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Return of the King is a bit nuts. The main selling point for me was a whole extra epilogue that I had never heard of before - the Scouring of the Shire - which would have made an amazing standalone/fourth film if they felt the need. The appendices in the back of the latest addition also provide a huge amount of detail about language, pronunciation and shared history for any and all things Middle Earth. Some of them are a bit of a slog, but there’s some fantastic background and lore tidbits in there which really enrich the main thread of Lord of the Rings.

The book itself is still a fairly tough read even at this point in the trilogy, but if you have a dictionary nearby, you can learn a lot about language thanks to Mr. Tolkien’s complex and imaginative way of writing. There’s nothing else I can say that hasn’t been said already, but the emotional weight (and the unexpected and homoerotic tenderness spread throughout) is incredible. What a journey.