I read this book once when I was far too young to enjoy it, and thought it was boring. It’s far from boring, it’s just… long. So long. Tolkien‘s characters will launch into page-long musings about their entire lines of ancestors and their people and their place in the world without any prompting (Gandalf makes fun of the hobbits for that, which is rather ironic). This is often interesting in parts, but rarely the whole way through. Still, a deserved classic! The four stars are largely due to the audiobook though. The way Serkis reads is pure magic, every character is perfectly distinctive and charming in their own way, with logical accents as well - people of the same race sound alike etc. Serkis is in fact so good that he can make Pippin imitating Gandalf actually sound like Pippin doing a Gandalf impression. I wouldn’t have loved this story nearly as much if it hadn’t been for the excellent performance!