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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celtavian" data-source="post: 1449457" data-attributes="member: 5834">And a great passion for fairy tales and epics. Tolkien enjoyed what he wrote as much as fans enjoy reading it. He was a very competent writer. I feel the boring parts of Lord of the Rings only lend greater verisimilitude to the overall story. Not every part can be slam bang action and intrigue. The hobbits were traveling about marveling at the world of Middle Earth as much a tourist as the reader and when Frodo and Sam were traveling, they weren't great heros capable of fighting hordes of orcs, they were weary, overburdened hobbits who fate favored from time to time. All in all, the boring, slow parts made the characters seem more believable and real in a way that most authors can't seem to manage, including Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin (whom I think is a great writer as well).How many writers can take an utterly non-combat character like Frodo and Sam and make them interesting and capable? Even in Martin's stories, only Sansa and Catelyn were non-combat. Even Arya and Tyrion tore it up, and Bran had special powers through his wolf. IMO, Tolkien had a wide range characters in his book. He doesn't get credit for very good use of fantasy archetypes, some of which he helped create. The story is much more complex, interesting, and varied than most fantasy stories, and if you really studied it in depth you would see how it compares more closely to the "real" world than most of the other stories mentioned, even in characterization. Anyhow, it would take a truly inspired author to usurp Tolkien's place in fantasy. Jordan I haven't read all that much of, and Martin is very good, but he's no Tolkien.</blockquote>

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