Review - The fellowship of the ring by J.R.R. Tolkien

Genre: fantasy, classics, adventure
Pages: 495
Rating: 5/5 stars
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Summary

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell into the hands of Bilbo Baggins, as told in The Hobbit.
In a sleepy village in the Shire, young Frodo Baggins finds himself faced with an immense task, as his elderly cousin Bilbo entrusts the Ring to his care. Frodo must leave his home and make a perilous journey across Middle-earth to the Cracks of Doom, there to destroy the Ring and foil the Dark Lord in his evil purpose.

My thoughts
I have read this book two times before when I was a lot younger. In my memory the story was very slow paced and at the time it took me very long to read. It might just not have been the right time to read it, because now that I read it again I went through it really fast. I love the world that Tolkien has created. The Hobbit was a nice introduction to this world, but in The lord of the Rings the world seems so much more fleshed out. In the book there are a lot of references to things that happened in the history of Middle Earth which made me feel like it was really a world that once existed.
The main character Frodo is quite interesting and not a typical hero. He is definitely a brave person, but he is also spoiled and a little naive and cannot always manage on his own. He does have a bit of a black & white view of the world, but it didn't bother me, because the other characters in the book didn't all share that view. All the characters in this book were very different and it was easy to distinguish between who was saying what.
One of the guys that follows Frodo on his quest, Sam, transforms quite wonderfully throughout the book. Or maybe it has more to do with the way he is described and you slowly find that there is more to him than meets the eye. In the beginning he just seems like a very loyal person who wants to follow Frodo everywhere and who is mostly excited to see the elves, as though he isn't really aware of the real danger the hobbits are in. Throughout the book he proves himself to be the most sceptic of all the characters, and very often this sceptism proves to be just.
The book starts out quit light, but slowly builds up and gets darker as Frodo and his companions come to realise more and more what it is they are dealing with. Pippin is one of Frodo's friends who seems very naive at times, but the manages to lighten up the story in times when it gets dark. Tom Bombadil is one of my favorite characters. He is a little strange, but that is exactly what I liked about him. It would have liked to see him in the movie of the book as well, but sadly he is not.
Tolkien's  writing style might not be the most accesible, but I really enjoyed this book and I can't really think of anything I did not like about it. I can't wait to read some of Tolkien's other stories!