The Lord of the Rings II: The Two Towers— JRR Tolkien

This book is like a lightning bolt in a clear sky. To say that the heroic, splendid, eloquent, and uninhibited novel has suddenly returned in an era of almost pathological anti-romanticism would be inadequate. For those of us living in this strange era, its return—and the relief it brings—is undoubtedly the most important thing. But for the very history of the novel—a history that goes back to the Odyssey and even before the Odyssey—it is not a return, but a step forward or a revolution: the conquest of new territory.