Listen, the worldbuilding is of course fantastic and what most fantasy aspires to, but the book gets progressively more tiring to read because Tolkien is so hell-bent on making you understand exactly where the characters are on the map in every. single. paragraph. I WANT to love this book, some parts of it are beautifully written, but... the *story* is wonderful. The prose however borders on exhausting, and 90% of what you learn about the characters is told to you by either the narrator or other characters, it's not shown as the story progresses. They also don't develop unique voices - if you were to cover up the dialogue tags, you'd have little to no clue who is talking unless it's Sam, especially in the second book.