I disagree with pretty much everything on that article. In fact the author clearly shows his ignorance of Tolkien's works several times throughout the post, obviously never having read any of the accompanying material.
I'm not even sure he's read the Silmarillion (which is required reading for any discussion of Tolkien) -- the only reference from there (Angband), he mispells; and I doubt the guy would be saying that Tolkien adhered to the "black-white" contrast perfectly if he had even heard of Feanor or Turin Turambar. Frankly even Gollum alone ought have taught him better than that.
Let alone any of the History of Middle-earth volumnes (which is required reading for any serious discussion of Tolkien).
I'm not even sure he's read the Silmarillion (which is required reading for any discussion of Tolkien)
To be fair, if we're talking about what liberties we are allowed to take with LOTR, it's important to remember that the Silmarillion was never a finished work, at least not by J.R.R. On some topics that are important to this discussion -- the origin and nature of Orcs, for instance -- Tolkien revised himself repeatedly. "The question of Orc origin may have been one of the problems Tolkien tried to solve by completely changing the cosmology and p...
This may be old news to some people, especially the Russian speakers, but I didn't see an article about it here.
In 1999, Kirill Yeskov, a Russian paleontologist, wrote The Last Ringbearer, a 270-page take on Lord of the Rings from the point of view of a medic in Mordor's dying armies who is also a "skeptic and a rationalist." In fact, Mordor represents the forces of reason in this retelling of the story. As a Nazgúl (himself a former mathematician) explains, Mordor is "the little oasis of Reason in which your light-minded civilization had so comfortably nestled." Barad-dur is "that amazing city of alchemists and poets, mechanics and astronomers, philosophers and physicians, the heart of the only civilization in Middle-earth to bet on rational knowledge and bravely pitch its barely adolescent technology against ancient magic."
The story has been newly translated and is available in free PDF form -- in English and the original Russian. There's a recent review from Salon as well.