3.2 KiB
[RT][FF][C] The Last Ringbearer (1999)
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Author: u/vallar57 Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic*
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URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/5knejl/rtffc_the_last_ringbearer_1999/
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Score: 27
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Created: 2016-12-28T01:15:51
Post:
Wikipedia article on the book.
English translation available here.
It was already submitted here, but since it was 3 years ago, and this sub is much bigger now, I decided to repost it.
Comments:
u/rhaps0dy4 [+8] (10 hours later)
Well. I really liked The Last Ringbearer, and I read it in english.
u/None [+7] (32 minutes later)
I remember reading about 40% of it and not liking it very much, partially because it turned into a spy thriller, and I'm not really interested in spy thrillers, partially because it was advertised as (and maybe intended by the author to be) something smarter and more mature, maybe even better than lotr and that... made it all the more unpleasant when it turned out to be kind of meh. I wasn't a fan. It's not even that Tolkien is all that sacred to me, but I still felt bad for him.
u/vallar57 [+4] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (an hour later)
You saw the wrong advertisement then :) At least in Russian, it was always known as part spy fiction, what with the author drawing inspiration from [Aquarium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquarium_(Suvorov)).
u/zconjugate [+1] (2 days later)
Yeah, I definitely enjoyed the first part, before it became a spy thriller, more.
u/ToaKraka [+3] https://i.imgur.com/OQGHleQ.png (13 minutes later)
When I read The Last Ringbearer a few years ago, I was very strongly reminded of my experiences with Project Gutenberg's translations of The Three Musketeers and of that book's several later sequels (collectively titled The Vicomte de Bragelonne, but usually split into several parts). The Three Musketeers consists primarily of action, while The Vicomte de Bragelonne focuses significantly more on court intrigue.
I found The Vicomte de Bragelonne to be rather boring (in comparison to The Three Musketeers, at the very least)--but how much of that was due to the slow story, and how much was due to the poor translation? Likewise, I found The Last Ringbearer to be extremely boring (IIRC), and completed it only on my second or third attempt (IIRC). Was that the fault of the author or the fault of the translator?
u/SpeakKindly [+5] (16 hours later)
I liked it in Russian just fine, but nobody I know has ever expressed a positive opinion about the English translation, and when I read the first few pages of that, I found them to be extremely pretentious in a way that the original somehow avoided.
u/vallar57 [+3] Unseen University: Faculty of High-Energy Magic (25 minutes later)
I honestly don't know. The book was very enjoyable for me in Russian, I even reread it more than a few times, but I haven't read it in English.