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| In Empty Lands by Larner | 14 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| Queen Galadriel | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 12/21/2008 |
| I've never read an account of Boromir's adventures on the road before--I like it! Poor man, he had quite the time of it. Author Reply: I did a drabble of his arrival that fell rather flat as there is so little room for detail--came out anticlimatic. Thank you so, my Lady! | |
| Kitty | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 11/15/2008 |
| The people of Tharbad were nice and helpful, no doubt. So glad they saved Boromir and helped him. Poor Boromir, what a welcome at Bree, so hoping for a real bed and a hot meal and then being denied entrance! The Breelanders should think over whom they allow in and whom not, considering who got in later on ;-) Glad the Farmer was more reasonable. *lol* To ask in Rivendell after Imladris might be a success, I believe :D Glad he got the directions from the Rangers, otherwise he could have strayed around further for quite a while. And now he's finally found his destiny! Author Reply: I liked putting the town there on the rebound, and seeing its folk helping this rather careless wanderer. Too bad the Bree-folk weren't as welcoming, although I couldn't leave him out in the wet again. And it was nice to play with the two names for the place, and decided the Rangers ought to have some mercy on the poor guy! Heh! Thanks so for your patience! | |
| Kara's Aunty | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 11/13/2008 |
| Hello, What a terrific chapter. An intro to the first leg of his travels and an intro also to your Boromir who is splendidly convincing! And I must commend you on the geographical detailing, not to mention the various dialects: the provincial speech of the countryfolk, the educated (if wary) tones of the Rangers and the refined speech of the Elves. And that from a non-UK native! Truly, truly impressive. I could be reading Tolkien himself here. Great work. I'm off to bed now, good night. Maureen :) Author Reply: I am honored! I try to keep each dialect true to the folk from which it comes. And I've been reading British novels for a LONG time. (Although one critic once felt my rustic Hobbit dialect was a bit too Appalachian in nature. I am glad you feel the geographical details ring true. Thank you so. And to be compared to the Master himself? The greatest of honors! | |
| ecrm | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 11/7/2008 |
| Tharbad's supposed to be abandoned in 2912 and I don't see any reason why anybody would want to rebuild it. It's very isolated and prone to flooding, I seem to remember reading somewhere in the History of Middle Earth that what remained of the inhabitants went north to Bree. Although I think there were fords at Tharbad these were difficult to cross; a fact illustrated by the building of a bridge, which would have been ruinous for centuries before Boromir crossed. I have to admit that I love reading your stories as they're very well written and have very good attention to detail. However your writing has one weakness; you write background characters (such as the people at Tharbad) with far too much intelligence. Many characters in LOTR do not understand complex notions when explained to them, as outside Gondor schooling would have been rudimentary. In short you have to take social background and history into account. I'm not being nasty, I'm a big fan of your work and am just offering some advice. Author Reply: One thing I have learned in history classes is that usually when a thriving town is built, it is placed in a location where it has certain advantages; and where a major travel route crosses a river tends to be a place where folk tend to build and where they tend to return to, even if the region does flood. Look at how resistant people in the Missouri/Mississippi River flood plain regions have been to relocating their towns at higher elevations even though during the latter half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first they were being repeatedly flooded (and how New Orleans has been rebuilt, and how folk keep rebuilding where other natural disasters tend to recur, such as along common paths of tornados, on beaches where storms tend to hit and so on). Considering some of the major changes Tolkien did between one version of a story and another regarding names and events (there remains the question as to who crafted the Elessar stone, for example, as well as whether or not it went with Earendil to Aman and, if so, how it got back to Ennor to be given to Galadriel, as well as just how much and intimately Celebrimbor might have loved Galadriel...), I decided that as this is my version of the story and LOTR doesn't indicate Tharbad had necessarily remained abandoned forever I would not change my story line to make it so. Also, at the time I wrote The King's Commission I was unaware that Tolkien had ever indicated that Tharbad remained abandoned. The fact it was marked on the maps and the name of it was given I took as an indication that the place was resettled at a later date, and probably was subject to periodic flooding and temporary abandonment before being rebuilt and repopulated once more. This is a very common pattern within the real world, after all. Having had Ruvemir stop in Tharbad to have his coach wheel repaired, I had to have a village or town with at least a blacksmith present four years after the end of the war; therefore I chose to have it rebuilt. I hope you don't mind too terribly much. Intelligence is not necessarily a matter of education--there is native intelligence and curiosity as well as book learning, after all. And often within a town the ones with the most exposure to outsiders would be innkeepers, blacksmiths, healers, and merchants. So I chose to make the blacksmith the only one within Tharbad who'd actually met an Elf and a Ranger together and who'd paid attention to what those traders and travelers passing through told him as to where they got their goods, who lived where, and so on. Some folk are more open to dealing with outsiders than others, after all. And I chose to have the youth one who had romanticized his one sighting of Elves in the distance while others tend to rather superstitiously fear the Elves and distrust the Dwarves. I don't find your comments nasty or offensive at all--I accept you're merely trying to increase my knowledge of parts of HoME I obviously haven't read yet (I still don't have copies of Peoples of Middle Earth or Morgoth's Ring or a couple other later ones, for instance), and point out some flaws. I only hope you don't take offense that at times I have chosen to change some things to better suit my own story line. Thank you so much for your feedback. I do appreciate it, although in my stories I'll probably continue to have a community at Tharbad and some folks who have made a point of learning something about lands outside their own. | |
| Radbooks | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/28/2008 |
| Oh, I like this very much, Larner! A great beginning. I enjoy a good Boromir story and I haven't read one of those for a long time. :) Author Reply: Am so glad you approve, Radbooks! This one sort of crept up on me! | |
| Andrea | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/28/2008 |
| Great story so far! In fact it's the first story that describes Boromir's journey to Rivendell I've ever read. He arrived after Frodo in Rivendell and so it is very interesting to find out through Boromir's eyes and the talk of the people he meets what they heard of Strider and the hobbits. "Don’t rightly know as how far it is t’ Rivendell, where they could tell you of where this Imladris might be." *grins* But on the other hand, how could a simple farmer know that Imladris is only another name for Rivendell? Author Reply: I've seen a few other stories of Boromir's great journey. In one story he finds himself skirting the Old Forest and the Barrowdowns and meets Tom Bombadil, and I've seen a few tales of the crossing at Tharbad and how he lost his horse. In one he is helped by Elrond's twin sons, who grow annoyed at him and send him off on a wild-goose-chase. I've sometimes wondered how he might have responded once he arrived at Rivendell and saw the two of them there. In one Surgical Steel wrote, Serinde does much the same, adding to the length of time it takes him to reach his destination. It would have been quite odd for him see so many folk who would have been for him but the stuff of legends for the most part, I'd think. As Tolkien indicated that Imladris was almost forgotten as the proper name for Rivendell, I'm not too surprised the farmer wouldn't recognize it! It was interesting, writing these stories from Boromir's POV, as I've so seldom dealt with him. | |
| Linda Hoyland | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/28/2008 |
| This story is quite unique.I loved the story of how Boromir reached Rivendell. I liked your Smith with his interest in other people. Poor Aragorn to be thought so badly of! I eagerly await more. Author Reply: I'm glad you find it unique. That drabble has been rather driving me crazy, so when Raksha asked what she did for her birthday fic I found myself compelled to expand on the drabble as a lead-in to the presentation of her story, which I'll post tomorrow, I hope. Am glad you like the smith--a decent and thoughtful guy, I think. And we know that Strider wasn't thought of highly by the folk in Bree, and heard the taunts about him thrown at the Hobbits by Ferny. Just seemed likely this would be what folks might well think. And more shall come. | |
| Antane | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/27/2008 |
| An interesting new series. Fills in a lot of gaps realistically. Like the little clues from the tale and Boromir retracing the steps - Bree, Weathertop, the torn robe and such. Namarie, God bless, Antane :) Author Reply: Yes, he's a bit behind the Chieftain and his four Hobbit companions, and is finding the situation strange, I'd think. I believe that Strider would have taken the knife haft with him, but not the black cloak, so it would have been there for the Rangers to find when they came through. Thanks so for the comments. | |
| Soledad | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/27/2008 |
| Awww - you decided to expand the story! That's wonderful! There are decidedly not enough Boromir stories in the world! I liked it how everyone heard the Horn of Gondor at the beginning, although most of them didn't know what to make of it. And Boromir meeting the Rangers was great. So, he didn't recognize Adunaic other than the language of Umbar? Interesting... Author Reply: Yes, I was finally moved to expand it. And you can thank Raksha for these, considering the next story in this series was written particularly for her, and I found it demanded to be introduced by these. And I've wanted to expand on that drabble for some time. No, I doubt Boromir learned to speak Adunaic, although he undoubtedly recognized the speech of Umbar. And I like to think he would see the similarities between these Men and those who served under his brother. Thanks! | |
| shirebound | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 10/27/2008 |
| Ohh, I like where this is going. What a long, frustrating, difficult journey for Boromir. And I often wonder what he thought about walking all the way home! Author Reply: Learning he would again walk home must have felt terribly like deja vu! Am glad you like it, Shirebound. | |