>>102994294Tolkien: Pastiches of early medieval sagas, only longer, padded with linguistics lessons irrelevant to anything. Between that and the turgid prose, I don't know anyone finishes Tolkien. The Hobbit is passable for kids.
King: If Lovecraft could write novels. Long, poorly defined novels, with apeshit plots. Probably the best of these four, in fairness, since King draws from personal experience in some early things, like The Shining and Pet Sematary.
Rowling: Trite public school adventures, a la Stalky and Co, but with MAGIC! She fails to keep the magic vague enough and creates a lot of inconsistencies. Harry is a dud of a character at the center of everything. Her best, Prisoner of Azkaban, is crippled by the ludicrous twist reveal of the antagonist.
Kind of telling that their best stuff is all early works with lots of editing, isn't it? Imagine if somebody had sent back Lovecraft's drafts and said, "It's promising, but fix these issues and flesh out the story and characters more."
