Review: The Hobbit

General Information
Title: The Hobbit
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien
There are over 1000 editions, here's the info for two paperback editions.
Pages: 366 / 389
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin / Harper Collins
ISBN: 9780618260300 / 9780261103344
My rating: ★★★½☆☆

 

I have never in my life seen the Hobbit films, nor have I read or seen The Lord of the Rings. I went into this book completely unprepared (which was a good thing). Also, I don't read classics. Except for school, I never have and maybe never will (never say never, but to each their own). But as a fantasy fan, I felt like reading at least one Tolkien book was a must, and here I am.

The story of The Hobbit is rather well known, so here's the very short version: A hobbit lives his peaceful life when one day a wizard arrives on his doorstep, telling him he will soon go on a big adventure with twelve dwarves to get back a treasure that has been stolen ages ago and is now heavily guarded by an evil dragon.

I enjoyed the story a lot, there are many interesting things going on and the hobbit Bilbo meets many different fantasy creatures (he actually is very interesting himself, I mean I'd never heard of a hobbit before). It's the perfect example of the "unlikely hero goes on a journey that ends in a big battle" trope. 

Yet, the writing style left me incredibly bored at times. This book put me into a major reading slump, it took me about half a year to finish it. Now we mustn't forget this book was originally written in 1937 and the writing style back then was quite different, but reading this today, being used to fast paced modern fantasy novels, was hard. Many of it was telling, not showing, and many of the adventurous things were being told in retrospect. The author acts as the narrator of the story, and he tells the reader about the adventures of the hobbit and the dwarves. That might work when you're sitting around a campfire at a renaissance fair (trust me, it's a magical atmosphere), but as a book, reading it in bright daylight, it doesn't always work so well. There's also a ridiculous amount of songs that are very imaginative but add nothing to the story.

I realize all this sounds incredibly harsh, but it wasn't all bad. Like I said, the plot itself was nice, entertaining and creative, it was just super slow going. As for the characters, I came to like Bilbo a lot because he's just so chill - he just wants to sit and eat all day which is something I can relate to (at least sometimes)! I liked Gandalf the wizard who was very wizard-like: often cryptic and mysterious, but also very wise and interesting. The dwarves on the other hand were really underdeveloped. There are 12 of them, and many of them seemed like one and the same character. Only one or two of them stood out.

In the end, I have to admit, considering when Tolkien wrote this book, it's a masterpiece. Fantasy is a genre that knows no boundaries, and he managed to come up with an interesting world, many magical creatures, some politics, magic and a complete story that isn't 600 pages like many fantasy books are today. Yet, The Hobbit may be considered a fantasy classic, but to me it was certainly lacking something, and therefore I can't rate it more than 3.5 stars. I'm sad to say I'm not gonna put myself through three more books like this (LotR), I'm gonna watch the movies instead.