Know your audience. And the context.
This comment tends to discredit your first comment, since the typical reader of this thread probably takes it for granted that MoR is good and is wanting to know whether this story is good as MoR.
Analogy: suppose someone posted a link to a new philosophy-of-physics paper, and then you made a comment saying that the paper was terrible and full of flaws. But as the discussion continued, it emerged that the reason you didn't like it was because it assumed the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, which you assumed to be wrong. The reaction of the LW readership is going to be something like "oh, well, never mind you, then."
Critiquing something on the basis of unstated assumptions you know the audience doesn't share is disingenuous. This is true even if your criticism is correct.
This comment tends to discredit your first comment, since the typical reader of this thread probably takes it for granted that MoR is good and is wanting to know whether this story is good as MoR.
How well warranted is this assumption, i.e. that a typical reader takes the quality of MoR for granted? Readers of LW who don't like MoR probably don't comment on it.
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.