Listened to the audio book this time. It was original American full dramatisation aired on NPR. This was shorter than I remembered. When reading these as a teenager, Tolkien's need to describe every damned thing in detail made it seem so much longer. The audio book may have cut some of that down since it was only 3.5 hours long. But I looked at my physical copy and its not a tome. Anyway, it was nice to get some of that detail back in my memory after all these years and the movies. That's the reason I decided to pick it up again.

With regards to the audio, I'm not a huge fan of some of the voices. Several sound too similar to each other despite being different actors (I checked). Frodo sounds emotionless even at very exciting, emotional and life threatening moments. And Sam sounds super young which kept throwing me off. Otherwise it was well done and wonderfully acted.

3.5 stars. Well this was a surprise. I read this for the first discord book club read of the bujo witches. This was an interesting and fast read. I liked how integrated the events and characters of the Salem Witch Trails were in this fictional story. I didn't love the love triangle as I felt the story could do without one relationship being romantic. There was no need for it and we all knew it wasn't going to pan out anyway.

This was very atmospheric. I felt like I could see, smell and taste everything. I liked that. Kind feeling like Camellia should have figured out a lot more earlier on. However, she's young and clearly dealing with a lot. But overall this was a good read. An interesting world. When all is said and done Sophia will not make a good Queen. Interested to see what will happen next.

I hate this book. Just adding this review to remember why. Its bleak and its boring. How its so filled with cold, grey angst but still so incredibly dull is beyond me. It was a struggle reading this in school. This from a person who flew through most required reading whether I enjoyed it or not. I still don't know what was the literary merit here. I could usually at least get that. But this was like someone was stabbing me slowly for weeks. I will say the descriptions of the landscape and setting were detailed but they were poor, miserable and living in the middle of nowhere so a lot of nothing described in detail I guess. That's fun. The plot was a no for me. I did not care about his emotions or reasonings. Just ugh. Its like Zeena sucked the life out of this entire book.

That was a solid 3. Once I got into the groove of the ridiculousness of it all it was more entertaining. I do want to read Through the Looking Glass. I think I just missed the boat on reading this as a kid where I would have loved it more I guess. I do want to learn more about the author and how and why he created this though. Literary nonsense indeed. I was having some trouble getting into it at first because I was expecting more of a plot or purpose. But there is none. That's what comes having watched movies and tv show adaptations all my life first.