Yahoo Forum Archive

Title: The Usurper · Author: Elena Tiriel · Times: Early Third Age:
Fixed-Length Ficlet · ID: 834
Reviewer: Elen Kortirion · 2006-09-29 23:28:33
Ooooh - so chillingly cruel! You have caught a character here that is
certainly an evil man. It is difficult to say I admire it because it
almost leaves one sickened, but then I assume that is your intention -
and you succeed very well; it's a strong and memorable drabble, that is
well written.
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Title: Along the Morgai · Author: Rabidsamfan · Times: The Great Years:
General Fixed-Length Ficlets · ID: 849
Reviewer: Elen Kortirion · 2006-09-29 23:38:11
This is a very gentle and loving view of their friendship, very
delicately told in a voice that seems very true for Frodo. It is very
poingant that he can imagine a future without himself being a part of it.
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Title: 17 Cunning Corsairs · Author: stefaniab · Genres: Humor:
Fixed-Length Ficlet · ID: 244
Reviewer: Elen Kortirion · 2006-09-29 23:43:04
It made me smile to read who was having this little burst of
imagination. I like the touch that her parents threaten her with Umbar
when she's naughty, but she sees it as a great adventure. The
descriptions of the boats are also very evocative, and very well written.
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Title: Heirs of the Oath · Author: Elana · Races: Men: Other
Fixed-Length Ficlets · ID: 151
Reviewer: Elen Kortirion · 2006-09-30 00:00:21
I like the this very much, the way that you have woven both the stories
to shadow each other. There is a lovely mixture of warmth and sadness
contained in the writing which is especially eloquent in Eomer last lines.
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Title: For Arda · Author: Dreamflower · Genres: Drama: Poetry · ID: 885
Reviewer: Raksha the Demon · 2006-09-30 01:25:12
An exquisite paean to Arda, as the epitome of Tolkien's myth, legends
and prose. The poem celebrates the power and beauty of Arda, and its
intensity.

I'm not sufficiently erudite to understand the exact structure of this
poem, but its verses are written in a particularly elegant format.

Well done!
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Title: Bilbo's Nursery Rhyme for Merry and Pippin · Author: Llinos ·
Races: Hobbits: Poetry · ID: 882
Reviewer: Raksha the Demon · 2006-09-30 01:37:27
Very cute, charming rhyme, quite appropriate for a friendly uncle-cousin
to create for two youngsters. And it's very hobbity! I loved the verse
about the pony being dressed in the Thain's shirt...
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Title: The Parting Gift · Author: Imhiriel · Times: First Age and Prior:
Fixed-Length Ficlet · ID: 948
Reviewer: Raksha the Demon · 2006-09-30 01:41:52
A wonderful origin drabble for Elrond's silver harp. I wish the writer
would expand it into a longer story; so that we could see more of the
relationship between Maglor and his foster-sons.

Excellent description of Maglor's final preparation of the harp.
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Title: The Gift of Time · Author: Rhapsody · Genres: Drama:
Pre-Fellowship · ID: 812
Reviewer: Gandalfs apprentice · 2006-09-30 02:02:39
Yes, time--there's never enough. Poignant and sad, given what we know is
about to happen and that Aragorn will grow up not knowing his
father's--and his own!--name. A small moment in time with a lot of meaning.
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Title: Strike While the Iron is Hot · Author: grey_wonderer · Genres:
Humor: The Shire · ID: 234
Reviewer: Marta · 2006-09-30 03:03:42
Cute! Pippin's paranoia was really cute here, and I loved the way Freddy
tried to protect him.
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Title: Unchanged · Author: Marta · Times: Late Third Age: Fixed-Length
Ficlet · ID: 926
Reviewer: Raksha the Demon · 2006-09-30 03:30:56
A clever and slightly unsettling look at Bilbo in what should be his
quiet old age, from his friend Rory Brandybuck. Very hobbity, and a good
expression of an almost sinister oddity in the drabble's 100-word format.
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Title: But the Scent Still Lingers · Author: Imhiriel · Times: The Great
Years: Gondor Fixed-Length Ficlets · ID: 947
Reviewer: Oshun · 2006-09-30 05:02:17
Who wouldn't want to dance with him. Very lovely, bittersweet, romantic.
I like when thinking about Minas Tirith post-war to wonder who would
have remembered Thorongil and how they would have reacted to seeing him
again. This was a perfect little snapshot. (And I hate to think about
aging--I am much too old!)
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Title: Rest and Recreation · Author: Raksha the Demon · Races:
Cross-Cultural · ID: 700
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 13:04:31
I really enjoyed this characterization of Boromir, and to 'see' him
sparring with Glorfindel was a real treat. I love to see Boromir getting
the respect he so richly deserves, both from characters and writers.
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Title: To Learn His Letters · Author: GamgeeFest · Races: Hobbits:
Children · ID: 977
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 13:18:01
Very clever idea, and most plausibly executed. I particularly enjoyed
the rich details of Hobbit life that structure this piece. Excellent.
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Title: The Letter · Author: Gryffinjack · Races: Hobbits: Post-Sauron's
Fall · ID: 955
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 13:25:40
This so easily could have been just a sappy "everything's okay now, I
miss you" "Pippin's coming home!" story, but you made it much more, and
much truer, considering all the good with the bad and unsettling. Well done.
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Title: Hewing Naught But Wood · Author: Thundera Tiger · Genres: Humor:
Parody · ID: 825
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 13:32:25
I really liked your characterizations of Gimli and Legolas, serious,
light, terse, and dire by turns appropriately. But I can't imagine how a
sword fighter - since that discipline also has a great variety of forms
- might have difficulty understanding that axe fighting might be just as
complex. You lost me there.
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Title: Little Brothers · Author: DinaLori · Races: Men · ID: 686
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 13:38:03
Nice. The relationship between Boromir and the younger hobbits is a rich
vein and I think you mined it well here.
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Title: Book Learning · Author: Branwyn · Genres: Romance: Incomplete ·
ID: 910
Reviewer: Marta · 2006-09-30 17:03:11
Now this is a work-in-progress that I would really, really like to see
finished. Or at least worked on some more. Pretty please?

A lot of stories out there start with the premise that Faramir or Eowyn
(usually Faramir) has some substantative sexual experience before they
met. It does make the beginning of their relationship easier to write,
but this approach is novel and very good too. Neither of them had much
of their family left to turn to, certainly not in Minas Tirith, so it
would be hard for them to have someone they trusted well enough to turn
to. The answers of where they *do* turn for help are in-character and
enrich the world F&E inhabit.

Faramir's use of the "Treatises on the Art of Healing" in particular
seemed very true to form. The idea of a bunch of twelve-year-old boys
poring over it reminded me of some of my male classmates' uses of
"National Geographic". Boys really do not change that much! And it's
refreshing to see Gondorians as not having our puritanical sexual mores.

There's so much to build on here. We've got a really good start to a
refreshingly new take on these two characters, and I'm sure with this
author that this story will live up to its potential when it's finished.
Because it will be finished, right? I'm not sure I could stand the
cliffhanger of not knowing what happens next.
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Title: A Spring Day At Cormallen · Author: Marigold · Races:
Cross-Cultural: With Hobbits · ID: 746
Reviewer: Nancy Brooke · 2006-09-30 20:32:47
Very nice. The use of such a simple thing as kite flying to symbolize
Pippin's recovery, his transcendence, is lovely, made all the morn
poignant against the backdrop of Middle Earth's forthcoming difficult
recovery.
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Title: Where The Shadows Are · Author: Kenaz · Genres: Drama: Elves in
Later Ages · ID: 776
Reviewer: Dreamflower · 2006-09-30 23:48:50
This is angstier and slashier than I usually care for. I did like the
description of Gil-Galad at the beginning.
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Title: The Dancing Master · Author: Flick · Races: Men: Vignette · ID: 323
Reviewer: Dreamflower · 2006-09-30 23:57:32
What a sweet and lovely little story! I loved the idea that Boromir
taught both his brother and Eowyn how to dance! I could just see it as
she described it. It made me sniffle!
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Title: The Last Age of Elves: A Precious Find · Author: fael_bain ·
Genres: Drama: Elves in Later Ages · ID: 744
Reviewer: Dreamflower · 2006-10-01 00:00:49
In spite of the rather implausible premise--Elladan and Elrohir come
across Elfling Legolas, who is running away to find his mother--it's a
cute story, and held my interest.
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Title: Notes and Observations by Frodo of the Shire · Author: Lurea ·
Genres: Drama: Featuring Frodo or Sam · ID: 971
Reviewer: Inkling · 2006-10-01 05:27:51
This is a stunning example of fanfiction at its best: thoughtful,
creative, masterfully written gapfiller that is deeply respectful of
canon while illuminating areas in which Tolkien was largely silent.

Lurea skillfully weaves together two distinct narrative voices here, the
first an absorbing third-person portrait of Frodo adjusting to his
post-Quest life in a city that is itself slowly recovering...sometimes
wry and humorous, sometimes deeply moving. The other is a harrowing
first-hand account of the nightmarish journey through Mordor, as Frodo
tries to exorcise his demons within the pages of his "Blue Book."

There are wonderful moments in the framing story: the trip to the Great
Market of Minas Tirith, where Merry haggles with a shameless jewelry
merchant; Gimli pragmatically hacking down the legs of furniture to
Frodos size; a conversation with Legolas in the moonlit courtyard of
their house:

[Frodo inhaled, and the soft air dispelled the tension lingering in his
shoulders. "This is pleasant, like a glade in the wild. Surprising to
find, in a house and a city of stone."]

Legolas replies, ["In men, softness is often concealed behind an
imposing facade."]

Indeed all of the Companions (with the exception of Aragorn, notably
absent from this story) are deftly captured in brief but dead-on cameos,
and in the case of Sam and Merry, powerful scenes that form the story's
emotional core.

"Notes" presents as well as any fic I've read the dilemma of the
returned veteran: whether to repress the horrific memories and lose part
of one's self in the process, or to remain imprisoned by the past...or
to find, if possible, some middle ground, some way of prevailing over
the shadows while yet acknowledging them:

[Is the only choice before me that of denying the War and myself with
it, or becoming morbidly obsessed with it, to the exclusion of all else?
I do not accept that.]

But it is within the pages of Frodo's journal that we find the story's
most powerful moments. In LOTR we can only guess at the inner torments
Frodo must experience in the later stages of his journey. Here we see,
in excruciating detail, just how the Ring plays with Frodo's mind,
perverting the most innocent thought or noble verse to a grotesque,
terrifying mockery, be it Sam's silly troll song or the Lay of Lúthien.
Still more shocking is Frodo's attempt to distract himself by counting
his physical pains with each step across Gorgoroth, only to suddenly
find he is counting in the Black Speech.

While dark and disturbing, these passages never become too unbearable,
for either the reader or Frodo, because of the welcome distance provided
by the alternating narrative. After finishing a difficult journal entry,
Frodo can close the book and have a big lunch and a nap.

The ending is beautiful and sad, given the heart-wrenching knowledge we
have that Frodo does not, as he writes of his beloved, innocent Shire
and the gentle pastimes he imagines for himself there before eventually
following Bilbo into the West, where ["over Sea my burdens will be set
down at last."]

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Title: Elfstone · Author: Gandalfs apprentice · Races: Elves: Other
Fixed-Length Ficlet · ID: 252
Reviewer: Bodkin · 2006-10-01 06:52:40
Celebrimbor is an interesting character. I like the way he called the
power into the stone - and such worthwhile power, too.
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Title: Trivial Matters · Author: Thundera Tiger · Genres: Humor: Gondor
· ID: 839
Reviewer: Bodkin · 2006-10-01 07:29:19
I can't say I blame Legolas for his exasperation. There is little more
annoying than hearing anyone (other than a baby, who will hopefully
outgrow the habit quite quickly) slurping!

The thought of Gimli experimenting on ways of driving Legolas mad is
hilarious - as is the image of Faramir slurping all morning on the same
glass of wine.

You are far too clever for your own good - this is a delicious piece of
writing. I love it.
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Title: Bedtime Story · Author: Gandalfs apprentice · Genres: Humor:
Children · ID: 355
Reviewer: Bodkin · 2006-10-01 07:36:35
Ahh - that's much more realistic a bedtime than twining sweet dreams of
elven perfection. Picturing Eldarion as Sam threatening Strider with a
wooden sword - it's a lovely image. And I think the prince should know
about Gollum. He and his father could play that when they are out camping!

Lovely family interaction.
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