It's funny. I haven't been enjoying RoP and I read this with interest. But then he started listed problems, and I have to say I disagree. The point of the endur

It's funny. I haven't been enjoying RoP and I read this with interest. But then he started listed problems, and I have to say I disagree. The point of the endurance test isn't honour, it's a power play - after feeling scorned the dwarf wants to put the elf in his place, and once the dwarf feels he has the upper hand his ego lets him engage, the elf knows this and plays along- master diplomat indeed. Galadriel is a bad ass. Yes, in LOTR you could kind of just gesture at it and say "Oh yeah she's 1000 years old and 800 years ago she kicked ass", that's fine when it's not her story, but this is her story. It wasn't executed well, but they did need to actually do it, and she can't act all calm and composed when she's meant to be relatively in her teenage years coping with the loss of her brother. To me, yes there are execution problems. But the core problem is different. It is trying to be Game of Thrones. It's telling several different stories in parallel - the harfoots, the humans, Galadriel, the other humans, the elves. Clearly, one day, these will combine, but at the moment it's five under-served, boring stories. None of the characters are worth getting to know. This is because they're trying to do the complex plotlines of Game of Thrones. But they miss that GoT started as 1 plot. It was the starks of winterfell. Stark went to the capital. End of season 1 he dies and his kids are thrown to the wind and it's only then that the multple plot lines start to explode. By that point you've got a deep investment in the characters and it evolves from there. The exceptions to this - Dani etc. struggle through this, I remember watching the Dani scenes in game of thrones and thinking "For gods' sake when is this going to actually link up with the story" and entire plotlines fail when they don't keep the thread (Dorne).