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Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague
Well, this is a nuanced view... what does "all over the place" mean? And the world building is necessary to give the reader a sense of the world in which the plot occurs - otherwise there's nothing in particular at stake. As a result of the work done to build up the world and its history, the books are an epic, not just a fairy tale. Tolkein isn't the greatest prose writer of the 20th century, but "poorly written" is ludicrous. For one thing, his ability to craft an image in precise detail of things, people, creatures that never existed or ever could is amazing.
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And this is where my criticism becomes circular logic. You need the detail to build the world but the level of detail takes away from driving the plot forward. So how do you do the world building and the plot development without one taking away from the other.
A good example might be the birthday party in the hobbit. It's about 40 pages long and I don't think adds to the book or the world. The key elements of that intro could have been woven in better throughout the story. He has quite a few moments like these. Poorly written might not have been the correct term but he certainly needed a good editor to push more of the world out of the main books and into the compendiums.
The Macguffern problem is a little bigger but he might be the early adopter of it so rather than it being a common fantasy trope it could have been new.