2015 Reading Challenge: Lord of the Rings The Two Towers

2015 Reading Challenge: A Trilogy
Lord of the Rings: the Two Towers
398 pages

CHARACTERS:
Frodo Baggins (hobbit)
Sam Gamgee (hobbit)
Merry (hobbit)
Pippin (hobbit)
Gandalf the Grey (wizard)
Aragorn/Strider (man)
Gimli (dwarf)
Legolas (elf)
Saruman
Treebeard
Gollum
Various Men
Various Orcs
Various Ents

We pick up right where we left off in the first book. The Fellowship has broken up. Frodo and Sam left to head to Mordor without the others. Merry and Pippin are taken by the Orcs. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas are on a chase to get them back. Somehow, Merry and Pippin escape from the Orcs and meet Treebeard, an Ent-keeper. They rally the Ents to go against Saruman and protect their lands from his evil sorcery and his Orcs. Aragorn, Gimli, and Legolas meet the Riders of Rohan and Gandalf who is no longer Grey but now White because Saruman is evil and other stuff that he talks about. (Read the book.) They all meet up at Saruman's place where we find that Gandalf is now more powerful and good than Saruman. Pippin touches Saruman's evil magical ball and now Sauron can see into his mind so Gandalf has to take him to Rohan to protect everyone. (Nice going, Pippin! Screw everything up for everyone else why don't you!)

We leave the remainder of the group and go to Sam and Frodo and their new guide, Gollum/Smeagal. They journey through dead places to get to Mordor and have various near encounters with Orcs and a creepy thousand year old Lady Spider who has spawned with some other spiders to created evil spiders (I'm thinking maybe even the ones that Bilbo meets in The Hobbit.) Gollum abandons them and Sam must rush in to save the day.

And we are left waiting for the third installment of the journey of these characters found in The Return of the King.

I'd recommend this although I have to be honest and say that I enjoyed the first half of the book much more than the second half. It seemed to slow down a lot for me and took me a couple of weeks to finally get through.

Overall, two thumbs up. I'm excited for the third book and to finish the trilogy.