/lit/ - Literature

Finished this and it was good, but I have a big issue.

Tolkien is a magnificent world-builder, probably the best ever, but frankly he's not a great writer. The story is great, but not told that well.

He has a lot of trouble with description. I have a lot of trouble visualizing much of the stuff he's describing. Also, he never describes what an Orc looks like so if I hadn't seen the films I would be really confused. Lastly, he is downright bad at writing fight and battle scenes. The Moria fight was so poorly written and aimless, but the better example of this shortcoming is in the Battle of Five Armies in the Hobbit: it's like 2 or 3 pages long, a bunch of stuff happens without purpose, and then Bilbo is unconscious, and oh by the way Thorin is dead. And this battle is supposed to be a massive conflict.

Before I started the Legendarium I was reading ASOIAF and the lurid detail that Martin injects into his world is startling. While Westeros isn't as interesting as Middle-Earth, it's much more realized. Also, don't even get me started on action sequences. Martin is fantastic in this regard.

So yeah, I was just thinking about this and thought I'd share.

Started reading the triology again and I've only just realised its taken half of the Fellowship of the Ring for them to even get to the prancing pony

Also, LOTR thread