Middle Earth is an incredible creation, and Tolkien deserves great credit for creating a mythology so durable and intriguing. However, The Lord of the Rings is not great writing. The plot is practically a shaggy-dog story — a string of ever-more-outlandish scenarios, some with no good reason for being included. On a page-to-page level, Tolkien is the most dry fantasy writer I've ever read. The experience as a whole is saved only by the magnitude of the creation. That said, I will probably read it again someday (this was my first time), and I'll probably enjoy it more knowing what to expect.