City News

Welcome to my review of the Hobbit, a story so old that I don’t know anyone as old as it. Jokes aside, my review of the Hobbit will give you some insight on this old piece of literature, without spoiling the story, as well my review will show why this calming adventure story is a good book to just pick up and begin reading.

Now before I tell you why this is a great book to read I must begin with some of the negative aspects of this book. Even though this is a story about an adventure, at some points the Hobbit can be a little slow. Some of these times are when huge settings are being described which do really help build the setting for the story but at the same time it can just bore the reader a little bit. But this is not found in the entire story, only a few select points when the characters find themselves in say mountain ranges or loud villages. As well the wording can be confusing and not because it's hard to read but since it was written in the 1930’s and English was a little bit different and back then there were different phrases compared to what we read today. The only reason why I really want to bring this up is that it can mess up the flow of the writing, making these phrases stand out from all the other writing and causing people such as myself to stop for a minute and focus on the phrase and then continue reading without having to stop and focus on confusing sentences. But in my opinion as I have said before these are not huge problems just small ones I noticed which don’t ruin the enjoyability of the Hobbit.

The story itself fits in with the magical world that can be found in children stories for it contains all sorts of magical creatures ranging from dwarves, to goblins, elves, dragons, and unsurprisingly in this tale there are hobbits. The Hobbit creates an amazing world fit with dark and evil forest which torment heroes, as well winding country roads that seem to lead nowhere and treacherous mountain passages that our heroes struggle to overcome. As I just said in the Hobbit the main characters of the story overcome many problems and that is part of the adventure. The adventure of solving problems, overcoming what seem to impossible situations and just growing as characters. This adventure is what changes our main character( who I should probably mention right now). The main character of this story is a little hobbit named Bilbo. He starts out as this bland character who has nothing special about him and he does not want to be involved in anything special for he does not like adventures or anything that involves quests or fighting monsters. But all of this changes after he meets Gandalf, a wizard who pushes Bilbo into an adventure with 13 dwarves whose names I can not remember for the life of me and the point of their quest is to********. What I was about to write was redacted for it would spoil the plot of the book and even though it doesn’t spoil everything it would be better for you to find out on your own. Anyway, on this journey Bilbo grows as a hobbit for he faces fierce creatures such as ravenous wolves and as he and the dwarves continue their adventure Bilbo gains respect from the dwarves who first saw him as useless. The dwarves themselves are the same and it feels unnecessary to have so many at some times, but I could see that the author wanted there to be a party of adventures instead of there being just Bilbo and two or three dwarves. There are other side characters such as Bard, a warrior from a water village that Bilbo and the dwarves visited, and Beorn a shapeshifter that becomes friends with Bilbo and the dwarves. What I think is amazing is how even after the adventures part ways with these characters they end up coming back, but that reason would also ruin the story so that is all I can say for now.

Overall no writing can really say how good this story really is. It is a special story that is a bit simple but yet complicated and genius. Sure at times I felt it was boring to read the book, but when I finally finished the book I was happy to have read it. This book does not apply to everyone's style of reading, and just because you read this review does not mean that you have to read this book. But if you are interested in everything I have written so far then I do recommend you read this book or at least give it a chance.

Checkout The Hobbit from then Newport Beach Public Library.