The Hobbit Review

     Bilbo Baggins is a hobbit, a type of creature that prefers peace, safety, and sameness in their little homes. In fact, adventures are shunned most of the time among them. Suddenly, Bilbo receives some unexpected guests- Gandalf the wizard and Thorin and his 12 dwarfs. They persuade Bilbo to become their Burglar for their journey to recover the treasure stolen from them when the dragon Smaug took over their home in the mountains. This story tells of their adventures and the finding of the magical ring that the books following this prequel (The Lord of the Rings) revolve around. 

    Keep in mind that everyone has their own opinion. This review is only my opinion, and you may have your own, different one. I would take into consideration what I say, but do not make a decision about the book solely based off of this review. Let's begin:

    I had never heard of this book or the books this is the prequel for until my dad showed me the movies. He had never read the books, but he loved the film adaptation and thought I would too, so he shared them with me. He was right, and I watched them on repeat. I decided it was finally time that I read the books they are based on. You can imagine my excitement when I began reading something that I was already pretty in love with and, for the most part, I was not disappointed.

    I really loved the world and how it was built. Tolkien was a genius when it came to creativity and world building. It was really magical and I now want to live there (just, maybe a bit closer to Bilbo in his home in the hill). I got really immersed in the world.

    I enjoyed all of the characters. However, my favorite had to be Gollum. He was my favorite for the movies and he is, if anything, more awesome in the books so far. I so wish that he was in this book for longer than just one chapter because that became my favorite chapter in the whole book. The only downfall I had with the characters relates to the dwarves. I could not keep track of them. It was hard to visualize them because of this and I kept having to really think back to understand that the character currently speaking was the one that said "insert quote here" before. I really wished that I had a better grasp on which dwarf was which.

    The plot has a very cool premise. There were many entertaining things that the characters experienced on their journey that had me intrigued. I was always invested in the story and wanting to know what happened next. Even still, there was one disappointment that I couldn't help but feel: I found it to be a bit anticlimactic. I feel like the issues that were built up to be some major problem that would be difficult to solve or would become an epic action scene were dealt with too easily. All of the smaller issues that were not built up as much became almost bigger issues than the supposed main one. This is not to say that I did not love the smaller things because I did. I simply wanted to get more from the apparently not-so-big-and-bad Smaug.

    Overall, I did still really enjoy this read. It gets a million bonus points for the creativity and world building, but I could not give it 5 stars due to the lack of a true climax and the confusion with the dwarves. I would still highly recommend this book to to others, though. If you love the movies, definitely give the book a go and, if you don't, still give the book a go because there are differences.

Rating: 4/5 stars

Author: J. R. R. Tolkien

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin

# of Pages: 272

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Adventure, Classic

Series: The Lord of the Rings (Prequel)