I am reading lotr and it is at the same time great and very underwhelming.

It is great as a story of a place (Middle Earth) and everything is so full of lore and well thought. The characters are not very deep but they have their personalities and some of the best moments are their dialogs (most of them are in the movies but changed in when they were said).

Now the bad. It starts incredibly slow and the prose itself is weird. I remember the part where Gandalf tells where he had been during the Council and it reads like the mumblings of a senile man with the amount of insignificant detail that would never happen in a real conversation. At times the dialogues are way too artificial.

Overall I have been enjoying (just started Two Towers) but keep these things in mind. I am a sucker for world building and lore and this lotr delivers.