I’ve read The Lord of the Rings at least thrice, cover to cover, and loved almost every part of it, which I’m saying upfront because any actual Tolkien scholar will smell the casual fan on me within a paragraph anyway. I don’t know Elvish. I couldn’t tell you the difference between a Silmaril and a palantír without looking it up first. But what I do have is a strong opinion on which of these three books earns the time it asks for, and which one has you glancing at how many pages are left.
Ranking them isn’t really about which one is best or worst, since all three are the best in their own ways. I’d rank them on the basis of how much a book kept me turning pages without a small voice in my head asking when we’d get back to putting it down. So here they are, ranked by their hold on the reader.
3
‘The Two Towers’ (1954)
Image via George Allen & Unwin
This is the book where Tolkien splits the story in half and tells one side all the way through before going back to tell the other, which works fine at first but it somehow means that you have to spend a huge stretch of pages away from Frodo, the character who carries the actual mission. I like Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli just fine, and the ride to Helm’s Deep is genuinely great, but there’s a long middle stretch with Treebeard and the Ents that had me checking how many pages were left before anything happened again. That bit was unreasonably long and boring.
Then the book swings back to Frodo, Sam, and Gollum picking their way toward Mordor, and right as that storyline finally gets tense, Shelob shows up, stings Frodo, and the book ends with him captured by orcs and presumed dead by his own best friend. That’s a genuinely brutal way to end a book, and it almost saves the whole thing for me. Almost. The pacing in the middle never fully recovers from that split.
2
‘The Return of the King’ (1955)
Image via George Allen & Unwin
I expected this book to be mostly one long battle building toward Mount Doom, and it is, and that part works exactly as well as you’d hope. Sauron falls, the ring is gone, and after two books of buildup, it actually feels everything is falling into place. But later, one would assume the hobbits would go home and the book would wrap up a chapter or two later.
But the writer decided to get back to the Shire and find out that Saruman has already ruined it while they were away and turned it industrial and mean. I had no idea that chapter existed going in, since the movies leave it out completely, and it ended up affecting me more than the actual fighting scenes did. Then there are the appendices. I’ll be honest, I read maybe a third of them before admitting to myself I didn’t need the full genealogy of Gondor’s kings to enjoy the story I’d just finished. As a casual fan, that’s the one part of the whole trilogy I’d tell you to skip without any guilt.
Collider Exclusive · Middle-earth Quiz Which Lord of the Rings Character Are You? One Quiz · Ten Questions · Your Fate Revealed
The road goes ever on. From the green hills of the Shire to the fires of Mount Doom, every soul in Middle-earth carries a destiny. Ten questions stand between you and the truth of who you are. Answer honestly — the One Ring has a way of revealing what we most want to hide.
💍Frodo
🌿Samwise
👑Aragorn
🔥Gandalf
🏹Legolas
⚒️Gimli
👁️Sauron
🪨Gollum
01
You are handed a responsibility that could destroy you. What do you do? The weight of the world falls on unlikely shoulders.
02
Your closest companion is heading into terrible danger. You: True loyalty is revealed not in comfort, but in crisis.
03
Enormous power is within your reach. Your instinct is: Power corrupts — but only those who reach for it.
04
What does “home” mean to you? Where we long to return reveals who we truly are.
05
When a battle is upon you, your approach is: War reveals what we are made of — whether we like it or not.
06
Someone comes to you for advice in their darkest hour. You: Wisdom is not knowing all the answers — it’s knowing which questions to ask.
07
How do you see yourself, honestly? Self-knowledge is the most dangerous kind.
08
Which of these best describes your relationship with the natural world? Middle-earth speaks to those who know how to listen.
09
You encounter a wretched, pitiable creature who has done terrible things. You: How we treat the fallen reveals the height of our character.
10
When the quest is over and the songs are sung, what do you hope they say about you? In the end, we are all just stories.
The Fellowship Has Spoken Your Place in Middle-earth
The scores below reveal your true character. Your highest number is your match. Even a tie tells a story — the Fellowship was never made of simple people.
💍 Frodo
🌿 Samwise
👑 Aragorn
🔥 Gandalf
🏹 Legolas
⚒️ Gimli
👁️ Sauron
🪨 Gollum
You carry something heavy — and you carry it alone, even when you don’t have to. You were not born for greatness, and that is precisely why greatness chose you. Your courage is not the roaring, sword-swinging kind; it is quiet, stubborn, and terrifying in its refusal to quit. The Ring weighs on you more than anyone can see, and still you walk toward the fire. That is not weakness. That is the rarest kind of strength there is.
You are, without question, the best of them. Not the most powerful, not the most celebrated — but the most essential. Your loyalty is not a trait; it is a force of nature. You would carry the person you love up the slopes of Mount Doom if it came to that, and we both know you’d do it without being asked. The world needs more people like you, and the world is lucky it has even one.
You were born to lead, and you have spent years running from it. The crown is yours by right, but you know better than anyone that right means nothing without the will and the worthiness to back it up. You are tempered by loss, shaped by long roads, and defined by a code of honour you hold to even when no one is watching. When you finally step forward, the world shifts. Because it was always waiting for you.
You have seen more than you let on, and you say less than you know — which is exactly as it should be. You are a catalyst: you do not fight the battles yourself, you ignite the people who can. Your wisdom comes not from books but from an age of watching what happens when it is ignored. You arrive precisely when you mean to, and your presence alone changes what is possible. A wizard is never late.
Graceful, perceptive, and almost preternaturally calm under pressure — you see things others miss and act before others react. You do not need to make a scene to be remarkable; your presence speaks for itself. You are loyal to those you choose to stand beside, and that choice is not made lightly. You have lived long enough to know that the most beautiful things in this world are also the most fragile, and that is why you fight to protect them.
You are loud, proud, and absolutely formidable — and beneath all of that is one of the most fiercely loyal hearts in Middle-earth. You don’t do anything by half measures. Your friendships are forged like iron, your grudges run as deep as mines, and your courage in battle is the kind that makes legends. You came into this fellowship suspicious of everyone and ended it willing to die for an elf. That is not a small thing. That is everything.
You think in centuries and act in absolutes. Order, dominion, control — not because you are cruel by nature, but because you have decided that the world left to itself always falls apart, and you are the only one with the vision and the will to hold it together. You were not always this. Something was lost, or taken, or betrayed, and the version of you that stands now is the answer to that wound. The tragedy is that you’re not entirely wrong — just entirely too far gone to course-correct.
You are a study in contradiction — pitiable and dangerous, cunning and broken, capable of both cruelty and something that once resembled love. You are defined by loss: of innocence, of self, of the one thing that gave your existence meaning. Two voices war inside you constantly, and the tragedy is that the better one sometimes wins, just not often enough, and never at the right moment. You are a warning, yes — but also a mirror. We are all a little Gollum, given the right ring and enough time.
1
‘The Fellowship of the Ring’ (1954)
Image via George Allen & Unwin
This is the one I loved the most, and it’s not close. Tolkien starts it almost like a children’s story, where the hobbits are worrying about their gardens and their birthday parties, and it takes a while before you notice how much darker it’s actually going to get.
Yes, Tom Bombadil is in here, singing and rescuing hobbits from a tree, and no, he doesn’t connect to much of anything else. I skimmed his songs. That’s my only real complaint. Everything after that, the Council of Elrond, Gandalf falling in Moria, Boromir slowly talking himself into wanting the ring before he ever reaches for it, is the strongest writing in the series. I finished this one in three sittings. The other two took a lot longer.
