"The Last Ringbearer", by Kirill Eskov, 1999.

[Deleted]

"In Soviet Russia, Aragorn murders Boromir."

Some background info:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

And here, the unofficial English fan translation, which may be downloaded legally: fan.lib.ru/img/e/eskov/last_ringbearer_engl/last_ring_bearer.pdf



Just found out that there is a "legal" Spanish print edition to this almost mythical book of LotR-fandom, and promptly snatched it on Amazon. Not going to argue about copyright problems here - "The Iron Tower", this is not, and the Tolkien estate should be compensated for their intellectual property being used in such a way. - At the same time, this book seems to be pretty brilliant, and so I don't want to miss out on it, either, because of some more or less justified legal mumbo-jumbo.

- Will report how it reads; not from snippets from the PDF, but how the book feels after I've read it completely.

Yours,

Rafe

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ymarkov.livejournal.com/273409.html

Eskov's own thoughts on the novel.

[Otto Harkaman]

Thanks looking forward to taking a look at this.

[Deleted]

Going back to this one, after a while. The book, after all, is legally available in Spanish; that's how I got my copy.

Anyone else read the novel? It's a bit bland, but it's also surprisingly witty in its approach to Tolkien: Other recent Tolkien-inspired writers (Stan Niccholls, for example) did not do as interesting a job as Eskov did.

[Deleted]

Refresh my memory. Is this the "Sauron did nothing wrong" inversion of LOTR?

[Deleted]

You are not wrong.

[Deleted]

Nov 14, 2020 16:58:43 GMT -6 @rafael said:

You are not wrong.

In that case, I'm familiar with the concept/synopsis but haven't yet had the pleasure to read it. I've been meaning to on and off for about 20 years now but somehow at the last moment I click "add to cart" on something else. You'll have to let us know your thoughts if you consider it worth reading. 

[Deleted]

Hehe, thing is, the link to the - free, and legally available - English translation used to be included on Wikipedia. It seems to be gone now.


archive.org/details/TheLastRingbearerSecondEdition

Here, you can have your own look, though.

Overall, it's certainly "unambitious" writing, with the thrill of the text certainly stemming from the taboo-breaking, of sorts. I found it pretty entertaining, though, because it remains so original: It's not a deconstruction of Tolkien, it's a commentary, and it's occasionally quite witty. Not to crap on writers like Stan Nicholls and Dennis McKiernan (both who I greatly appreciate), but this one is one of a kind.