Rate this book

The Last Ring-Bearer (2000)

by Kirill Yeskov(Favorite Author)

3.49 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

review 1: The good in the LOTR trilogy is so good that you want to shout: "Frodo, ditch that weak english Shire ale, break a bottle of the hard stuff over Gandalf's head, and tell that senile old quack of a wizard to stick his ring where the sun don't shine." "Oh, and Sam, grow a spine and get out of Frodo's ass." As for the other two pipe-weed smoking hobbits on tour, does anyone even remember their names?Pure good versus pure evil gets boring real quick, the shade of grey called Gollum remains too much of a sideshow, and our pet hobbit's moment of doubt on Mount Doom looks like Tolkien threw it in as an afterthought in a futile closing-time attempt to make the main character of the trilogy go a little deeper than a surfboard.The bad is more interesting than the good, and in LOTR t... morehe malice of Mordor is so deliciously evil that you really want Aragorn's half-elf run off with a football team of teenage orcs, the cheating wizards burned at the stake before being fed to the crocodiles, and Sauron to reach world domination in a grand finale akin to Doctor Evil kicking Austin Powers to pieces.So I started The Last Ringbearer with high hopes. Maybe there'd be justice after all.It kicked off pretty good. The hidden agendas of the powers that be turned them into much more convincing powers that be. Superstitious wizards versus the science of Mordor, religion trying to stamp out reason (pope vs. Galileo, creationists against evolution), the realpolitik of Gondor, and an orc with more personality than the entire population of Hobiton combined. Good stuff.But just before halftime things went downhill real quick. The spy story in the hybrid town of Venice-Constantinople could have made an interesting novel on its own ("John LeCarre in Middle Earth"), but as an intermezzo in LOTR-as-it-really-happened it was as distracting as the Shaka Zulu detour. The end of the book (Mordor's Manhattan Project, elf politics, last throes of the wizards, wrap-up at Mt Doom) looks like the skeleton of a building that got abandoned in mid-construction because the money ran out.The writing is often really bad, but because I don't read russian I don't know whether to blame the author or the translator for that.In its present state, The Last Ringbearer looks like an unfinished manuscript. That's a shame. I really wanted it to be good, because the idea upon which it is built deserves more than a blueprint. This book needs an editor that kicks the author out of bed to finish the job.
review 2: Jeśli myślałeś, że orkowie i trole to rasy brzydkich potworów - nie mogłeś mylić się bardziej! Bardzo lubię takie "alternatywne wersje", a ta jest bardzo ciekawa. Wersja świata jest nieco bardziej realistyczna - pozbawiona patosu, oraz totalnego podziału na białych i czarnych. W pewnym momencie nieco odbiega od tematu, przeradzając się w opowieść kryminalną - ale jest to całkiem dobry wątek "poboczny". Polecam - jeśli nie w wydaniu książkowym (ciężko dostępna, ale mi się udało) - to w ebooku. less

Download links for: The Last Ring-Bearer

Advertising