What is your take on "The Last Ringbearer"?

[Beutlin]

What is your take on the book "The Last Ringbearer" by Kirill Eskov? Has anyone actually read it here? I read parts of it a couple of weeks ago. Suffice to say, I found it pretty trashy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer

Middle-earth according to Mordor: http://www.salon.com/2011/02/15/last_ringbearer/

Why I reimagined “LOTR” from Mordor’s perspective: http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ri ... planation/

A review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/149874157

[yovargas]

Ha! I wouldn't be surprised if it's not a very good book but I gotta say that I do love the idea!

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It would be a vast copyright violation in any country other than Russia!

[Frelga]

There would certainly be a lawsuit. However, am argument can be made that the book is fair use in that it exists as a criticical and philosophical response to LOTR. While the world and the characters of Eskov's novel use names and events of LOTR, they also tell a very different story.

I think the book is a lot less of a Tolkien ripoff than many fantasy works legally published in Englsih (Belgariad comes to mind). And a much better read.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

As I read current copyright law (at least in the U.S.), that would be a difficult argument to be made. As I understand it, the book doesn't so much comment on the original work (as a parody would) as it does tell the same story using the same characters, locations, and events, but from a different perspective. I don't think that would survive a copyright challenge.

Edit: Ax, of course, will disagree!

[yovargas]

I would hate being a copyright lawyer. So much grey! I hate grey.

[Frelga]

As I read current copyright law (at least in the U.S.), that would be a difficult argument to be made. As I understand it, the book doesn't so much comment on the original work (as a parody would) as it does tell the same story using the same characters, locations, and events, but from a different perspective. I don't think that would survive a copyright challenge.

Edit: Ax, of course, will disagree!

So will Frelga.

It does not tell the same story. It is not LOTR from POV of Shagrat or Witch King. It begins after Pelennor, and the three protagonists are all original characters - a military surgeon from Umbar, an Orc (a human, Mongolian nomadic type) of Mordorian special forces, and a Gondorian officer.

Orcs, Trolls, and even Nazgûl are all human, while Elves are more consistent with the tradition of them as being not very nice at all (PJ's Thranduil would be right at home, I imagine). The canon characters who both feature prominently and retain their original personality most closely are Faramir, who is a sort of intelligence chief for Gondor, and Éowyn, pretty much as herself but with a rather different backstory where Aragorn is concerned. Aragorn is NOT himself.

Nor are the settings exactly Tolkien's. My favorite was Umbar, never really described by Tolkien but here imagined as a Venice-like beautiful city of merchants and heady intrigue.

Compare that with Belgariad, which features a bad god deformed by touching a pure artifact, a line of lawful kings whose single male heirs are guarded by a wizard, the company with a forthright, heavily armed knight, a marvelous archer, and a man who turns into a bear, and the settings that include a magical forest and a country of horse-lords.

The most vulnerable point of Eskov's book from the originality standpoint is the objective of its heroes - a destruction of a magical artifact (not the Ring, which in this version... um, does anyone care about spoilers? OK, just in case... which

Hidden text.

actually is simply a piece of bling designed to distract the Western forces

).

V, I wonder if you are thinking of the Black Book of Arda, which is more or less a retelling of Silm with Melkor as a creative free spirit and Ilúvatar as a tyrannical autocrat. It's a Russian thing.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

That's possible! Nor am I enough of an expert on copyright law to be terribly confident in my opinion, anyway!

[Smaug's voice]

I have read parts of it (I don't own any copy of it) and I did like it.
I will just say that I pretty much agree with most of what Frelga said.

And I loved Umbar too!

[axordil]

It's less of an IP test of derivative work than The Wind Done Gone was, as it's not even covering the same time frame as the originating work, and it's bringing at least as much new commentary to the table. Characters and other names--for that matter, even titles--are not covered by copyright protection.