The armies of the Dark Lord are massing as his evil shadow spreads ever wider. Men, dwarves, elves and ents unite forces to do battle against the Dark. Meanwhile, Frodo and Sam struggle further into Mordor in their heroic quest to destroy the One Ring.
The middle novel in The Lord of the Rings—the greatest fantasy epic of all time—which began in The Fellowship of the Ring, and which reaches its magnificent climax in The Return of the King. Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read The Fellowship is scattered. Some brace hopelessly for war against the ancient evil of Sauron. Others must contend with the treachery of the wizard Saruman. Only Frodo and Sam are left to take the One Ring, ruler of the accursed Rings of Power, to be destroyed in Mordor, the dark realm where Sauron is supreme. Their guide is Gollum, deceitful and obsessive slave to the corruption of the Ring.
The Fellowship of the Ring is the first part of J.R.R. Tolkien's great work of imaginative fiction The Lord of the Rings. It is impossible to convey to the new reader all the book's qualities, and the range of its creation. By turns comic, homely, epic, monstrous and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scenes and character in an imaginary world which is totally convincing in its detail. In the words of the novelist Richard Hughes 'For width of imagination it almost beggars parallel, and it is nearly as remarkable for its vividness and narrative skills which carries the reader on enthralled for page after page'. Tolkien created in The Lord of the Rings a new mythology in an invented world which has proved timeless in its appeal.
Or There and Back Again
"The Hobbit" is the prelude to "The Lord of the Rings" series, and should be read before "The Fellowship of the Ring".