LOTR Mordor Style

[Strolen]

Did you see this on slashdot over the weekend?

"It's been said that history is written by the winners but Laura
Miller writes in Salon about a counterexample as she reviews a new
version of Lord of the Rings. The Last Ring-bearer was published to
acclaim in Russia by Kirill Yeskov, a paleontologist whose job is
reconstructing long-extinct organisms and their way of life. Yeskov
performs essentially the same feat in his book. The Last Ring-bearer
is set during and after the end of the War of the Ring and told from
the perspective of the losers. In Yeskov's retelling, available in
translation as a free download, the wizard Gandalf is a war-monger
intent on crushing the scientific and technological initiative of
Mordor and its southern allies because science 'destroys the harmony
of the world and dries up the souls of men' and Aragorn is depicted by
Yeskov as a ruthless Machiavellian schemer who is ultimately the
puppet of his wife, the elf Arwen. Sauron's citadel Barad-dur is, by
contrast, described as '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.'"

Review: http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/index.html

Link to download: http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html

[Scrasamax]

Downloaded, reading now

[Murometz]

those crazy russians! 

(Must read this too!!)

[Scrasamax]

56 pages in and it is an interesting read, Mordor as a city of science and progress facing war mongering traditionalists and the machinations of evil poison using elves and their human puppets. The role of the Nazgul is absolutely fascinating!