Book Review: The Hobbit

A family re-read of the classic quest fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien.

This isn’t a first for me. I have fond memories of my dad reading The Hobbit to me as a bedtime story when I was a child, and it’s remarkable how much the book stuck with me over the years. Now I’m older and I have children of my own, it has given me a wonderful opportunity to read the book to them as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t own a copy of the book! But, as chance would have it, in the Autumn I managed to pick up an old paperback from a used bookshop when we visited a National Trust property—I paid the princely sum of one pound—and since then, I’ve been reading a few pages a night to the kids and we’ve been thoroughly enjoying the experience. I read the final chapter of the book to them a few days ago, and now it’s time to review it on the blog!

Blurb

Bilbo Baggins enjoys a quiet and contented life, with no desire to travel far from the comforts of home; then one day the wizard Gandalf and a band of dwarves arrive unexpectedly and enlist his services – as a burglar – on a dangerous expedition to raid the treasure-hoard of Smaug the dragon. Bilbo’s life is never to be the same again.

Review

Reading the words of The Hobbit myself for the first time was a great experience, and especially reading them aloud. My kids thoroughly enjoyed the story, though I think many of the environmental descriptions—which are vivid, but lengthy, as is typical of Tolkien—were lost on them, as well as the politics of the last few chapters.

As much as the story overall had stuck with me over the years, there were a few things I had forgotten about the plot. This was probably for the best, because towards the latter parts of the book, I noticed the plot seemed to lose its way a bit in the tying up of loose ends. The death of Smaug was more anticlimactic than I remember, coming at the hands of a brand new character with whom we had no emotional connection. The following chapters felt like they were trying to inject that connection after-the-fact, and the battle of the five armies was more than a little contrived. The ultimate fate of Thorin and company made sense as a foil for their characters (particularly Thorin himself), but brought a low-note to what should have been the end of a grand adventure. It wasn’t bad by any means, but it went in a different direction and felt odd compared to the rest of the book.

The characters for the most part are fantastic: Bilbo, Gandalf, Thorin, Balin, Beorn, Bombur, Elrond, The Elvenking, The Trolls, Smaug, Gollum, and even Bard himself despite being introduced extremely late. The other dwarves of the company are a little bit interchangeable, and their initial presence was clearly to give reading out the roster comedic value. But when you introduce all these characters, you have to do something with them, and they didn’t necessarily add much. Consequently you don’t become quite so attached to them.

Pacing was inconsistent, especially towards the end, which despite having very short chapters, felt like it dragged along. The first two-thirds of the book up to the point where Bilbo meets Smaug is excellent, and well-deserving of its beloved status. After that, like I said above, it starts to stumble a bit.

I know I’m being pretty harsh and it sounds like I didn’t enjoy the book at all, but that’s far from the case. I don’t give much weight to many of these negatives, but they’re interesting observations to note and things I didn’t notice at all when the story was read to me as a child. They’re also probably things which my own children didn’t notice either, seeing as how the very moment I finished reading the final words of the last chapter, my daughter piped up, “You’re going to start it again tomorrow night, right?”

Overall The Hobbit remains a brilliant read, great fun with lots of adventure and deep lore. I loved it; my children loved it, and it’s making me really want to try reading The Lord of the Rings again (fourth attempt’s a charm, right?)—though, I won’t be reading that to my children; we can watch the movies together instead.