It’s Amazing! Granted I’m only like 110 pages into Fellowship but Tolkien is an amazing story teller. I read the Hobbit a while back and since I work from home (the one benefit of my company having Covid hysteria) I get to read a lot more.
I remember Peter Jackson saying he wanted to tell Tolkien’s story. It’s too bad modern day adaptations don’t have that respect for source material. Wheel of Time comes to mind. That showrunner is more concerned with lgbt representation than actually adapting the story. And I have no hope for the new show based on the Simarillion (which I’ll read after I finish the trilogy).
Tolkien was subverting Tolkien tropes before it was cool. The Silmarillion and the assorted Unfinished Tales are pretty dark, dismal, and depressing, and filled with morally flawed antiheroes that do some pretty despicable stuff. If anything, it was The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings that were the subversions, where the evil was finally defeated and the good did not fall to corruption.
Tolkien did it well I’m sure. Nothing wrong with occasional subversion but it seems that is what everyone does now. There is a reason the heroes journey has stood the test of time