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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sakzilla" data-source="post: 1307762" data-attributes="member: 6105">To set the tone, a little background.  I read the trilogy for the first time over the last two and a half years.  I am probably the only 30+ gamer in the world that had not read it yet, but there it is.  I had tried starting MANY times, and I could never get past Tom and the Barrow Downs.  But I gutted it out and got through them.I think he is hit or miss on character development.  Strider, for example, is introduced in relatively generic terms - the "strange looking weather beaten man" and all.  Throughout the FOTR, I had no sense of who this character really was.  Then I saw the movie, and I was 'tainted' with that imagery for the characters the rest of the way.But then the whole Moria section was done well.  I enjoyed reading (and re-reading) that section more than the same section on the movie, and I thought it was the best part of the first movie.MY MAJOR GRIPE: The use of multiple place names for the same location. Lothlorien is also called Laurelindorian (and mispelled on the same page as Larenlindorian - try to keep that straight the first time without the Tolkien atlas!!!).  As Sam and Frodo are heading into Moria, Cirith Ungol and Minas Morgul are used interchangebly by a few characters (and Faramir jumped on this bandwagon in the TT extended DVD) - this is the equivalent of saying "we're going to DC" and your friend jumps in and says "You're going to Baltimore?" - they are not the same thing and upset the pace, diminish the significance of Minas Morgul, and give a reader a headache.But those are stylelistic comments.  The thread was more about errors or flaws in the writing, and I don't know of any (other than the location switcheroo).  Is excessive use of annoying poetry and song a writing flaw?  He does shift gears a bit with the length and richness of the various 'italicized' passages - the dreaded "skip this for your sanity" sections of each book.I also think the trilogy is a decent vehicle - Tolkien used this to good effect.  I prefer finding a set of works that are done, or near enough that if I start reading now, the end is in sight.  The Robert Jordan style of dragging out the story for books on end is tired.  Terry Goodkind's series started out with promise, but then started recycling itself and it lost it's magic.  Tolkien did not have to repeat his battle details for every situation.  Jordan would have had AT LEAST nine books about Eowyn individually killing off each of the Nazgul - so Tolkien kept his pacing pretty decent.Alot of what people don't like are pacing (action chapters mixed in with the Frodo stuff), the underlying anti-war, anti-modernization message coming out of two World Wars, and the "history book"-style writing. But the books and supporting material from Christopher Tolkien make for a fantastic gaming set of resources.I'm subscribing to this thread to see where it goes - I'd love a non-flame discussion on the books.  they just always seem to spin out of control (My fantasy writer can beat up your fantasy writer!).</blockquote>

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