altariel | The Last Ring-bearer by Kirill Yeskov

"In 1999, Russian scientist Kirill Yeskov wrote The Last Ring-Bearer, a 139,000-word novel that re-wrote The Lord of the Rings trilogy–re-imagining J.R.R. Tolkien‘s heroic epic as a bloody war with unrecorded consequences. Now Yisroel Markov has released a translation of the novel (with Yeskov’s help)."

Article here.

Link to downloadable file here.

Disappointing article by Laura Miller at Salon.com in which daft ideas about fanfic are perpetuated here.

Excellent, well-informed critical article which puts it into a wider context of post-communist Eastern European fantasy here.

I'm about halfway through this now. The start is pretty brilliant:

"This, then, was the yeast on which Barad-Dûr rose six centuries ago, that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle Earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."

As you know, Boromir, I've longed to write a story about Númenor on these lines. So I kind of love that paragraph.

It doesn't pull any punches. Aragorn is a nasty piece of work under the control of some extremely inhuman Elves, who are set on destroying the nascent modernity of Mordor and re-establishing their not-so-heavenly kingdom on Earth. Loads about warfare and surveillance, with a strong flavour of WW2. Ithilien is an important battleground. The bit where Aragorn seizes the rule of Gondor from Faramir is jaw-dropping; should warm the heart of anyone who's wanted to see realpolitik play out in a Middle-earth setting.

The translation is dreadful, but I can read past that. The women are all there to service the men, which is rubbish and critically undermines the novel's self-perception as radical. Part way through it turns into a spy thriller, and you can't help thinking of what Tolkien said when he contemplated writing a Fourth Age thriller: "Not worth writing."

Still, I've been enjoying the ride, and it's fun to see the mythos flipped round. Like someone has sneaked up behind it, jabbed it in the kidney, and put the boot in on the way down. But it's not like fanfiction writers haven't been doing this kind of thing for ages, and so it's extra annoying to see it get so much fanfare at Salon and so on.

One last interesting point: Faramir is unequivocally a good guy. As if whatever your standpoint, you can't help but point at Faramir and go: "Yes, that's how it should be. If governing was done by people like that, things would be so much better." Seems like everyone is a nostalgic romantic at heart. It's like punk never happened.