Ah, well, i know that The Hobbit was written before The Lord of the Rings but i think that LOTR was the saga that delivered the huge impact on the fantasy scene at that time.. That's why i tend to think of Tolkein as the genre's inventor. Further more, i know that several of the latter Conan books were, in fact, written by Robert Jordan (under a different alias of course).. As i said, original or not, i suggest you start reading The Wheel of Time and see for your self if you agree with the critics.
