Anyway, it's not uncommon for a work of fiction to take inspiration from another work of fiction. Take a look at "Young Goodman Brown" (Nathaniel Hawthorne) and "The Man in the Black Suit" (Stephen King). Both excellent short stories, but essentially have the same plotline; King took all his ideas from Hawthorne's story, but people overlook it.
And come on...everything that's a medieval fantasy draws a little something from Tolkien. He made up, well, everything, so you can't fault someone for drawing a little idea from his works.
On topic though, I never got into the series >.>. So...heh.
