The Two Towers

As I approached the end of the second installment in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings I began to remember why it's been so long since I read this book. Why I never got around to the Appendices or The Silmarillion. This book gets bleak and then it gets a bit boring. It's like the fourth season of Battlestar Galactica. There's only so much depression I can take before I stop connecting with the characters and lose interest.

The Two Towers is split in half. The first half focuses on the members of the fellowship who aren't continuing on to Mordor. Merry and Pippin get kidnapped by orcs and find themselves in the Entwood just in time to incite the Ents to destroying Isengard and defeating Saruman. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli get sidetracked in their attempts to rescue Merry and Pippin and drawn into a battle to protect the horse lords of Rohan. Despite being so disconnected from the main plot, I really liked this half of the book. The action jumps between the characters and things stay lively. There are some cool creatures and some exciting battles and everyone is running around doing things. There's also enough happiness to break up some of the tension.

It's the second half of the book that loses me. Frodo and Sam meet up with Gollum who agrees to help them find a way into Mordor. And then they walk. And they walk some more. The landscape gets more barren. Gollum gets sneakier. The ring gets heavier. Sam starts to lose hope. And this lasts for over a hundred pages. I mean, I get it. This is a hard, dangerous journey. Frodo and Sam have to fight through a lot. But it goes on for so long that I start to disengage from the characters.

They finally meet up with Shelob, a giant spider, at the end in a pretty exciting chapter. But it's the only real excitement that exists in this half of the book. And after she's defeated the book drops right back into bleakness and despair. And I just don't care anymore.

I'm still debating whether or not I want to read The Silmarillion. I have been enjoying the snippets of Middle Earth history I've been getting. Part of what I liked the most about Shelob was learning that she was the beast as old as the land and not entirely of it. She's slightly more supernatural then natural. I'd be interested in read some more mythology-type stuff like that. But Tolkien can get wearisome. I suppose I should wait and see what I think of Return of the King before I make up my mind.

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