Dreary, plodding. It is a pretty good critical rule of thumb that anything that takes itself seriously as an epic creates its own language in the telling -- Tolkein cheats on this by creating a clutch of separate mock-languages, etc., but it is an add on to the epic. His own prose is not very interesting. It is sort of Edwardian high-style, clunky. One would think that someone so saturated in medieval poetry would write beautifully, but for some reason all that stuff is handed off into the mock-languages. You don't read LOTR for the style, but for the story. Every once in a long while, his prose begins to match the content (some of the battles are well described).

yours,

Peter T.