[Rumil]

Goodness me, this is an old thread!

Maybe one day I'll figure out what I was trying to say about sleeping dragons!

HP versus LoTR is a bit of an unnecessary fight in my opinion. Both use traditional archetypical characters, eg Gandalf/Dumbledore/Merlin/Obi Wan Kenobi, and plots - orphan saves world from ultimate baddy, so its not that surprising that similarities emerge. Baddies - Nazgul and Dementors - are dark shadowy figures, but so are traditional ghosts, ghouls etc, and bright yellow figures just don't fit as bad-guys!

Maybe this is one of the reasons that both books are so accessible?

But the differences are marked as well, JRRT was far more interested in philology, landscape and history and the broad sweep of time and story in his sub-created world. Rowling grafts the fantasy on top of the familiar muggle world that we all know, and is more concerned with feelings and relationships. Tolkien rarely if ever says what his characters are feeling, we get to know them through their words and deeds. Rowling, in common with most modern authors, explicitly shows what Harry is feeling, a very different approach. She also draws on traditional boarding school stories (going right back to the Victorian 'Tom Brown's Schooldays') as much if not more than Fantasy.

For me, there's room for both on my shelf, but it's the Tolkien that I'd save from a house fire by a long way!