One of his ten top underground menaces, as shared at the Guardian:The Balrog in The Fellowship of the Ring by J. R. R. TolkienRead about another entry on the list.
This fire demon of the ancient world has driven the dwarves from Moria and now threatens the fellowship. Tolkien rightly doesn’t spend a lot of time describing it, but rather lets our imagination, and the reactions of the characters to it, do the work. Peter Jackson recreates this brilliantly in the film, when we are given an aerial shot of hundreds of orcs scaling a cavernous underground hall to get out of its way. The balrog’s confrontation with Gandalf at the bridge of Khazad-Dum is one of the highlight reels of The Lord of the Rings. As a child, the ‘drums in the deep’ line filled me with every kind of primordial fear. It still does.
The Lord of the Rings also made SF Said's top ten list of unlikely heroes, Nicole Hill's top eight list of notable royal figures in fiction, Becky Ferreira's top seven list of bromances in literature, Nicole Hill's list of eleven of the most eccentric relatives in fiction, Nicole Hill's top seven list of literary wedding themes, Charlie Jane Anders's list of fifteen moments from science fiction and fantasy that will make absolutely anyone cry, Elizabeth Wein's top ten list of dynamic duos in fiction, Katharine Trendacosta and Charlie Jane Anders's list of the ten sources that inspired the dark storytelling of Game of Thrones, Rob Bricken's list of 11 preposterously manly fantasy series, Conrad Mason's top ten list of magical objects in fiction, Linus Roache's six best books list, Derek Landy's top ten list of villains in children's books, Charlie Jane Anders and Michael Ann Dobbs' list of ten classic SF books that were originally considered failures, Lev Grossman's list of the six greatest fantasy books of all time, and appears on John Mullan's lists of ten of the best women dressed as men, ten of the best bows and arrows in literature, ten of the best beards in literature, ten of the best towers in literature, ten of the best volcanoes in literature, ten of the best chases in literature, and ten of the best monsters in literature. It is one of Salman Rushdie's five best fantasy novels for all ages. It is a book that made a difference to Pat Conroy.
--Marshal Zeringue
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