Last updated on August 27, 2025
I loved the beautiful, dangerous, and mysterious world Tolkien created in Middle-earth. Still, the most important reason I read to the very last sentence of his epic trilogy is that his characters transcended the page and came alive for me. As a fantasy author myself, you could suppose that snagging my overactive imagination wouldn’t be too difficult. Except that since then, I’ve read (or more accurately, tried to read) any number of fantasy novels that couldn’t hold a candle to Tolkien’s works.
Tolkien created larger-than-life characters partly by assigning them quirks common to man. Bilbo’s fondness for the comforts of home made his perilous quest particularly difficult. His grumbling seems at first comical, then pathetic, and finally endearing. Later in the story, when he relinquishes his desire for hearth and home in favor of the greater good, his decision is nothing short of heroic. Frodo, hero of The Lord of the Rings, has to overcome the power of an addictive force. Strider (Aragorn) must summon courage in the face of defeat to heal his kingdom. Even Gollum is a villain to be despised, but pitied because of his sin of greed. Tolkien designed his characters to speak to our human weaknesses and to make us better for having vicariously experienced their character arcs.
Adventure is the greatest element present in Tolkien’s books. Due to the author’s skillful foreshadowing, the sense of doom grows as the series progresses, reaching a fever pitch during the final, excruciating conflict. This is storytelling at its finest. Reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy with an analytical mindset can help writers understand how to increase tension in their own stories.
Unlike C.S. Lewis, who gave us a Christ-figure in Aslan, Tolkien doesn’t employ a single symbol of Christ, but rather many. Frodo becomes the sin-bearer, Aragorn the savior, and Gandalf the mysterious visitor who calls on us to leave the comforts of home and defeat the wiles of a dark enemy.
I count JRR Tolkien among the influences on my Tales of Faeraven trilogy, which is written in the medieval epic fantasy genre he helped establish. The series begins with DawnSinger and now continues with the release of Wayfarer.
As children, my older brother and I would beg my father for bedtime stories, and he would gladly give them to us. His deep voice rumbled against my ear at his chest as he unfolded stories of exotic places like Oz and Neverland. My imagination carried on with the tales even after he closed the book for the night. When eventually he stopped reading stories, I began creating my own.
Within a few years, I’d become the storyteller of my neighborhood. The other children would gather in a circle on our lawn while I invented stories to entertain them. No one, including myself, thought of this as anything unusual. It wasn’t until my sixth-grade teacher pointed out my ability to spin a tale that my parents and I took note. This is how, at the age of twelve, I decided to become a novelist. As it turns out, fulfilling that dream took a few more years than planned.
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Good thoughts, Janalyn! Love LOTR…
Thanks for reading, Jennifer. I suspect our home libraries contain many similar fantasy books.
Enjoyed this Tolkien article and feature on Janalyn's new novel Wayfarer. I look forward to reading DawnSinger too!
Blessings,
Janet Chester Bly
Enjoyed this Tolkien article and feature on Janalyn's new novel Wayfarer. I look forward to reading DawnSinger too!
Blessings,
Janet Chester Bly