During his eleventy-[first] birthday celebration (hobbits have their own way of counting), Bilbo Baggins reluctantly agrees to give up the powerful but corrupt Ring of Power he found years before in The Hobbit. But getting rid of the ring turns out to be no easy task. In this first installment of Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, Inglis's skilled narration manages to retain the old-fashioned, fairy tale quality of the original text but is also well in tune with the story's darker aspects. As Bilbo's nephew, Frodo, and his friends take center stage to help dispose of the ring before some truly unsavory characters can obtain it, Inglis demonstrates he is up to the task of relating the original story's drama, suspense, and dark mysticism