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.
How well warranted is this assumption, i.e. that a typical reader takes the quality of MoR for granted?
A typical reader of this post, mind you.
Readers of LW who don't like MoR will probably have a strong tendency not to be interested in "rationalist fanfiction" in general. If someone reads LW and is also willing to entertain a rewriting of a famous fantasy story such that the characters are made to be LW-style "rationalists", it seems highly unlikely that they're going to be turned off specifically by the idiosyncratic details of M...
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.