Agreed, but I gotta give credit for not just choosing to unpause whenever it wants like Peacock does, can't tell you how many times I've paused to run to the store or do chores and come back to it having progressed 2+ episodes.

Gonna add the caveat that book 4 and a couple of the novellas were originally recorded by a different narrator than Jefferson Mays, and people disliked them so much that Mays went back and recorded those as well. Make sure you get the right copy if you're hopping on the audiobook train, I couldn't make it through book 4 with the other guy so I ended up just reading it myself.

Oh so adding elves and dwarves to Europe circa 4000 BC is realistic but adding black people to the European continent circa 4000 BC is unrealistic bullshit that completely ruins the source material?

Elves are fictional. Dwarves are fictional. Ents are fictional. Orcs are fictional. Magic is fictional. Nothing about LOTR is realistic or reflects real-life ancient Europe at all. So get the fuck over yourself that they added one more fictional thing to a fictional world.

And HBO has spent 20 years as the channel for premium content by giving a shit about what they attached their name to. Do you think it's a coincidence they were able to charge hundreds of dollars a year on top of cable costs and thrive while doing it? Would you spend $60 a month on Netflix? Because millions of Americans have been spending around that on HBO since the 90s.