I need to pick up both HOTH & the Annotated Hobbit. I am finishing up a reread of UT. I am not sure what I am going to read next. I thinking another trip through the Silmarillion and then off to the Adventures of Tom Bombadil again.
Jim
I’ve been escaping into PTerry when HOTH wears me down! I’m starting to like his dwarves a lot better!
“We’re certainly dwarfs”
–lead singer for a rather short but hairy band with rocks in, announcing who they are
I love Tolkien’s Dwarves. PTerry’s are but a parody of Tolkien’s* anyway.
Gimli is one of the greatest characters in fiction. Simple and complex at the same time. However I will admit that many of the 13 were less than endearing. In fact only Balin, Fili & Kili could really be called endearing.
I guess my escapes are Tolkien, Heinlein and E.E. “Doc” Smith. I can always pick any of them up and enjoy them. I am probably overdue for another Groking.
Jim
- Well maybe will a slight touch of Disney Silliness tossed into the mix.
Most of the 13 are, necessarily, ciphers; only those three, Bomber, and Thorin really have personalities. But I rather like Thorin–or, at least, understand him.
I’d disagree. PTerry has explored and expanded his own dwarf culture far beyond what JRRT ever wrote about the dwarves of Middle Earth.
The conflicts between the “deep-down dwarfs” and the ones willing to go into the light, the changing notions of dwarf gender and sexuality, and just the ongoing discussion of what makes a dwarf a dwarf, show that PTerry has moved far, far from his parodist origins.
JRRT never expended the energy on developing dwarvish history that he put into elves and men and hobbits. Khuzdul is one of his least-developed languages. And he borrowed heavily from the Norse sagas and other germanic legends in what he did put together.
JRRT is still hands-down superior in his ability to create lasting literature, but PTerry has begun to create his own literature of a sort, beyond his humorist story-tellings.
As for JRRT’s dwarves, I’d say he wrote far more depth of character into Mim than he did into Gimli.
Just IMHO, and far afield from the actual thread topic. 
Except somewhere along the way Gimli became the archetype of all Dwarves that followed. This makes Gimli seem simpler that you are giving him credit for. His appreciation of Galadriel beauty. The Awe he found in Aglarond. His caring for the two young lost Hobbits. His friendship with Legolas. His leading a group of his people to help fix Minas Tirith and make it more wondrous. Gimli had more depth than any Dwarf that has wandered through Discworld.
I will happily admit though that Pratchett has gone far beyond his early beginnings, but every time Rincewind reappears, he reminds me that he can be worst than Anthony at times. Possibly the Welsey Crusher of his universe. A pathetic character that really was not funny. Why does Pratchett return to him? The entire Unseen University gets tiresome and shows Pratchett at his worse.
He soars as a writer with the Watch and Susan and the Witches, but he become self-indulgent and often lazy with the Wizards.
Skald the Rhymer, that is an excellent point.
Jim