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One could put the sense of the original question this way: "is this apple a better apple than that orange is an orange?" One could find that there are standards by which to judge such a comparison. Is it fresher? Is it free of blemishes? Is it sweeter? More sour, as apples and oranges go?
We lump both CoH and LotR into a category of "fantasy", which is just as apt as lumping apples and oranges together as fruit. However, differences are as important as similarities.
LotR was called by its author a Romance and a Faery Story. CoH is, by comparison, Tragedy and Myth. Neither of them is Comedy, obviously.
Both stories achieve their purposes within their categories. LotR is full of color and adventure and has a generally happy ending. It also brings the reader through escape, recovery, and consolation. And, as the author himself said was essential for Faery Story, its happy ending comes about through eucatastrophe. As such, LotR is seminal and groundbreaking. It is as long as it needs to be to tell the story to be told. By comparison, CoH is dark, bold, and cold, as one would expect northern tragic myth to be. It also succeeds within its genre. Is it long and short enough to tell the story to be told? I have read above that some readers think it is not on a par with LotR on this score.
So, to be brusque in a summation, using far too little data, but daring nonetheless, I think it fair to say that LotR succeeds as a romance/faery story better than CoH as a tragic myth. That does not say that CoH was not worth writing or reading! But if one is going to compare them, this seems at least as fair a comparison as any I've read elsewhere.
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