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Opinion
Tolkien wrote so much in his lifetime that I’m not sure any reviewer has any rights to criticize any of it. He had a style that was very much of his personage, but never did it shine in my opinion as brightly as with this first book. “The Hobbit” certainly created some big shoes to fill for future authors. However, I am reviewing this, and I am going to be fair, no matter how legendary this book is.
Full disclosure, I read the hobbit sometimes twice a year, or instead, I did do that before becoming the book reviewer you know and love. I think I’ll do it this once for now, and likely won’t happen again for some time. What makes this time passing through the novel so unique as opposed to the many times I’ve read it before? I’m looking for stuff this time, that’s what.
My first impressions of this novel are that it still reads very comfortably. From the first pages and the descriptions, the reader is treated to things that can make the imagination wander. Even if this isn’t the first time I’ve read it, I picked up on some things that struck me more this time than before. For example, Bilbo, our beloved MC was 50 years old before stepping foot out of his house for an adventure. How many of us think life is over at 30? Imagine doing something unusual at 50, and becoming whom you were meant to be so long after so many others have called a quits to age.
Here are my critiques, and it has to do with the Kindle version I picked up. I picked this up on Kindle Unlimited, and this first one is non-scoring, but it’s frustrating. Kindle Unlimited is like picking up a library book, and when you open it, you get all the highlights that others have made. This copy was dogeared with them. So as a public service message, please to all of you out there who use KU, delete your highlights when you are done reading it. That’s just being nice.
My second critique comes from the “Story Structure, Foundation and Presentation” part of my scoring. While I love the margins on this copy, the issue I have is the spacing. The actual line spacing is excellent, but there is no space between paragraphs. Yeah, okay some people argue with me about this piece, but it frustrates me. I read all the time, and by not having space between paragraphs, there is no break for the eyes. Consider it is breathing for eyes, a pause that gives them rest. Without said pause, there are pages of long walls of text, and it is painful after awhile. There weren’t any breaks in this copy and thus, I’m noting it.
Another critique comes from “Story Structure, Foundation, and Presentation,” and that is random italics. I’m not sure if this was Tolkien’s idea or if this is the copy, but like the no breaks, it causes the eye to ache after a while. It’s especially frustrating when there are random bits in pieces of standard stylized text.
Now, let’s go into what I truly loved about “The Hobbit.” I love the pacing and tension in the story. From the comedic stress where the dwarfs show up at random to Bilbo’s house or the palpable tension as the story goes with Bilbo’s character transformation, it’s delightful. The pacing in the forest with the spiders was terrific and I did enjoy everything with that last army battle.
On the Kindle side, I want to give praise to how well the chapter links work, and all of the bookmarking features. Sometimes when you bookmark or lose your place in a book, it is a pain in the Took to find it. Well, this copy is lovely. I did get lost at one point thanks to life, and I was able to see my spot rather quickly instead of extensive searching.
Next, let’s talk about amazing characters, and firstly I love Smaug. The dragon king of awesome is one of the great figures in literature. Moreover, second to that is Gollum, who had such a small part in the story, but an important one.
The last thing that I want to note that what I truly enjoyed about this story is the tone. I love the tone of this story. It’s told in a narrative that I feel would almost feel like a children’s story, but at the same time, it’s very much adult level content. Wars, dragons, even the spiders, those things would scare small children. However, that first chapter, it’s told so warmly and so comfortably any three years old could understand. I enjoy this. This is a book I could put on my Audible anytime and let my five and nine years old listen to them anytime. Indeed, Tolkien can span ages. This is a beautiful thing. I find his work exciting and lovely even to this day.
Score
So, based on the math here, and with my scoring, I’m going to score “The Hobbit” with a 96/100 which is a five-star review on Goodreads and Amazon.
