Some of you might not know but I while ago I bought the Lord of the Rings trilogy books as well as The Hobbit and started reading, I read The Hobbit and Fellowship of the Ring but couldn't find time to read the other two books, eventually my interest ceased and I only read things related to study, now I still have to read some books for college preparation but I decided to go ahead and spare some time to the second Lord of the Rings book, two days ago I finished it, here's my thoughts about it, compared to the first and The Hobbit. I might spoil some content in this text, so if you've never read Lord of the Rings, beware.

I must say that I liked the second book more than the first one, I would rank it up there with The Hobbit, I really can't decide between these two, after all The Hobbit was a full book and Two Towers is just a continuation, there's no time lost introducing characters, over-detailing the main locations and so on. I always had an opinion about climaxes, I find them important but not the most important part of most mediums, take a suspense movie for example, the climaxes are generally ephemeral and just gives you a bang to reach the apex and soon enough fade into the end, while the moments preceding the climax are generally more exiting, it's where the atmosphere is constructed, the mysteries start to emerge, you deliberate, you make up possible solutions to what's being shown, it's simply the best moments of the movie. Of course that's me, other may not agree. With Two Towers what we have is possibly the finest moments of a story, where everything is all about the best moments of development. There are still many things to uncover, and that's what's great about it, we got to meet one of the menaces in Middle-Earth at the time, Saruman, we got to see Frodo and Sam infiltrating Sauron's domains, among other stuff.

If we simply look at characters' development I think this made several improvements over Fellowship of the Ring, I like to see how Gimli and Legolas bond, how two people of so different races and traditions end up relating so well, past their differences. The soon split-up of the character did good for the story as well, Tolkien got to focus more on a smaller group of characters, when Merry and Pippin got kidnapped and meet Treebeard and the Ents, and how Tolkien could focus on them two only; how Gimli, Legolas and Aragorn pursuing them also got special treatment; and specially Frodo and Sam. Frodo and Sam were two characters I didn't actually like in the first book, maybe because I preferred Bilbo so much over Frodo, and Sam didn't really show much depth; this time they two go separated from the rest and now I actually enjoy them, Frodo continues not being a better character than Bilbo, but he's not as bad as I thought upon finishing Fellowship of the Ring, and I got to know Sam's personality a lot more. A lesson to take note, bigger group of characters piled together means lesser development, while a smaller groups generally means better focus resulting in a deeper portray of the characters.

The first part--named 3rd book--is great, so great I was sad to see them changing to Frodo and Sam's perspective in the middle of the book--now changed to 4th book--, more because I wasn't very fond of them, I wished to know what happened to the rest of the Fellowship too though. Fortunately for me the second part could be described as even better than the first, Tolkien outdone himself in reversing my first impression of these two, their relation with Gollum also made it memorable. Though the first book had its good moments, like when they met Tom Bombadil, while in Bree, going down the flow of Anduin with that Orc attack in camp and the feeling of Gollum following them, and I could also say while in Lorien. This second book had as many or more memorable moments. The Helm's Deep part was a moment that could have lasted longer, yes, but my main complain would be that the details are too confusing on that specific part, not the battle itself, but the environment, maybe it's just me. The rest of the great moments include several of them, basically everything really, especially later in the book. Overall I could say The Two Towers is more consistent, and ultimately better than the first book, still not sure if it's better than The Hobbit, probably not.