It has all the goodies: a great story, lovable characters, rich settings, detailed mythological backgrounds, awesome action cues—and, for the literary analysts, a treasure chest of ideas to be explored and debated....above all, The Lord of the Rings is a pinnacle of human imagination. Yet these are elements that can be—and have been—recreated in other novels, with less success. Why is The Lord of the Rings so special? Instead of praising the aspects of this novel that have been praised in other novels before, I will attempt to look at what sets Tolkien's unique story apart from everything else.

First off, the distinctiveness of LOTR (my acronym for the book's title from now on) has something to do with its vast scale and scope—not only does the novel boast an appreciable binding size, it's big in terms of substance. Lots and lots of events take place within these pages, all of them interesting, leading to and circulating one another in a grand and seamless fashion. Because the story is paced like one huge crescendo, never deterring from the final goal or surrendering to formulaic repetition, it never seems to falter under its own enormity. Therefore it has a clear advantage over ‘smaller' novels like The Hobbit, which, while excellent, does not achieve the same mountainous momentum as LOTR does. And yet a fundamental difference exists between this and such extravagant undertakings as The Sword of Truth, in that the latter is a series I feel will not end as long as Terry Goodkind realizes the commercial benefits involved. (I have the same suspicions about Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time, which is too disgustingly long for me to pick up and start reading any time soon...)

More importantly, though, I think LOTR's success rests in Tolkien's supreme dedication to pure and simple storytelling. Other authors love to preach, directly or indirectly, connecting their worlds in some way or other to the modern world. While I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, it is something that does set apart Tolkien's novel from other novels: Tolkien is concerned only with transporting us to a different place with a different background and telling us a story we haven't heard, nothing more. Thus the popularity and appeal of LOTR may be explained by the fact that it provides the best escape route for our minds because we don't have to worry about how it relates to the real world—since it doesn't! Although this guess might contradict some of my other reviews which commend the very use of such allegorical connections, I think it's still true to some degree—readers, particularly those of sci-fi and fantasy, once in a while want to read something where they're free from the constraints of real life stress. LOTR is the best provider of that. Once absorbed into the novel, the characters become more engaging, the environment more real, and the story more personal. All this, combined with Tolkien's mastery of prose, is what makes LOTR such a great story.

(Interesting, though, how so many essays have been written on the novel trying to dissect the thing, including this review....it just goes to show that most stories are more powerful and thought-provoking the less they try to preach.)

I have deliberately refrained from summarizing the plot, just as I have decided to put all three parts of the novel under one review. But the story is also one of the contributing factors to the power of LOTR—a story involving a reluctant hero who must journey on a quest to face unimaginable evil. The hero is Frodo, a simple character with the fate of the world thrust upon his shoulders. The mythic quest idea is the only ‘formula' that Tolkien might have used, and it's this same ‘formula' which catapulted the Star Wars films into popular fame.

Many scenes are just downright exciting—Tolkien has a special knack for making my pulse pound like a hammer during the chase sequences, and I start perspiring whenever he plunges his characters into strange, dark places. (This happens a few times...you know there's always something around the corner when they're wandering around unable to see anything, but it's still frightening.) Other scenes are heartbreakingly beautiful, like the gracefully underplayed love relationships and the breathtaking scenery. And then there are my favourite scenes—the epic ones. Particular mention goes to the novel's climax, a twelve-chapter tour-de-force that contrasts a clash of massive armies with Frodo's desperate, heroic venture into the heart of evil.

Without any more rambling, I will conclude by giving this book a recommendation so high that I myself am going to read it again. Eventually.

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