The Lord of the Rings: J.R.R. Tolkien

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Lee made cover paintings for the 1983 Penguin edition of Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast trilogy. [2] [3] He also did the artwork for Alive!, a 2007 CD by the Dutch band Omnia, released during the Castlefest festival. [3]

There is some very sweet melancholy seeped through Tolkien’s world or at least I felt it that way. The verdure and meadows in the Shire, to fight for the world, but also for your tiny homeland, though it will never be the same, to do all you are capable of for what you know is good and right even if you won’t be there to enjoy it yourself… When my parents wanted to wash their hands of me and thereafter treat me with a distanced forbearance - as I sweated it out in a nearby hospital and resisted my coming of age - it seemed the whole world had ganged up on me, though of course it hadn't. To create a fantasy world is one thing, but to breathe life into ages of that world, to keep all the pieces together with such magnificent detail and rigour, to create character after believable character and make us care about most of them, even poor Smeagol/Gollum, that is a literary labour of Hercules. And by pulling it off, Tolkien created the single most important manifestation of Fantasy that has ever and will ever be written. The Lord of the Rings has rightly been named a classic. It is part of the canon, and it deserves its place. It is entertaining, it is weighty, and it is loved by nearly all. This second volume certainly saw more action. However, much like in the first book, many of those scenes were handled slightly better in the movie (I shall re-watch the second one tomorrow or the day after).

On Creating the Feeling of a Gateway into Another World

It has become dogma among fanboys and fangirls that the bastions of The Lord of the Rings are unassailable. Criticize Tolkien's work -- academically or otherwise -- and you put yourself in almost as much danger as a chatty atheist trying to engage in a theological discussion in a coliseum full of Jehovah's Witnesses (how many of those folks will make it into the afterlife? Isn't there a limit?). Interesting how the prologue is an info dump on hobbits and smoking, far from a traditional setup of a large adventure So here we are in March and the final book of the trilogy, and what an epic finale it is. Again different to the film, but yet again immeasurably superior. In the end, we get to say goodbye to all these lovely creatures we've journeyed together with, that we've laughed and cried with, whom we care about and kept our fingers crossed for. For, sadly, the age of magic is over and the age of man is upon us. And no, I don't like it one bit.

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets. Fascism crushed by united, different fractions that understand that they´re just powerful together as one population of Middle earth, no matter how small and hairy or angular eared they may be. A Diversity of Dragon by Anne McCaffrey with Richard Woods ( Atheneum Books, 1997) ISBN 978-0-689-31868-9Now the reader can enjoy so many different settings, cultures, traditions, and even a bit of political power balance, that it feels kind of relaxing to switch to Sam and Frodo from time to time for some good, old fight for survival without complicated following the big picture actions.