The parody closely follows the outline of The Lord of the Rings, lampooning the prologue and map of Middle-earth; its main text is a short satirical summary of Tolkien's plot.

[5] Saruman is satirised as Serutan, a laxative, who lives in a "mighty fortress" with "pastel pink-and-blue walls" and a "pale-lavender moat crossed by a bright-green drawbridge", giving access to an amusement park for tourists.

The Tolkien scholar David Bratman, writing in Mythlore, quotes an extended passage from the book in which Frito, Spam Gangree (Sam Gamgee), and Goddam jostle on the edge of the "Black Hole" (a tar pit), commenting "Those parodists wrought better than they knew".

He explains that Tolkien, in his many drafts, came very close to "inadvertently writing the parody version of his own novel", though in the end he managed to avoid that, in Bratman's view, remarkably completely.

[19] Leah Schnelbach, on the science fiction and fantasy site Tor.com, writes that the book is full of "interesting comedic thoughts ... stuffed in under all the silliness".

[6] In her view, it takes "an easy, marketable hook" and creates "a cutting satire of shallow consumerism and the good-old-fashioned American road trip".

The eagle "is efficient to the point of rudeness, yelling at them to fasten their seatbelts, snapping at them to use the barf bags if necessary, and complaining about running behind schedule: he's the encapsulation of everything wrong with air travel".

[21][22] Current editions have different artwork by Douglas Carrel,[23] since the paperback cover art for Lord of the Rings prevalent in the 1960s, then famous, is now obscure.