Rating: 3 out of 5
I have been a fan of the Lord of the Rings ever since… well, a very long time ago. I think the world of Tolkien’s skill in crafting a world, languages, and a story. My familiarity with CS Lewis is less, but I’ve read the Narnia books as a child. I was therefore very interested to pick up this title that would investigate how this came about.
Overall, I found many of the points that the author made rather interesting, but I was very quickly bored stiff by his style. As an estimate, at least a fifth of the book is made up of citations, both in line and as paragraphs. It would be reasonable were these mostly citations of Lewis and Tolkien brought in to describe the points being made, but it’s stuff about the UK, Hitler, the war, etc. Overall, too much of this book is a retelling of the Second World War.
I believe I was informed of this title by an episode in the Rest Is History podcast, but there was actually more plain content there about Tolkien’s war time experience: linking his works as air warden with the Nazgul and the hobbits hiding from them. I didn’t really see many insights like this which would link the actual lived experience that the two authors had to the situations they wrote into their stories. Oh, there definitely were some, but it wasn’t a painstaking analysis (it’s a separate question of whether it should have been).
I do think this is a very interesting story that Mr Loconte wants to tell. I was intrigued by Lewis’ conversion to Catholicism and his subsequent writings. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve ever put down as many titles into my to-read list as during this book, those mostly being works by Lewis. For that, I’m grateful. For the rest, this could have been much shorter and more on the point.
