A lot wrong with a book like this, as many reviewers discuss. Ready is pompous, self-assured, factually wrong, in need of an editor (is an introduction or conclusion requisite?), and so overarching in his praise of Tolkien and dismissal of contemporaries and predecessors that one wonders on what his arguments are based. Has he read Tolkien? It's anyone's guess. 

Still. . . . Still, we might find in Ready's rhetoric the traditional British erudite littérateur, waxing in the parlor one evening, about the power of this work of fantasy. In such a venue, he hardly need do more than expound, has few demands accept to mesmerize through words. And he does.  This is not the plain-spoken backgrounder on Tolkien of Carter, Kocher, or Chance, but one who presumes a certain aesthetic sensibility about our beloved fantasy epic. 

Both reveling and highly speculative late in his career, yes, Ready is off-putting to Tolkien fans who seek to learn author or trilogy facts. I'm largely with them. On the other hand, a sometimes poetic and broadening take on a subject that is too often pedantic trivia skirmishes.