Kirill Yeskov, a Russian scientist, wrote a re-imagined version of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as a single novel, titled The Last Ring-Bearer. Released in 1999, the novel re-frames the events in Tolkien’s most famous works as a gritty war story told from the perspective of the troops of Mordor. Yisroel Markov has translated the nearly 140,000 word novel into English, and made it available through his blog. No commercial release is planned due to “fear of the Tolkien estate, which rigidly controls all derivative works, especially in English.” I always enjoy seeing impressive fan-made works like this (I count both the novel and the translation, in this case), and I’ve been enjoying The Last Ring-Bearer thus far. The picture is of a no-less-impressive Lord of the Rings fan-work, a model of Minas Tirith made entirely of matchsticks. AB
