Book review: The Hobbit…
The Hobbit. J. R. R. Tolkien, author (1957). “What?” you say. “I come here to read reviews about new books, not old ones. I can just see the damn movie!” A fair complaint, I suppose, but any reader of this blog who might say such a thing doesn’t write the articles for this blog! And while I greatly enjoyed the three Lord of the Rings movies, I read the corresponding books as a kid. (Much better reads than that Harry Potter crap, of course.) But I didn’t read The Hobbit, which is like Asimov’s Prelude to Foundation relative to his Foundation trilogy, i.e., this book is the prelude to the Rings trilogy. (By the way, that trilogy was just one epic novel that Tolkien divided into three for publication.) So, if I ever see The Hobbit movie (a big “if”), I’m better prepared to critique what Hollywood does with it.
As many of you know, this is the story of not Frodo but Bilbo Baggins, the little hobbit whom Gandalf the wizard forces upon the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield and his dwarf buddies to serve as their aide and moral rock on their quest to reclaim their riches guarded by the evil and murderous dragon Smaug. The reader will meet many more creatures from Middle-earth in addition to the dwarves and hobbits: goblins (where Bilbo steals the infamous ring from Gollum); elves (not always good guys and quite self-centered and smug at times); talking birds and wolves; and ordinary humans.
I couldn’t help making a comparison between Tolkien’s book and H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines. Of course, there are many stories about searches for lost treasure, old and new, and The Hobbit is both a weird and entertaining one. It has all the trappings of an adventure story, though—or a modern thriller!—but it’s fantasy, of course, one of the pioneering originals, better known than most, and better in quality than most everything else I’ve read.
Tolkien’s work, in fact, can provide lessons for any aspiring author. (See next week’s article for an unusual one.) None of his main characters are simple ones. Each one is as complicated as any real person might be. The settings are strange but well-described. The plot moves inexorably forward (although possibly a bit rushed toward the end?), and it’s mostly in the POV of the hobbit, alternating between action and introspective reflection for him and among its characters. This is classic storytelling that should be studied in any MFA writing program worth its salt.
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Pasodobles in a Quantum Stringscape. I don’t write a lot of fluff (and could never compete with Tolkien writing fantasy, or many other authors either, for that matter), so I don’t have any fantasy novels. But this collection of short fiction contains some stories that could be called fantasy—ghosts in a Massachusetts town, a zombie chasing a time traveler, a dog take over by an ET, and so forth—so you might want to have some reading fun with it. In contrast to other books, it’s only available on Amazon (it’s the other way around with my recently published books!). Note: The other volumes in this series of short fiction collections are even less expensive—they’re free. (See the “Free Stuff & Contests” web page for a list of all my free downloadable PDFs.)
Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!
