(I'm going to keep this review extremely brief since I will be writing a more detailed review for the entire trilogy as one. The review for the Fellowship of the Ring can be found here.)
Five-second summary: Hobbits escapes orcs, strange treefolk, Isengard falls, Rohan to the rescue, Helm's Deep defended, part of the Fellowship reunited and split up again, Gollum, Sam and Frodo climb dark mountains, big spider attacks!, Frodo captured.
Pros: Great character development, excellent prose, attention to detail is almost unsurpassed (same as Fellowship) plus some good battles. By this time, I've about got all the names of people and places figured out. I guess it was just a matter of time.
Cons: Almost none. I wish that instead of placing the three separate parties' stories one after another, Tolkien would have instead mixed them together, chapter-wise, to keep the time elements straight between the them.
In the movie trilogy, this was my favorite. I'm thinking it will be in novel form, too. It takes everything that was great about the first part of the trilogy and gets rid of almost all of my complaints. You can tell Tolkien really was hitting his stride in The Two Towers. He essentially tells three stories in this one novel, which is very impressive. I'll hopefully be wrapping up The Return of the King this weekend and will have a quick review for it and then a more lengthy review for the entire trilogy next week.
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