A jolly little story of a hobbit turned adventurer, thief, and savior.

I have not read a book with such a whimsical narrator in a very long time. The flowery language was quite a joy to read and I often stumbled upon words I hadn’t heard before.

As to the story itself, I found the broad strokes to be rather ordinary, but the details to be quite interesting. I also liked the worldbuilding, although having a narrator comes close to cheating in that regard.

Characters had a quaint charm to them, and while many were rather one-sided (also owed to the number of characters and how short the book is), they generally felt authentic and believable.

I thought I had read this book once before in german, many years ago, but now I’m not sure if I finished it back then… A surprising amount of times I found myself remembering some of the events I was reading about. however, this almost completely stopped after the battle with Smaug. Only Thorins fall to greed seemed very familiar. I remembered nothing about Bilbo’s “betrayal” or the battle of the five armies.

Next up: Lord of the Rings, Part I