I came across this on one of my treks through the interwebz. It is actually an interesting story. Written by a Russian biologist, it takes the world for Middle Earth, and retells the War of the Ring from a historical standpoint… sort of. What the author tries to do is re-interpret the ‘legend’ of the war into a more realistic telling of an ancient conflict whose history was written by the victors. the author takes the point of view of the “Orocuens” (orcs) a race of nomadic desert dwellers, and their counterparts who built Barad-Dur some 6 centuries earlier to study science, medicine, etc and throw off the yoke of old world magicians and superstitious Warlords. Interesting…
(The link below leads to a fairly recent translation into English. Apparently, though published in Russia and several European countries, publishers elsewhere are unwilling/unable to fight the VERY litigious Tolkien Right’s holders and publish the story in English.)
Anybody out there read this already? I only just started it and am up to chapter three, so don’t feel comfortable explaining much more than is available in the prologue.
