King Crusoe’s Reviews > The Lord of the Rings > Status Update

Finished Book Five. Excellent, constantly high-octane, and moving in many fashions, both for the personal and for the epic. 1 book left. Only 130 pages of the proper narrative. Will take the next couple of days to do that!

It’s kinda crazy how packed Book Five is. Several moving pieces that still make time for personal moments. Excellent stuff. Just as in the movies, the Rohan and Gondor material is impeccable on the page, and now they’re about to merge together again.

Book Four down. On to finish through this week 🔥

Two Towers definitely the biggest improvement from book to movie still. I think the general structure is better, and what it decides to hold off for the next film works better too imo

Oddly - surprisingly - I’m liking Book Four more than I did last time, just as I enjoyed Book Three slightly less than last time. Very odd, that. Perhaps it’s Andy Serkis’s Gollum that’s making that difference? Certainly could be lol

Took a bit longer than expected, but I am done now with Book Three. Book Four will follow the Ring again for a little while, tho it is a good bit shorter than I expected / remember in comparison by page count. Even so, I plan to go through that this weekend!

Halfway through Book Three now. Entmoot and a particularly impactful return is all for today; the most epic stuff of the volume to come tomorrow! Can’t wait to re-experience it all tomorrow 🔥

A bit later than intended, but Book Three is underway! While I may have my minor qualms with the structure of this portion of the narrative, I love the material too much to make too major a fuss about it at this point.

Finished Fellowship this morning!

I’m honestly rather surprised by how well the movie was able to condense *so much* so that reading this again right after watching it yielded so many new and unremembered things from 5 years ago. Fascinating!

And now Lothlorien is past. Only two chapters left in Book Two!

I definitely did not recall there being this much to this section in the book. Makes for a beautiful respite, however, after Moria and before the end of the first volume . . . .

The party is now through Moria. Much bigger sequence than I remembered it being! And yet also takes less pages than one might expect compared to some of what has come before and what is still to come. Magical storytelling in many ways though!