Still, it's good, but probably suffers from the same problem GEB does: because it's the first one to do its thing, it means a lot of the stuff it inspired have a better flow even if they only tackle one of its themes/aspects.

There's this idea that LoTR was "first" that has no basis in truth. Tolkien no doubt grew up reading Dunsany. Jon Bauer was a celebrity decades before Tolkien sat down to write The Hobbit. While Tolkien was writing it, Robert Howard pumped out 21 stories of Conan the Cimmerian (and died). The magic system in Dungeons and Dragons isn't taken from LoTR, it's taken from (international bestseller) The Dying Earth, which was published four years before Fellowship of the Ring.

The problem with everything else, though, is it's all dangerous. People die. Blood is shed. Endings aren't always happy. A place without civilization is a tricky place to live and wizards tend to fuck up your shit.

Lord of the Rings persists because it makes everything cozy. Frodo is Pooh. Sam is Eeyore. Aragorn is Christopher Robin. My wife loves it? She had a pair of Pound Puppies named Frodo and Bilbo. Me? I'd read Dying Earth, a few Conans and the whole of Vardeman's Cenotaph Road series before taking on The Hobbit in 4th grade which is probably why I've never been able to see LoTR as anything but trite bullshit. It's the era's Harry Potter - "let's make everything cute and British but also inescapably about the English caste system."

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. Sherlock Holmes in SPAA... I mean, medieval HRE.