Well I didn’t either! But I have just found out that there is a book that gives a fair and unbiased version of those events.
A friend of mine had this link on his Facebook page.
The site is down now but it explained how a Russian scientist named Kirill Yeskov wrote a book describing events occurring after the fall of Sauron, The Last Ring-bearer, written from the point of view of some of Sauron’s supporters. It turns out that Gandal et al. are not as virtuous as we were led to believe.
This man has translated it to English. He has created a .PDF file and you will find links on his page to a Kindle version. There is also a link to the original Russian version.
I’ve downloaded it and will start reading it. I always suspected that those Elves were secretly hiding something behind those ethereal oh-so-noble faces.
Despite this attempt to discredit LOTR, I have decided that whenever I run across a bible-thumper, I will claim to use LOTR as my good book and tell them I pray to Gandalf.
Stop coddling those godless savage terrrorists from Mordor! Remember the fall of Isengard! If we allow this book to be published in English…then the ORCS WILL HAVE WON!!
LOL, funny stuff. Reminds me of the Tolkien Crackpot Theories page, a collection of deranged ideas gathered from rec.arts.books.tolkien over the years.
To be fair to Faramir, he was extremely sick in bed at the time of the coup d’etat (really Gandalf’s, with Aragorn as figurehead) and by the time he could get up it was too late, and he was smart enough to know whose good side to get on. Of course, history does not record the savage suppression of the ‘Steward’s Rebellion’ in Ithilien in the early Fourth Age…
(From the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen)
I’m going to give it a shot, even though I still haven’t read LotR for reasons I’ll not get into. I may not read it all the way through, but I’m curious how much of it I’ll get without having read the original. And I figure that perspective might be interesting. If I think I have something to say, I’ll say it.
i’ve started to read it. The translation is clumsy in places (the person who translated it is obviously not a native English speaker). I don’t think you’ll get anything out of it unless you’ve read the Lord of the Rings.
Meh. A lot of it seems to run on forever, but once the story itself gets going, it’s rather good, and, really, after they get through with the part of history that is covered by LotR, you wouldn’t even need the movie knowledge.
Also, the translation was produced in collaboration with the Russian author himself. And the translator himself is a USSR expatriot now living in the U.S.
And, Arnold, I think you overstate the clumsiness. Though I admit it’s worse in the beginning.
Maybe I’ll have more to say on this later, after I’ve decompressed from the reading session.