The Last Ringbearer is an interesting book. On the surface, it is a continuation of The Lord of the Rings, with the story starting just after the end of The Return of the King. The twist: it is told from the perspective of a couple of soldiers from the vanquished Mordorian army. As such, its story is markedly different from that told by J.R.R. Tolkien. Orcs and trolls aren't monsters, they're simply other races of humanity. Elves aren't benevolent protectors of Middle Earth, they're aliens from a parallel world bent on conquering this one. Aragorn isn't Isuldir's heir, he's just another power-hungry man who was smart enough to tell the right story at the right time.

The book breaks down into essentially three main sections and an epilog. I say essentially, as Eskov divided the work into four sections, but the first two follow a similar path and style, so I view them as one. During this first section, Eskov both introduces his heros and updates the reader on the "real" history of the War of the Ring. It is also a thinly-veiled critique of Western domination of the past several hundred years of our own history. In it, Eskov describes Mordor as an enlightened, mostly peaceful, desert kingdom on the path towards an industrial revolution. They have universities filled with scholars studying physics, chemistry, and mathematics. They are, unfortunately, completely dependent on other kingdoms for food. Gondor and Rohan, on the other hand, are backwards, agrarian, and feudal, yet through the assistance of the Elves and most of the wizards of the White Council, they managed to conquer the technologically superior Mordorians. In the process, they threaten to destroy centuries of accumulated knowledge. Of the three sections, the first is the most expertly wrought. Eskov does a wonderful job twisting the familiar Lord of the Rings story. Not only does he convey an interesting story in its own right, he also manages to put forth a convincing second side to the victor's history.

The second and third sections tell the actual story, wherein Field Medic Haladdin, an unlikely hero, accepts a quest from a mystical being to venture deep into the enemy's heartland and destroy their powerful weapon. Sound familiar? As with the Lord of the Rings, the hero's compatriots come from a broad, and mismatched, swath of Middle Earth: an Orcish sergeant, a Haradian scholar become field medic, a Gondorian baron who was also a master spy for Gondorian intelligence before and during the War. The second section covers Baron Tangorn's cloak-and-dagger mission in the South, while the third covers Sergeant Tzerlag and Field Medic Haladdin's mission to enter the Elven stronghold of Lorien.

As entertaining and interesting as the story is, the execution is uneven. Eskov devotes nearly 1/2 of the book to introducing characters and filling in backstories. In this section, he not only goes into detail on the storyline itself, but he brings in flashbacks from the main characters' pasts to round them out. Characters have names that are at least plausible within the realm of Middle Earth. The second section takes roughly another third, and while the story remains engaging, the style starts to unravel. Dialog shifts from Middle Earth to Modern Earth, and character naming style changes from Tzerlag and Tangorn to Cheetah and Jacuzzi. In the third section, Eskov appears to simply run out of steam. Instead of the dense, careful, detailed prose of the first section, the final section is a muddle of rapid-fire events that give the appearance of a student who has just realized that, after spending ten pages restating the question on an essay test, he only has two sheets of paper left in which to provide the answer.

The epilog reads as if Eskov had a definite message in mind when he started, but feels that message didn't quite get conveyed in the story, and therefore decided to bludgeon the reader. Mordor is the Middle East, Harad Africa, Hakimianism Islam, etc. Eskov spells it all out in embarrassing detail, even inventing a new people, the Amengians, to represent Americans. If you choose to read The Last Ringbearer, and I recommend you do, the epilog can be skipped without losing any important detail, and doing so may well leave you with a better impression of the book.