Can you imagine how awesome The Two Towers movie would have been if it was just Orcs and Ents and Rohan?! With no endless wondering of Frodo and Sam? It would be all awesome all the time. Well, that's exactly what we get in Book 3 of the Lord of the Rings. Frodo and Sam are not in a single sentence of this book. It opens with the death of Boromir, which, I gotta say, was done way better in the movie. I cry at that seen more often than I should. In the book, Boromir dies in like the 3rd paragraph and he's all like "oh no!" and Aragorn's all "Sucks to be you!" .... Well not exactly, but it's handled with a brevity and lack of significance that isn't really fair for such an interesting character.
Anyway, once they send Boromir over the falls in a canoe overflowing with the weapons of all the orcs he killed, Legolas, Aragorn, and Gimli embark on an impromptu ulta marathon. They chase the orcs across Rohan and cover 120 MILES in 3 Days! I was exhausted just reading that. Then we break away to spend time with Merry and Pippin for a few chapters. This is all pretty close to what happens in the movie, with one major exception. The Ents in the book aren't clueless morons! Turns out, Creatures older than the elves tend to notice when people start burning and tearing down their trees. I don't care if Peter Jackson wanted more character growth for the hobbits, you can't justify the Ents not knowing whats going on! It would be as bad as making Aragorn not act like a King....
So we leave the Ents just as the begin their march on Isengard to check in with our 3 other heroes. Aragorn has followed the hobbits trail into the woods where they get reunited with Gandalf. Gandalf has been seriously leveled up since being sent back. You get the sense that the Maiar (basically angels) have noticed the some serious shit is going down and have decided to let Gandalf use much more of his true power. At one point, when he has been mistaken for Sauroman, he says, "You have no weapons that can harm me" So Gandalf is basically invincible, and he's also got a super fast horse to ride. I'd say dying was the best thing that could have happened to him.
Then we go rescue Theoden from wormtongue, and everybody rides to Helms Deep, because this is the smart thing to do, and Gandalf encourages it. Then we get the battle of Helms Deep. It's awesome! And the men fight off the orcs without any help from the elves. The biggest change is that there are many more men than in the movie, and Eomer is there the whole time. In the morning, when Gandalf returns with the cavalry, it's a different guy leading the Rohirrim. Anyway, it's one of the best battle scenes ever written.
The rest of the book covers the remaining fellowship members reuniting at a destroyed Isengard. Merry and Pippin relay the tale of the Ents killing and smashing everything, and Pippin touches the palantir (that crystal ball thing) and has to ride away with Gandalf, end book 3.
Book 3 has some of the best pacing in the whole story so far. The one thing I want to point out, that is really starting to bug me, is how much cooler Aragorn is in the book. He's not some whiny guy in exhile, hiding from his destiny. He grew up in hiding, knowing full well that it was his responsibility to return to Gondor and restore the race of men. For crying out loud, they reforge his sword in the first book, and he's not afraid to tell anybody that he's no one to trifle with because he's Aragorn, son of Arathorn, Kind of Gondor Dammit! And you better recognize before he stomps you in to the ground like a worm.
10/10
And now I get to look forward to 200 pages of Frodo and Sam on the longest camping trip ever...
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