I'm more than halfway through The Two Towers, going through the portion of the story focusing on Frodo, Sam, and Gollum. I'm at the part where they encounter Faramir.
This part of the book is hit or miss. When it's good, it's engaging. But when it's off, it's incredibly tedious. Some chapters were nothing more than characters just sitting around engaging in stream-of-consciousness pondering that really goes nowhere, fails to flesh out/develop them meaningfully, and does little to nothing to progress the story. But then again, this isn't the first time Lord of the Rings has gone off the rails into what feels like lengthy drug-fueled tangents where I'm left scratching my head and wondering, "Where in blue blazes is this even going?" (Council of Elrond chapter comes to mind.)
EDIT: Further into the book. I just finished the chapter about the forbidden pool.
I've had people tell me how awesome Faramir is in the book, but I'm not seeing it. He really could have been a dynamic and interesting character, but so far he has been nothing more than another ho-hum flat character who serves merely as a mouthpiece to dump exposition. So far, the only characters who really have personalities in the book are Pippin, Gollum, and to a lesser extent Merry and Sam (who's starting to come into his own.)
I blaspheme when I say I vastly preferred the film's version of Faramir, because he was a more believable character than book Faramir so far. It makes sense to me that someone in his predicament would have a more stony disposition, given the boulder sized chip on his shoulder, and would most certainly be at least a little bit tempted by the Ring.
I mean,
Faramir's dad, Denethor, either hates him or doesn't think much of him, strongly (perhaps obsessively) favoring the elder son Boromir- who is now dead. Faramir's homeland, Gondor, is doomed. Faramir is determinedly fighting the good fight, but is still pretty much damned if he lives, damned if he dies. So in all that turbulence, he finds two suspicious hobbits (Frodo and Sam) who know something, but are withholding the truth. They particularly withheld a major truth about their third companion, Gollum- who is later caught breaking a sacred rule punishable by death in Faramir's creed but is spared simply because one of the suspicious hobbits requests it.
So no, I'm not buying that
given all of these circumstances, Faramir would trust and welcome Frodo and Sam so quickly, treat them like honored guests in the secret stronghold, and proffer information to them that could prove deadly if it fell into enemy hands... which is where Frodo's errand is pretty much taking him. Plus, Faramir just lets them go with no big reservations.
All this makes book Faramir seem like a total Mary Sue. Nobody in his shoes would be that gregarious and incorruptible, even in the realm of fantasy and especially when it comes to the Ring.
I think once I finish Lord of the Rings, I'm done with Tolkien. I will finish LOTR, though, because having come this far I'm too invested not to see it through.
EDIT 2: To break things up a little, I read a sample from the novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit by Gary Wolf. Roger Rabbit is my all time favorite movie, so finding out that it was loosely based on a book was eye-opening. I liked the sample. It is very different from the movie, but that's what makes it intriguing. One thing that's interesting is not only the tension between humans and toons, but also tension among toons between "humanoids" (cartoon people) and "barnyards" (cartoon animals.)
