Books like The Way Between the Worlds

This is a difficult one for me. I definitely enjoyed the plot, the characters and to a certain extend, the conclusion. I think what keeps me from rating this set higher than 3 stars was the writing style. This is a very personal thing (I find Tolkien a hard read for the same reason, so he's in good company), but I just didn't fall in love with the way he told the story.His descriptions were sometimes quite extraordinary and I found myself so astonished at his choice of phrase that I found it detrimental to the immersion I normally feel when reading (i.e. it got in the way of the story for me).I will read other books by him, but I didn't feel it to be a labour of love to read them.I did also find his attempts to give everyone good/evil aspects to thier characters to be a little clumsy (sorry!). I didn't quite believe in those protagonists who hated each other and then worked together, then didn't, etc.Finally, there seemed to be a lot less back story that there initially appeared to be. Ultimately, there were just two real stories. The one that happened X thousand years ago, and one which happens now. The mystery did not torment me in the same way it does Llian, and the resolution did not astonish me either.I apologise if this comes across as an unnecessarily harsh review - I can see that others rate this very highly, but to me whilst some of the ingredients were good, and the tale of interest, it was much too long for such a small tale (and I did enjoy that small tale).