The Lord of the Rings – The Best fantasy ever?

Isn’t The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien the best piece of fantasy writing ever? If the movies were not fascinating enough, the books are even better.

I read the Hobbit and loved it but ever since I have started reading the LOTR (which is actually a single novel and not a trilogy as people erroneously often call it), I have been mesmerised by the quality of the writing and the depth with which the characters, the locations and the histories have been modelled.

What has amazed me the most is the panache with which the author has composed the numerous and often very lengthy songs throughout the length of the story. For an author to be able to write such a long and fantastic story without losing the reader’s interest is a huge achievement in itself. But when you add to it the fact that he has deviced a seemingly different style of poetry to go along with story, you really start to understand what it is that makes LOTR the best piece of fiction writing ever.

Not to mention the numerous times the novel has run into problems due to printer’s errors, compositor’s mistakes including well-intentioned ‘corrections’ of the invented languages and delicately constructed nomenclatures by Tolkien. Despite suffering from such tragic setbacks, Tolkien kept working on rectifying the problems and the publishing of these books spanned over a decade. At the end, Tolkien has delivered the world’s most fascinating piece of fantasy writing ever to be published. And all this way back in the 1950s.

So, for me, there is absolutely no question about it. There is not and will not be any other book that even comes a close second.

Do you agree with me or do you think there are others better than LOTR?