The Fellowship of the Ring

J.R.R. Tolkien

Sep 2021 · Lord of the Rings Book 1 · RB Media · Narrated by Andy Serkis

About this audiobook

An unlikely hero. A perilous quest. The greatest adventure ever told.
In a quiet village in the Shire, young Frodo is about to receive a gift that will change his life forever.
Thought lost centuries ago, it is the One Ring, an object of terrifying power once used by the Dark Lord to enslave Middle-earth. Now darkness is rising, and Frodo must travel deep into the Dark Lord’s realm, to the one place the Ring can be destroyed: Mount Doom.
The journey will test Frodo’s courage, his friendships and his heart. Because the Ring corrupts all who bear it—can Frodo destroy it, or will it destroy him?
'The English-speaking world is divided into those who have read The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and those who are going to read them.'—Sunday Times
This brand-new unabridged recording is narrated by the acclaimed actor, director and author, Andy Serkis.

Ratings and reviews

This version is okay. I feel like Serkis is over acting on the voices. Like parts that clearly say the elf "said laughing", and he's saying it all spooky and slow, not really paying attention to what's written, just reading it like some mystical writing. He reads the whole thing like that. And the songs... melodies weak and practically non existent, like he's singing all over the place, no key or melody at all really, just on the fly, no preparation. It's okay, sometimes annoying and even confusing. Not nearly as good as the Inglis version. So solemn it takes all the fun out. Too bad, seemed like a lot of potential there.

The story and reading is amazing. The formatting is terrible. Every 30 minutes or so, the book just stops. Not a pause, as I cannot start it from the widget. I have to open the app completely to watch it cycle off pause and then push play.

Punctuation is optional for Andy Serkis. So many sentences have their endings glossed over to hurry into the next one. Additionally, his singing leaves a lot to be desired.

About the author

A writer of fantasies, Tolkien, a professor of language and literature at Oxford University, was always intrigued by early English and the imaginative use of language. In his greatest story, the trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954--56), Tolkien invented a language with vocabulary, grammar, syntax, even poetry of its own. Though readers have created various possible allegorical interpretations, Tolkien has said: "It is not about anything but itself. (Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical, moral, religious or political.)" In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962), Tolkien tells the story of the "master of wood, water, and hill," a jolly teller of tales and singer of songs, one of the multitude of characters in his romance, saga, epic, or fairy tales about his country of the Hobbits. Tolkien was also a formidable medieval scholar, as evidenced by his work, Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics (1936) and his edition of Anciene Wisse: English Text of the Anciene Riwle. Among his works published posthumously, are The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Fall of Arthur, which was edited by his son, Christopher. In 2013, his title, The Hobbit (Movie Tie-In) made The New York Times Best Seller List.