This holiday season, I am closing out the year with a countdown of my top ten posts of the year!

For 2019, the number five post was: LotRFI Pt.43–The Battle of The Pelennor Fields

This was the most popular post from my First Impressions series this year! For those who haven’t followed the blog, this series was an attempt to reconstruct my early reading of The Lord of the Rings by writing a short blog post about each chapter.

In this post, I was able to reflect on how the battle scenes were different from any of my prior reading:

The scale of the violence was a significant change from my prior reading experience. This means that two elements were very different for me to adjust to. The first is how the story told of the battles, especially Pelennor Fields, from multiple perspectives. This is a trick that Tolkien uses to show more of the battle, and it was a new approach to me. Also, the ebb and flow of the battle was also unique.

I tried to contextualize this response to the story in relation to my other readings as a young reader.

Be sure to go see the whole post if you haven’t already!