The Last Ring Bearer by Kirill Eskov

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Apologies if this has already been posted before, but I couldn't find it in a search.

The Last Ring Bearer by Kirill Eskov is an account of the LOTR series from the perspective of Sauron. In it, Mordor is portrayed as a city on the brink of industrial revolution populated by Alchemists, Poets, Mechanics and Astronomers.

I thought it sounded really interesting. There is an unofficial English Language version. Has anyone read it?
 
I've got in my TBR pile.
There are [ahem] unofficial translations available if you want to look them out...
 
I'm aware of this story but I'm given to understand that it loses much in translation. Though I do find it a fascinating concept, it's pretty much what I was expecting from Stan Nicholls Orcs series...
 
Dunno 'bout TLRB, but what I expected from Stan Nicholls' Orcs was undelivered while Jacqueline Carey delivered it well done in The Sundering. What I expected was reasons... and she gave reasons why Melkor was driven from Aman, why the Witch-king hates Elendil's family, why Sauron took Gandalf's scheme to make Aragorn into Elessar as a declaration of war, and she showed how Frodo was an uninformed bumpkin easily manipulated by Gandalf. The orcs in Orcs are just differently appearing humans. The differences between orcs, dwarves, and humans are about as much as between a cherry red 1956 Chevrolet Corvette and a candy red 1956 Chevrolet Corvette.... i.e. none.
 
I actually downloaded this as a PDF a few years ago and gave a it a go. As @CupofJoe says, it's difficult to tell whether it's much good because the translation is extremely poor, which makes it unenjoyable to read. What I did get from it was that the voice is absolutely not Tolkienesque (but then, I wonder if Tolkien himself sounds Tolkienesque when translated into Russian?), and has a much more modern feel.

Still, I am intrigued enough in the concept that I'd very much like to read an official copy. I don't suppose the Tolkien estate would approve, though, even after Christopher's passing. Not without significant recompense, anyway. So unless we can find a Russian publishing translator on Chrons I fear we might have to let this one slip us by...
 
Ok, I've read a little bit of this now. The concept and the switching of POVS certainly is intriguing; we get to see conversations from Saruman's POV rather than Gandalf's, for example, which makes for interesting reading. Gandalf is the warmonger who believes the transactional nature of the sacrifice he is imposing upon the civilisation of Mordor will be vindicated by those who write the history books. No doubt he is correct, given that the history books would be written by the race of Men under the victorious Elessar II and his descendants.

Also, the familiarity of the setting, geography and characters means it's easy to grasp what's going and become engaged in the story from early on.

However, the problem is the writing itself. Unable to speak Russian, I've no idea for sure whether the problem lies in the translation or the original text, but I suspect it to be the original. Put simply, the author has no concept of how to anchor the language of the work in its proper temporal seeting; stylistically, it does not read like Tolkien's English. I mentioned this above, and this might have been forgivable had the author taken the time at least weed out the numerous anachronisms, which are both material and linguistic. Obviously Tolkien gets a fair bit of stick from using such a highly stylised approximation/bastardisation (delete according to taste) of classical English, but if you're going to set a piece of fiction inside that world (even if that piece is an attempted counter-argument) then IMO it ought to stylistically adhere to the principles of that world. It's far too contemporary. The contemporaneous nature of the language also opens the book up to another criticism, which is that it offers up the perception that the author is only able to view LOTR through a contemporary lens, rather than a historical one.

Here are some choice quotes which made me cringe:

"Dearest Saruman... please forgive an old man, but, erm...I wasn't listening all that closely... even if we start to bicker, what's gonna happen to the world, eh?"

"Gandalf, a child is always a disaster in the house. First, dirty diapers, then broken toys."

"What the hell do they need it for?"


At one point Aragorn calls women "broads". I'm pretty sure Aragorn wasn't a docker from 1940s New York, but there you go.

Then there are some passages which are just nonsensical, and perhaps have been translated badly. At one point Radagast says, "What you are about to do is worse than a crime. It is a mistake." Eh?

Chapter 5 comes across less as a story than a summary of military campaigns that happened either in or just prior to events in LOTR, and is written from the authorial voice rather than being explained through dialogue, as, for example, was the case in The Shadow Of The past (one of the best chapters in LOTR IMO). The fact that it's placed at Chapter 5, after some story has been allowed to roll along, is strange. The whole thing feels a bit first-drafty, as though the author has got very excited by his endeavours and not followed through with a good, hard edit, or even a second opinion from a hardened Tolkien reader. As such, it's like most fan-fiction; an interesting mish-mash of ideas, but chaotic, slipshod and amateurish execution. The reason this has garnered so much attention IMO is simply because of the coat-tails it chooses to ride on. Its lack of professionalism would prohibit the Tolkien estate from ever allowing this to surface as an official publication.
 
Why not allow its publication? What harm would it do?
 
So much LOTR discussion lately, I thought I'd post about The Last Ringbearer - and sure enough here is a thread.

The second edition translation (HERE - Internet Archive) is a pretty good read. There are some complaints about the art of the translation, but I was not turned off by a few unexpected grammar choices and some ungraceful dialog. In short I enjoyed the story. It offered an interesting point of view and retelling of the story in a way that pretty bluntly claims that the fairy tale version we all know was greatly romanticized in the telling, an idea that I think is pretty awesome in itself.

Additionally we visit a few new parts of Middle Earth to offer a perspective that while the ancient kingdoms of Arnor and Gondor were deteriorating into vast empty spaces during the 3rd age, there were other parts of Middle Earth teaming with activity, an idea hinted at by Tolkien, but told more directly here.

At times while I read the tale I wondered if I was also experiencing some of the Philosophical differences of English Academia vs Russian Academia. Though, that was probably my imagination at work.
 

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