The Two Towers is split into two mini books: the first follows Aragorn, Gimli, Legolas, Merry, Pippin, and Gandalf through Helm’s Deep and the sacking of Saruman, with riding off to Gondor as the ending; the second tracks Frodo, Sam, and Gollum’s trek to Mordor, with Sam realizing that Frodo has not been killed by Shelob as the ending. I will admit, the first was a lot more fun to read. In the first book we get a delightful amount of ent-lore, plus some great wizard shenanigans. The despair of the second book is so thick that Tolkein seems to feel the need to apologize for it even within the narrative, with Frodo and Sam talking about how they must be in the very worst part of the story that will be told about them some day. I am glad to be out of Shelob’s lair and heading towards the last of the trilogy.
My biggest takeaways are: I was happily surprised by the apparent strength of Eowyn in the first half of Two Towers. I had expected there to be a lot more “she can’t lead because she is a woman,” and I was proven wrong. But Shelob is so horribly vaginal, and her grotesqueness undid any points Eowyn had scored. Also very surprised to learn that the movies introduced the plot point of Gollum separating the hobbits on the stair with the food trick, AND that the movies exclude Sam wearing the ring!