The Lord of the Rings (Movie Art Cover) (Paperback)

by J.R.R. Tolkien (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
This is a single-volume edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, in which the hobbit Frodo and his elfish friends get swept up in a mighty conflict with the dark lord Sauron (who owes much to proud Satan in Paradise Lost), the monstrous Gollum, the Cracks of Doom, and the awful power of the magical Ring. The book's characters--good and evil--are recognizably human, and the realism is deepened by the magnificent detail of the vast parallel world Tolkien devised, inspired partly by his influential Anglo-Saxon scholarship and his Christian beliefs. (He disapproved of the relative sparseness of detail in the comparable allegorical fantasy his friend C.S. Lewis dreamed up in the Chronicles of Narnia, though he knew Lewis had spun a page-turning yarn.) It has been estimated that one-tenth of all paperbacks sold can trace their ancestry to J.R.R. Tolkien. But even if we had never gotten Robert Jordan's The Path of Daggers and the whole fantasy genre Tolkien inadvertently created by bringing the hobbits so richly to life, Tolkien's epic about the Ring would have left our world enhanced by enchantment. --Tim Appelo

From Library Journal
The official movie tie-in volume with cover art of a Nazg?l perched upon its black steed offers the complete story in a single volume, as the author intended.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 1168 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; One Volume Ed edition (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618129022
• ISBN-13: 978-0618129027
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1,388 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #432,663 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

538 of 552 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The finest edition of LOTR ever published, October 26, 2004

By	Larry D. Curtis "MrCere" (Utah, United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings (50th Anniversary Edition) (Leather Bound)

While the price of this book is steep, this is easily the best version of this book in existance. The gilded pages and high-quality leather look, smell and feel wonderful. This is not the questionable quality leather used on previous versions, this is the real deal. More importantly, this version has, as J.R.R. recorded in letters, reproductions of the Book of Marzubul. These are the pages from the Dwarven book found in the Mines of Moria by Gandalf and the Fellowship. In the begining and ending of the book are also included maps that fold out to render Middle-earth for the reader, again as the author originally wanted.

This is the book that Tolkien dreamed of having published but couldn't due to the realities of post-WWII publishing costs and questions about a 400,000 word publication.

For me, there is an emtoional response to this book for two reasons. One, it is as fine or better than the book the author originally wished to have published and two, it is a beautiful piece of art all on its own, suitable for display. If you love books or love Tolkien or both, this is a must have and the centerpiece of any worthy collection.

464 of 485 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars My absolute favorite book, December 17, 2000

By	Chad M. Brick (Ann Arbor, Michigan USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings (Illustrated Edition) (Hardcover)

This is not a review of Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings". Its having been voted "The Greatest Book of the Millenium" here on Amazon.com says more than enough about the worth of Tolkien's work. Rather, it is a review of the several hardcover editions of this fantastic story.

There are for major hardcover editions of LOTR, all published by Houghton Mifflin Co. They are essentially the same price, so I will not take that into consideration.

The best of the editions (5 stars) is the blue Alan Lee illustrated version printed in Nov 1991. I have owned this book for several years, and read it three times. It is durable, beautiful, and has no flaws that I have found. The illustrations are wonderful, though most Tolkien fans will have seen these pictures before.

The red edition printed in Nov 1974 is also a solid edition of the book (4 stars). It is every bit as good as the blue version, but does not have the illustrations. If you are the type of reader that prefers to leave everything to your imagination, this is the version for you.

Both the blue and red versions have matching editions of "The Hobbit" (Houghton Mifflin, Sep 1997 or Oct 1973, respectively). I found both of these editions to be satisfactory.

The other two major editions of LOTR - the white three-volume edition from Oct 1988 and the black seven-volume edition from Jan 2000 - are not recommended (2 stars). The print quality in both is poor, and the durability is less than that of the red and blue versions. The only advantage of these editions is portability, as the red and blue versions are single-volume and quite hefty.

Ramble on....

177 of 183 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Beautiful -- if a bit impractical -- Edition of the Book, January 6, 2004

By	A. C. Johnson (Oakland, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Lord of the Rings (Hardcover)

This is a particularly beautiful edition of The Lord of the Rings (ISBN: 0618260587 ), and is probably best suited for someone who is already a fan of the book, rather than for someone who is reading the book for the first time.

The format of this edition is larger than most books tend to be making it very difficult to read in any position other than sitting upright holding the book on your lap or on a desk. Each of the three volumes features a beautiful glossy dust jacket and is filled with a dozen or so full color illustrations by the famous Alan Lee.

My main problem with this edition, besides the weight and size of the books, is that the pages containing text are glossy paper. The glare caused by this type of glossy paper make it a little irritating on the eyes when reading for long stretches of time. It would have been much nicer had they published this edition with matte paper for the text and saved the glossy solely for the illustrations.

If you are a fan of Alan Lee's artwork, and don't necessarily intend on READING this edition, though, this is a great piece to pick up and will most likely be the type of book you end up treasuring for years to come -- even if it isn't the one you give your kids to read.