Frodo Baggins inherits a ring that must be destroyed in the fires where it was made, and the journey there and back again takes three volumes, six books, and over a thousand pages. Tolkien spent twelve years writing it, drawing on his philological knowledge, his experience in the trenches of World War I, and his Catholic faith. The prose is deliberately archaic; the world-building unprecedented in its depth. Critics dismissed it; readers loved it; it became one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. The eucatastrophe at the end, the unexpected turn toward joy, is Tolkien's answer to despair.