Bumping because I had a few more comments-
Remember, these things aren't static. Until a few years ago you'd hard put to find
any but the most backhanded "praise" of Tolkien's writing in the online SF&F fan community. Used to be the general view, in many areas of the net, that he was "a decent worldbuilder but a terrible writer" whose unreadable work had been heroically salvaged by Peter Jackson and whose contribution (if any) had been to come up with the crude beginnings of the genre later perfected by
real writers (like Jordan or G.R.R.M). And that's when they were being
nice...
Now that has changed quite a bit in recent years, I think. You still see people bashing away, as described by
Lotrelf, but it seems more like individual opinion rather than general consensus- a definite improvement. Could it be we actually have "The Hobbit" film trilogy to thank for this?