Rating: 
Summary: READ THIS BOOK!
Review: I only wish I could have read this book before seeing the movie as a child. The writing in the books are verbatim with most of the lines in the movie, so much so that I find it very hard to separate the two. Thus, my imagination is infinitely jaded so that I can only see the childhood film interpretations. Of course the story is beautiful and somewhat unconventional at that. If this book interests you, I would encourage you to read "The Princess Bride". It too has a movie that lifted most of its lines verbatim from the text, but there's enough extra to make it much better than the film---and SO much funnier.
Rating: 
Summary: Nice, but no Tolkien
Review: I remember watching the movie, the original by Rankin/Bass many many years ago, and fell in love with it. Here I am, 28 years old, and just read the book. This is one case where I think the movie was better.A lot of people compare this particular story to Tolkien. But I have to be honest and say, it is far from his works. Granted it is an interesting story, original. But I found it to be a little boring. It has interesting fantasy, and a great villan (love the bull). But I couldn't help but be slightly bored with the slow travel, and encounters, and very few climactic scenes (or battles). It has it's moments, surely, but it isn't all it's cracked up to be. People make this book sound like it's the next gospel. But I found it to be creative, yet simple, and even though it's fairly small book (which was surprising) it took a while to get through it. And I found some areas difficult to understand, and had to re-read a few paragraphs to understand exactly what was happening. Nevertheless I'm glad I read it. It isn't horrible, it's just been glamourized a little too much. Check out the movie, I think it's actually better.
| 
