Bored of the Rings

I'm currently reading LOTR -The Two Towers. It took me 8 years to read Fellowship. 8 YEARS! 8 bloody buggering years! Why am I doing this to myself? Because I have to. How can I call myself a fan of all things fantasy when I haven't read Lord of the Rings? So now I have to slog through 7 billion pages of a bunch of people with Paper Thin Personality Disorder walking in a sodding wood and getting into the occasional fistycuffs!

Yes. I know. It's 'seminal'. It defines a genre, a genre for which I have great love. I just hate the way its written. The characters all sound the same, segregated into three groups; Gollum, hobbit and other. The battle of Helms Deep is crammed into about 10 pages, completely devoid of tension or any sense of peril only to be followed by 20 pages of walking, oh, sorry, riding as they bugger off to Isengard! Seriously? The language is dated, the bits that are in English I mean. The characters show no emotion; you're told what they are feeling but there is little in the way they talk or act to reflect this.

And the ring. What does it actually do? What is it about the ring that makes it so bloody powerful and makes everyone want it? It makes you invisible. Kinda cool, you can use it to spy on the ladies but worth destroying the world for?

Any time I dare voice my opinions in public I'm immediately shot down. I said I know it is THE most influential fantasy book ever but it needs an editing hatchet taken to it. People always tell me 'oh you just need to skip over the Council of Elrond... and the bits with Sam and Frodo... and anything that appears in italics, then it's a fantastic novel'. Well, here's some news for you. If you have to skip out nearly half the book it's not a fantastic novel. A fantastic story maybe, I'm not saying the plot isn't brilliant. You just shouldn't have to wade through 1000 odd pages of pointless shite to get to it. A novel shouldn't require Appendices.

So here. I'm saying it. Tolkien is not the God of Fantasy. Godfather, maybe, but his books are not sacred texts to be put on a pedestal and admired for all time, any speaking against them to be struck down for such blasphemy.

Okay, so maybe I'm being overly harsh, but I'm sick of being treated like a leper for feeling like this. As much as I slagged off the book for giving us every small detail on the workings of Middle Earth it's quite cool having all the back story but I have to agree with something J K Rowling once said. An author should know everything about their characters and their world but the reader doesn't have to. If you want to go into minute detail on the number of days in a Shire month do it in text book.

I will get through the series. I'm not wasting that 8 years but next time I think I'll just stick to watching the films.