Incomplete Tales

Hi everyone, I'm a 23 year old fangirl from le Canada. I'm just transferring from GR and I blog reviews on incompletetales.tumblr.com. I enjoy vast genres and am indeed a Hufflepuff, so don't be afraid to say hello :)

SPOILER ALERT!
The Hobbit - J.R.R. Tolkien

 Review

 

I went into The Hobbit with really high expectations. It’s pretty hard not to with all the hype around it. But fear not, it certainly meets the highest of expectation, surpasses them even! The first bit was written just beautifully. The way Mr. Tolkien wrote felt like story telling at its best and it was just so well executed. I had no issues with this book except for one major little not so little problem.

 

SPOILER SPOILER LOOK AWAY SPOILER SPOILER BEGINS

Smaug’s death.

 

The dragon himself was amazingly cool (well as cool as a hot dragon can be, am I right?) but his death was just so sudden and quick and UGH. How can he just die a lame death at the hands of some random stranger who held a mediocre weapon at best. I mean, sure the guy might be cool and it’s how you wield the weapon not the weapon itself but come on, this is a dragon. The mightiest of all dragons. Who couldn’t be defeated for ages and along comes this man who just shoots him down?! Really, I mean do you understand what I’m saying here? If it was so easy to kill Smaug, how did he reign for so long in Middle Earth!

 

It just doesn’t make sense and the fact that everyone was leading up to Smaug who happened to be taken out so easily was a bit of a let down. After that segment, the next few chapters became a little disappointing because my heart wasn’t really in it even though I can tell that it was a very significant battle.

 

Apart from that little rant, Thorin and Fili and Kili’s deaths were pretty abrupt as well. I think Tolkien liked to focus more on the journey than the characters, which lead to all these deaths feeling insignificant because he didn’t spend too much time pondering and writing about them.

 

If there’s anything I would change in the book to movie adaption with the 2nd part coming out, I strongly request Mr. Jackson to make Smaug’s death to be as epic as he was when alive. I mean, I don’t think anyone would object to that.

 

Besides those little points, this really was an extraordinary read. I’ve never felt more invested and immersed in this world of high fantasy epicness of a novel. I’m really looking forward to delving deeper in Tolkiens’ works  and read on Lord of the Rings (which won’t be till probably next year though). Regarding the songs, I didn’t enjoy them as much because there were quite a lot of them but since it is partly meant to be a children’s’ books, it’s not a big problem for me. I did enjoy the riddles because they were positively entertaining!

 

Overall, this book belongs in Hufflepuff because of it’s focus on loyalty and honesty, including a lot of hard word. I mean the dwarves, even Bilbo, are really hard workers. I’m not saying each character from the book belong in Hufflepuff, just describing how the book itself would fit into Hogwarts.

 

 

So without a doubt, it deserves it’s status as top notch classic.  I do think that as a kid, I wouldn’t have enjoyed it as much as I did now. So for that reason, I think it’s great for older teens and up or kids who can be read to by their parents/guardians. 5/5!