It’s Amazing! Granted I’m only like 110 pages into Fellowship but Tolkien is an amazing story teller. I read the Hobbit a while back and since I work from home (the one benefit of my company having Covid hysteria) I get to read a lot more.
I remember Peter Jackson saying he wanted to tell Tolkien’s story. It’s too bad modern day adaptations don’t have that respect for source material. Wheel of Time comes to mind. That showrunner is more concerned with lgbt representation than actually adapting the story. And I have no hope for the new show based on the Simarillion (which I’ll read after I finish the trilogy).
You're in for a fun journey!
I remember reading it as a kid but lost interest about half way through The Two Towers (fwiw, I was in elementary school at the time) then later on in middle and highschool got on the "Tolkien is overrated" bandwagon. Finally read through the series back in 2017 and not only did I enjoy it but I was old enough to really appreciate it and understand why Tolkein has the amount of esteem and regard he has.
A far better author than the legions of fantasy hacks (incl George R. R. Martin) we've seen since. And honestly, I think I'd go as far as to say classifying his work as "fantasy" is an insult to his writing.
Still have to read the Silmarillion though lol
I remember reading that GRRM wrote Ice and Fire to subvert Tolkein's tropes. At least Tolkein finished his books.
Pretty disgusting if true
Granted, I enjoyed reading Martin's series, but that is an evil reason to want to write a story. To tear down and destroy something that shows humanity at its best.. I just can't imagine being in a mental state to where I wanted to crush something like that. Well..no, I can, it comes from a place of resentment and envy, and that's the sort of frame leftists like Martin are operating from. Inb4 all leftists
To be fair there's nothing wrong with deconstructing popular and established works, genres, and authors, nor does it mean that you dislike them. Alan Moore was and always has been a fan of Silver Age superhero comics, but that didn't stop him from looking at them under a more serious and analytical light with Watchmen (and he hated the age of dark and gritty comics that it ushered in).
I think the bigger problem with Martin is that instead of just focusing on writing the best possible story he can imagine with A Song of Ice and Fire, he has instead made it his God-given mission to deconstruct every fantasy trope and convention that Tolkien made popular. Which has not only slowed the story down to a crawl because he's so damn focused on the unimportant minutia, but ultimately limited the tools he has at his disposal because that's ultimately what deconstruction does. When you deconstruct tropes, you can no longer play them straight or else you ruin the reason behind the deconstruction of them in the first place.
Good point and I think a lot of modern writers are obsessed with it or subverting expectations. Nothing wrong with that but there is a reason that the heroes journey exists. I remember critics gushing over the last Jedi.
Watchmen was amazing but like you said when you do something different like that you get lots of copycats
Tolkien was subverting Tolkien tropes before it was cool. The Silmarillion and the assorted Unfinished Tales are pretty dark, dismal, and depressing, and filled with morally flawed antiheroes that do some pretty despicable stuff. If anything, it was The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that were the subversions, where the evil was finally defeated and the good did not fall to corruption.
Tolkien did it well I’m sure. Nothing wrong with occasional subversion but it seems that is what everyone does now. There is a reason the heroes journey has stood the test of time
Not finishing is the ultimate subversion.
i call it fantasy fiction.