| ACQUIRED | Purchased through Audible |
| FORMAT | Audible unabridged audiobook |
| LENGTH | 22h 38min |
| FIRST PUBLISHED | 1954 |
| GENRE | Epic fantasy, action-adventure |
A long long time ago I can still remember… how my boyfriend at the time convinced me to watch The Lord of the Rings and I, being a naive teenager, complied. I found it so boring that I kept falling asleep. The next time I was at his house we would start us watching from the part I fell asleep at. And so on so forth until I finished the film… and found out that it was only the first one of three. Needless to say, that relationship didn’t last very long after that. Lesson learnt: there is no fixing basic incompatibility.
Flashback even further back – a boy I sort of liked gifted me a CD. It was the soundtrack of the Fellowship of the Ring. He was obsessed with LOTR and this was the first sign of this obsession. This relationship, if I could even call it that, also didn’t last. I must confess that I am listening to it now via Apple Music and it’s… not bad?
The point is: I came to The Lord of the Rings with some preconceived notions and a healthy measure of bias against it, yet I recognise it as a seminal classic with far reaching cultural influence. I really wanted to read it. Or rather, I liked the idea of having read it. When I mentioned this to my friends I was told it wouldn’t be something I’d be into. One friend suggested that I read The Hobbit instead and see how I feel about it before tackling The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, no thanks. I don’t need no training wheels. Except I sort of do, because I bought the audiobook version of The Fellowship of the Ring. And then it sat for a long time in my Audible library until I finally decided to give it a whirl. Let me tell you, I should have done it so long ago!
The story
What can I say about this book that hasn’t been said already? As a brief synopsis: The Fellowship of the Ring is book one of the trilogy that constitutes The Lord of the Rings. In the novel, we join Frodo Baggins on his quest to destroy the ruling ring of power and prevent Sauron’s evil omnipotent rule.
Tolkien masterfully weaves seemingly hundreds of influences into one complete story told across three tomes, along with various associated books. The result is an incredibly rich fictional world so packed with detail that scholars have based entire careers on it. If world-building is your thing, J R R Tolkien is your man.
A lot of people criticise Tolkien’s style as long-winded. The main criticism I see is that he spends a long time describing settings and objects regardless of whether they are actually relevant to the plot. I would typically join in on that criticism, as I tend to prefer more straightforward and less ornate narration, but not in this case. In my opinion the descriptions and ‘historical’ background add richness and authenticity to the world of the novel. A character’s view from a resting spot gives the reader a sense of place and dimension, not merely the location for the next plot point. Although I do wonder if my opinion would be any different had I chosen to read the book instead of listening to it.
I was surprised by the length of this book and not in the way I was expecting. The audiobook version is only 22.5h long, which isn’t short by any means but it also isn’t anywhere nearly as long as I was expecting it to be. I suppose that’s to be expected when it’s only book one of three. I think the longest audiobook I have in my library is Stephen King’s The Stand, which totals 48 hours of audio.
Listen to this one for its outstanding narration
Andy Serkis is the best narrator I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. He gives voice to every character in this audiobook edition of The Fellowship of the Ring, and he does it so well that you know at all times which character is speaking – without ever sounding silly or farcical. Hobbits, elves, dwarves… character sounds natural within their kind. Serkis even crafts different accents and dialects to suit the character. It’s an absolute marvel. Each time I pressed play, straight away I would forget that all these different voices came from the same man. Oh, and did I mention that he sings each and every song in the book?
I intend to listen to more audiobooks narrated by him in future. If you’ve ever wanted to experience Tolkien’s storytelling but found it too intimidating, I highly recommend trying this Audible version.
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