Large parts of Book III, particularly the Rohan chapters, kind of leave me cold. I think the problem is that with several chapters containing no Hobbits, it shifts into complete heroic mode, and I just have a hard time connecting with it. I feel like the book suffers a bit from the Hobbits being absent so much. The Silmarillion lacks Hobbits too of course, but the Rohan chapters don't have the mythic wonder of the Sil (or of some other parts of LotR such as the Pelennor). King of the Golden Hall does very little for me, for example, and I don't particularly care for Théoden until he meets Merry.
A couple of smaller things that bug me:
- While some of the tensions between different orc groups are interesting, a lot the Uruk-hai dialog is really bad. PJ's version is worse, but it's not really by that much.
- No matter how many times I read it, I always find Helms Deep confusing and hard to follow. Tolkien really should have included a map.
![Wink ;)](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
With that said, there are obviously many parts that are excellent, such as Treebeard and the entire chapter of Voice of Saruman. And smaller things like Gimli geeking out over the Helms Deep caves. And even the weaker parts of Tolkien are still pretty good.