2005 Author Reviews for
Alawa

Alawa is one of those authors who takes brevity as a challenge and rises to the occasion. Whether it's a drabble or a poem, a vignette or a gap-filler, she has an unerring sense of where the heart of the matter lies and of displaying it with an elegance and sharpness that don't take away from the other essential quality of her writing: polyvalent resonance. Despite the brevity, or perhaps because of it, words and phrases signify in multiple directions, and they vibrate, resonate with the multiple connections they make, all of which contributes to the experience of reading the work. A poet needs this quality desperately, and Alawa has it in spades. Short pieces deserve second and even third readings; Alawa's "Dandelion Clocks" is one of the trickier fanfics I've read, for all it's a mere one hundred words, and her Gr?ma doesn't need a sonnet to squick. Just give him a haiku and the chill that's imparted is out of proportion to the length, unless we postulate an inverse relationship of word count to impact. When it comes to romantic poems, Alawa shows that spareness of verse can convey as much as a dozen longer fics, and is twice as suggestive of necessity. In closing, Alawa is one of the few fanfic poets who can make me sit up and take notice, who can get through to even me with a stanza. I don't know how she does it, and I'm not equipped to do a more detailed analysis of what exactly makes her work turn, but whatever it is, it rarely fails to entice me onward.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

Alawa has a particular talent when it comes to working with Aragorn and Bilbo, either together or separately. I'm very particular when it comes to Aragorn fics?being a dyed-in-the-wool Aragorn groupie, I have my own very definite notions about his characterization and the will to write if I don't like what I'm reading or am simply unimpressed when it comes to Aragorn as he appears in the fandom. Alawa is one of the few who writes him in such a way that I never bat an eye; I just relax and enjoy the ride, and am never disappointed. She's managed to get inside the inside-ever-outside experience of a Ranger who would be king, who has the pedigree and the will and ability to survive the rigors of a courtly existence, but who is at home among the lowest of the low, having been there himself as a Ranger. That tension is often missed by other writers, or overplayed, but Alawa hits it every single time when it's called for, as we see in her stories involving other Rangers, be they OC or Arathorn and his relationship with Gilraen. Undoubtedly, this is what makes her Bilbo so wonderfully alive, particularly when she has him interact with Aragorn. These two characters are both consummately insiders in their own societies, but also absolutely outsiders at the same time. No wonder they're drawn to each other. They get it, and each other, and so they can relax around each other. Bilbo, however, never loses his hobbity down-to-earthness; his wisdom and outsider's eye are not the same as Aragorn's, so there's never collapse of one character into the other, either.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

Alawa is one of those authors who takes brevity as a challenge and rises to the occasion. Whether it's a drabble or a poem, a vignette or a gap-filler, she has an unerring sense of where the heart of the matter lies and of displaying it with an elegance and sharpness that don't take away from the other essential quality of her writing: polyvalent resonance. Despite the brevity, or perhaps because of it, words and phrases signify in multiple directions, and they vibrate, resonate with the multiple connections they make, all of which contributes to the experience of reading the work. A poet needs this quality desperately, and Alawa has it in spades. Short pieces deserve second and even third readings; Alawa's "Dandelion Clocks" is one of the trickier fanfics I've read, for all it's a mere one hundred words, and her Gr?ma doesn't need a sonnet to squick. Just give him a haiku and the chill that's imparted is out of proportion to the length, unless we postulate an inverse relationship of word count to impact. When it comes to romantic poems, Alawa shows that spareness of verse can convey as much as a dozen longer fics, and is twice as suggestive of necessity. In closing, Alawa is one of the few fanfic poets who can make me sit up and take notice, who can get through to even me with a stanza. I don't know how she does it, and I'm not equipped to do a more detailed analysis of what exactly makes her work turn, but whatever it is, it rarely fails to entice me onward.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

Alawa has a particular talent when it comes to working with Aragorn and Bilbo, either together or separately. I'm very particular when it comes to Aragorn fics?being a dyed-in-the-wool Aragorn groupie, I have my own very definite notions about his characterization and the will to write if I don't like what I'm reading or am simply unimpressed when it comes to Aragorn as he appears in the fandom. Alawa is one of the few who writes him in such a way that I never bat an eye; I just relax and enjoy the ride, and am never disappointed. She's managed to get inside the inside-ever-outside experience of a Ranger who would be king, who has the pedigree and the will and ability to survive the rigors of a courtly existence, but who is at home among the lowest of the low, having been there himself as a Ranger. That tension is often missed by other writers, or overplayed, but Alawa hits it every single time when it's called for, as we see in her stories involving other Rangers, be they OC or Arathorn and his relationship with Gilraen. Undoubtedly, this is what makes her Bilbo so wonderfully alive, particularly when she has him interact with Aragorn. These two characters are both consummately insiders in their own societies, but also absolutely outsiders at the same time. No wonder they're drawn to each other. They get it, and each other, and so they can relax around each other. Bilbo, however, never loses his hobbity down-to-earthness; his wisdom and outsider's eye are not the same as Aragorn's, so there's never collapse of one character into the other, either.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

Alawa is one of those authors who takes brevity as a challenge and rises to the occasion. Whether it's a drabble or a poem, a vignette or a gap-filler, she has an unerring sense of where the heart of the matter lies and of displaying it with an elegance and sharpness that don't take away from the other essential quality of her writing: polyvalent resonance. Despite the brevity, or perhaps because of it, words and phrases signify in multiple directions, and they vibrate, resonate with the multiple connections they make, all of which contributes to the experience of reading the work. A poet needs this quality desperately, and Alawa has it in spades. Short pieces deserve second and even third readings; Alawa's "Dandelion Clocks" is one of the trickier fanfics I've read, for all it's a mere one hundred words, and her Gr?ma doesn't need a sonnet to squick. Just give him a haiku and the chill that's imparted is out of proportion to the length, unless we postulate an inverse relationship of word count to impact. When it comes to romantic poems, Alawa shows that spareness of verse can convey as much as a dozen longer fics, and is twice as suggestive of necessity. In closing, Alawa is one of the few fanfic poets who can make me sit up and take notice, who can get through to even me with a stanza. I don't know how she does it, and I'm not equipped to do a more detailed analysis of what exactly makes her work turn, but whatever it is, it rarely fails to entice me onward.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.

The neat thing about Alawa as a poet is how understated her poems feel. There's a subtlety to them that makes you look a little harder, but it's not so subtle that the meaning escapes you altogether. "A Lullaby for the Longest Night" was the clearest example of this to me, but the parallels and metaphors in "Grima's Giftgiving" were also part of this subtlety. It makes for very smooth poems that linger in your mind long after you've read them.

Alawa is one of those authors who takes brevity as a challenge and rises to the occasion. Whether it's a drabble or a poem, a vignette or a gap-filler, she has an unerring sense of where the heart of the matter lies and of displaying it with an elegance and sharpness that don't take away from the other essential quality of her writing: polyvalent resonance. Despite the brevity, or perhaps because of it, words and phrases signify in multiple directions, and they vibrate, resonate with the multiple connections they make, all of which contributes to the experience of reading the work. A poet needs this quality desperately, and Alawa has it in spades. Short pieces deserve second and even third readings; Alawa's "Dandelion Clocks" is one of the trickier fanfics I've read, for all it's a mere one hundred words, and her Gr?ma doesn't need a sonnet to squick. Just give him a haiku and the chill that's imparted is out of proportion to the length, unless we postulate an inverse relationship of word count to impact. When it comes to romantic poems, Alawa shows that spareness of verse can convey as much as a dozen longer fics, and is twice as suggestive of necessity. In closing, Alawa is one of the few fanfic poets who can make me sit up and take notice, who can get through to even me with a stanza. I don't know how she does it, and I'm not equipped to do a more detailed analysis of what exactly makes her work turn, but whatever it is, it rarely fails to entice me onward.

Alawa brings an amazing depth and reality to Eriador, which I know from personal experience is very hard to do and make it still feel connected to canon. She is perhaps best known for her poetry, and she shines on that note here, but her vignettes are what really grab me. I think my favourite ones are the ones where she deals with customs (as in "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit"), and where she looks at the family relationships like she does in "Love's Labours". And as always, her Aragorn and Bilbo are particularly enjoyable. Thank you for all the lovely reads, Alawa.