I hated Fellowship for the first while but I eventually got totally sucked into it. I love the poetry and long prosaic passages about nothing at all. I read it more as a really, really fucking long poem with the story being almost incidental than it does as a traditional 'Novel'. It entirely depends what you're after when you read it. If you want an action-packed page-turner then it's not for you (the Hobbit, however, is). But if you want a really well-written, prosaic story which plunges you into every detail (from the mundane to the breath-taking) of it's fantasy realm, them the LOTR series is a must. xx