The Return of the King
1950
- elves
- hobbits
- the lord of the rings
- hope
- fear
- magic
- fiction
- fantasy
- english fantasy fiction
- juvenile fiction
The story
THE RETURN OF THE KING, which brings to a close the great epic of war and adventure begun in The Fellowship of the Ring and continued in The Two Towers, is the third and final part of J. R. R. Tolkien's masterpiece, "The Lord of the Rings." In these three books, which form one continuous narrative, Tolkien created the saga of the Hobbits of Middle-earth and the great War of the Rings. Praised by such writers and poets as W. H. Auden, Richard Hughes and C. S. Lewis, "The Lord of the Rings" - that special world of beauty and terror and meaning - holds a secure place among the books that will live. --- **Also contained in:** - [The Lord of the Rings](https://openlibrary.org/works/OL27448W/The_Lord_of_the_Rings)
What it’s like
Long, slow chapters of open country under wide skies, with the light shifting from pale dawn over grey hills to the red-gold of a dying evening, and the dark of Mordor pressing in as a low, brooding stain on the horizon. Tolkien's prose is measured and layered, rich with archaic cadence, place-names and songs that give the world a weight of old memory, and its sensory world is strongly textured: wind over grasslands, stone towers, the hush of ruined halls, the smell of smoke and rain. The mood is elegiac and steadily hopeful, a long, deliberate calm punctuated by sudden dread and some sharp, brief battle scenes that are weighty rather than graphic, with war described in the aftermath as much as the clash itself. Its pace is unhurried, with long travelling stretches and quiet interludes, so it rewards slow reading on a winter evening, a long train journey, or a rainy weekend with a pot of tea. Some of its characters arc from weariness toward a hard-won, bittersweet peace, and the emotional register is sincere and tender without irony. Violence is present and serious but not gory, and the fear is more atmospheric than explicit. It suits readers who want a deep, immersive world, lyrical language and a melancholy-tinged sense of hope.
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