#3 in Classics
The Two Towers
- 432
- Pages
- about 8 h
- Reading time
- Film 2002 +1
- On screen
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Our view
In “The Two Towers” Tolkien turns a quest into a war and lets “The Lord of the Rings” grow darker without losing its sweep. With the company broken, the story follows separate roads; the chapters with Frodo and Sam, trailed by a creeping stranger, carry a quiet dread of their own. It is a second volume and expects the first to be fresh in mind.
Worth knowing Published in November 1954, it holds Books III and IV and tells them one after the other instead of interleaving them: first Aragorn, Rohan and Isengard, then Frodo and Sam on the road to Mordor. Tolkien himself gave different answers about which two towers the title means. Peter Jackson’s 2002 film moves the book’s final episode, with the giant spider, into The Return of the King.
The view of the BookRank editors, written from readers’ ratings and comments. It does not affect the score or the book’s place in a ranking.
About the book
Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They lost the wizard Gandalf in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue their journey alone down the great River Anduin—alone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.
Reading order · The Lord of the Rings
Full order & progress →- The Fellowship of the RingStart here
8.88.8 / 10 - The Two TowersThis book
8.98.9 / 10 - The Return of the King
9.19.1 / 10
On screen
This book has been adapted for the screen 2 times — from 1978 to 2002.
Adaptation data: Wikidata · On screen →
Where the score comes from
The sources average 8.9 across 3,852 ratings. With that many, the reader vote carries 96% of the weight and the score stays at 8.9 — the Classics average of 7.7 barely moves it.
| Source | Average | Ratings | Weight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Library | 8.7 | 231 | 6% |
| Google Books | 10.0 | 10 | 0% |
| Hardcover | 8.9 | 3.6K | 94% |
Frequently asked
How long is The Two Towers?
It has 432 pages — shorter than 69% of the ranked books in Classics.
In this book
Themes this book shares with others — each leads to the best books on it.
If you liked this
Same shelf — Classics — with scores between 8.1 and 9.1, closest to this book.
