up the first book at the very least, if only to see what writers are doing to go beyond the standard set by Tolkien.

[cofax7]

As a counterpoint to the Martin/Sanderson/Rothfuss world of manly paleness, I really recommend Kate Elliott's “Crossroads” series, which is less epic than “Crown of Stars”, but more tightly plotted, and has lots of interesting cultures (including people of various colors).

Also Sherwood Smith's “Inda” series, which has some pretty impressive world-building and great gender work (as well as battles, pirates, polygamy, betrayals, and magic).

[snurri]

Thanks!

[jonhansen]

I don't know - to me, Frodo leaving the Shire at the end of the movies felt like he'd decided to go because his horrible experience of carrying the ring made him feel like an outsider in his own home, very PTSD. In the books, his decision felt more like, "well, the Shire got ruined too, so screw it, I'm going to live with the elves."

(I should clarify, although those books were probably my go-to-read through most of my adolescence, I haven't reread them in twenty years, so I could be misremembering.)

[snurri]

The way I read it his decision in the book has a lot more to do with the lingering pain of his wounds from the Witch-King and Shelob; it's less than two years after they return that he decides to leave. During that time he's so active in first freeing, then rebuilding the Shire (he serves as interim mayor while the imprisoned mayor recovers) that it's hard for me to see it as him feeling that it was ruined.