I think it's pretty much known that Tolkein was no professional writer. He took not classes nor obeyed the traditional rules of prose and format. To some that is a reason to stay away, however to mkost it just adds weight to the story. He multitude of characters would normally be something a writer avoids but as Tolkein had a whole world mapped out, traditional story-telling was of no importance to him. There was no love interest, no traditional ending and no attempt to hide the fact that there were more things going on than what he wrote. To me the books are the greatesty works of fantasy fiction ever written, and half of the reason I feel this was is BECAUSE it's not written the way all others were.