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Anticipating Midsummer by Larner	4 Review(s)
Lindelea	Reviewed Chapter: 3 on 4/16/2026
I forgot to highlight this phrase in my review of Chapter II: "too Baggins stubborn". Perfect summary of Frodo's determination, that took him all the way to the fiery Mountain, with Sam's help, of course. I could use a reading aid like the one Sam used. I used to be one of those page-at-a-glance readers, but my eyes don't focus well enough to do that anymore. I remember how indignant I felt when I reached the last few pages of LOTR for the first time as a teen. How unfair it felt to me, that Frodo was unable to enjoy the fruits of his labors! (I think that's why in one of my AUs, I wrote about him sending a letter to Pippin (and Merry) at Crickhollow announcing his upcoming wedding to Pearl...) Unfair, indeed. How glad he was that Frodo could sleep so once more. Sigh. I love getting glimpses of Frodo healed and filled with wonder and joy. Gandalf noting that Midsummer's Day will arrive in two days seems to bear more weight than just a casual reminder. Taken together with Frodo's contemplative haste in finishing the copy of the book, and Sam's conversation with Rosie in his sleep, it seems they are quite ready to take the next step in their journey. The dance with the staves sounds familiar, as if I have seen such a thing IRL, though I can't quite pin it down. Are you drawing from any particular folk tradition? (What happened to the book after they passed onward? Sam wished that Eleanor could have it – though she would not have been able to read it, I should think, but might have appreciated the illustrations?) Author Reply: I was remembering that before the manifestations of Moon and Sun the Elves used gem-lights to illuminate areas not receiving the light of the Two Trees, thus making the Elves of Aman not needing candles and oil lamps for non-daylight hours. The Silmarils were the epitome of such Elf-wrought jewels of Light. Yes, it is possible that the use of an Elf-gem lamp might have assisted Sam to read Rhyselle's archaic version of Sindarin. It's also likely that just living on the island for the past months and having possibly read other books available there might have prepared him to do it as well. Hard to say. Am constantly being interrupted tonight by cats, most conspicuously Phryne (previously known as Euphrates) who is determined to knock as many small things as possible off the headboard and my bedstand. Plus the cursor loves to dance around the screen as I move the slightly damp wrist of my robe across the mousepad. Gaack! I was not upset by Frodo having to leave Middle Earth. I'd read several books in which characters suffered from shell shock, which we know now as PTSD. Some had fought in the trenches of France in WWI, or were veterans of WWII or even Korea. I didn't know about Aman, but figured that wherever it was that the Elves were going was the one place in which Frodo, too, could know full healing. I read LOTR the first time starting when I was thirteen and a half years old. In my-verse, Frodo let Sam make the decision as to when they will move on, and he will make the decision as to where they would lay their lives down. Sam early on chose to leave on the anniversary of Rosie's death; Frodo chose to be near the White Tree of Tol Eressea. As Frodo admitted that he'd realized long ago that he could not keep track of time within the Elven lands, something he and Sam realized in FotR as they see the moon rising as they sail down the river. As a result, Sam asked Olorin to give him two days' warning of when Midsummer will oocur, and knowing Hobbits as he does from being Gandalf for so long, he realizes why Sam would want to have that warning. This gives him time to make his plea to Lady Varda to be given the right to call upon the Maiar in charge of the heavenly bodies to dance that night to give joy to the Cormocolindor as they left this reality. Frodo might not know for certain when Midsummer might occur, but he can recognize that summer is here as the fruit comes ripe, so he uses the Realm of Possibilities to compress the copying and binding of Rhyselle's book into one afternoon so he doean't inadvertently leave the project unfinished. When I was a child I saw a dance performed on TV in which some group used two large poles for a dance in which the dancer performs various moves between the poles as they are lifted, patted upon the ground a time or two, and then clashed together, which could cause painful bruising to the ankles of the dancer should s/he miss a step. I don't remember the culture that did this dance, but it lodged in my brain. Also, dancing with weapons either lying on the ground or being wielded as if in battle is common in many cultures, in which a misstep could lead to serious injuries. To this day a playing of The Sabre Dance inspires me to dance wildly. Quarterstaffs were used by serfs as weapons for personal protection throughout British history, so it followed to me that such dances as this could well have been done with such things. Wouldn't those who lived in the far northern regions of the Shire where perhaps archery was not as well practiced possibly use such weapons against incursions of Men or bears or perhaps even wolves? In In Empty Lands Frodo and Sam perform this for Boromir during weapons practice while they remained in Rivendell, and it was seen by Gandalf and Elrond. Why not postulate a repeat performance one last time for a dance few upon the island would have seen, a unique way to demonstrate their vitality on their way out of this life? It was proof that both these mortals were healed of the damage done by the Ring, and a means of demonstrating their joy in the life they'd lived. AS for Sam's book--well the epilogue is not yet written. Heh!

Lindelea	Reviewed Chapter: 2 on 4/15/2026
The bag Mistress Rhysellë had brought with her had contained fruit from her orchard, as well as strawberries from her garden. I never thought of it before, but does Tol Eressëa have seasons? I can't think of orchard fruit that would be ripe at the same time as strawberries, but then it's early, and I'm not quite awake yet. instead displaying—was it eagerness? ...and perhaps that is one of the reasons the Ring had trouble gaining power over Hobbits? For the Númenoreans' fear of death was the seed that led to their downfall, if I'm remembering right. (As I mentioned earlier, I'm quite groggy yet this morning, and the kitten is meowing his head off for some reason which also makes coherent thought difficult. I think he wants someone to put on his leash and take him for a walk. He loves exploring outdoors.) Come to think of it, in the film ROTK, Bilbo talks about sailing West as just another adventure, and Ian Holmes portrayed him as joyful and eager despite the weariness of age that was on him. It seems quite natural for Sam and Frodo to display the same attitude. Author Reply: I'm not aware that Christopher or Ronald Tolkien (the name JRRT used as his own) did detailed maps of Aman as they did of the northwestern lands that included Arnor, Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor. I imagine that Tol Eressea was sunk after its two trips between Aman and Endore in a location much of same latitude of, say, California, more moderate than our placement more northerly situated and thus subject to greater differences in temperature than the Bay Area and points south. (Although Samuel Clemens famously commented that the coldest winter he ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco.) As children we had apple trees surrounding our house, each tending to ripen at different points in the summer and fall. The yellow hybrid would come ripe in early July, while the three Gravenstiens didn't do so until September, at which time the hogs from the farm behind ours would escape and come through the field to the house to gorge on the windfalls. Big Bro and I took turns in summoning the brothers who raised them to come herd their porkers back home. The strawberries that had gone wild on the south field would produce berries from late June through early August, while the blackberries would start ripening in July and produce through to early September. What ripening times on the Lonely Isle would be is difficult to say for certain, so I decided to take writer's liberties with many possibly overlapping with more temperate weather than we experience here on the west coast. Book-Bilbo indicated he was quite ready to make one more journey when Frodo and Sam joined the Elves in the Woody End, while Movie-Frodo went from pale and withdrawn once they entered the Grey Havens to smiling and more rosy cheeked once he crossed the gangplank and set foot on the ship's deck. James Barry wrote Peter Pan anticipating the possible coming of rising tides and the crocodile to eat him as possibly proving to be a great adventure, although he took advantage of the chance to escape the rock and the rising tide and return home to the cottage under the tree, forgetting he'd thought he might die betimes a short time ago. Seeing death as being as natural as enjoying a good meal followed by a satisfying smoke was probably one of the Hobbits' saving virtues, although I suspect it was the rarity of ambition for power over others that saved them from the Ring's lure in the end. Frodo and Sam had survived the Ring in the end, and each knew healing and fulfillment before they came to their time for dying. I think they, as was true for Aragorn, knew their time had come and were finally eager to let go and take that last blind step of faith out of this world into what comes after. Yes, I think at that point they were becoming eager.

Lindelea	Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 4/15/2026
So many interesting details in this chapter! Did I ever tell you that I have a bookbinder in my family just a few generations back? Some of the books he bound have found their home on a shelf in my dining room. I remember my dad telling how he'd watched, fascinated, as his much older relative split a sheet of paper, then split it again, and yet again, and even (IIRC) a fourth time, resulting in paper sheets that were incredibly thin. The bookbinding reminds me of my dad's descriptions, a friend's demonstration of bookbinding, Mo/Bluejay the bookbinder from the Inkspell series, and, oddly enough, going to Kinko's to have a newsletter copied, collated, and folded via an automated process that rendered a uniform product. All we had to do was apply an address label to each (a labor-intensive process that took much longer than the copying) and a sticker to keep the newsletter together in its folded state, ready for the Post Office bulk mail process. Those were the days... But now all went together as if by magic! Magic, indeed. I can easily believe that Frodo would feel drained after such an exacting, energy-intensive process. I love the maker's mark in the form of a dragonfly. I saw a dragonfly just the other day, flitting above the bee garden. They resemble magical creatures in themselves, with those gossamer wings and the way they can float and dart in any direction. Author Reply: As part of my requirements to become a special ed teacher I was required to take a class involving various manual skills. We did pottery, carding, spinning, and dying wool and fabrics, weaving using finger-weaving, looms of various sorts, braiding, and so on, potato printing (a skill I first learned in Blue Birds when I was a child), and even doing some woodworking using manual tools--AND book-binding. I used the book I bound to write out the script of a Nativity Play I wrote for a volunteer tutoring group I worked with for Goodwill in Seattle when I was young teacher. It was fun to use that experience in this story. It's hard to think of applying address labels and stickers as being more labor intensive than actually copying your fanfic magazines to share with others! The property on which I grew up had swamps, ponds, drainage ditches, and other water features liberally featured throughout the more than two and a half acres we kids played on, so dragonflies were common sights (not to mention leeches and mosquitos). As the water was mostly stagnant we didn't have caddisflies, but we did have fairy shrimp, water striders and water boatmen, frogs of all sorts, garter snakes, diatoms, and even damselflies to watch and study. I cannot remember who invented the idea that Primula Brandybuck Baggins embroidered a stylized PB as a butterfly onto the products of her loom, embroidery hoops, knitting needles, crochet hooks, lace bobbins, and the like, but it inspired me to write Drogo Baggins to use a stylized DB to make a beetle and Frodo a stylized FB to make a dragonfly as their own makers' marks for their own works. And, yes, I suspect that directing this work to make exact copies of books would indeed be a draining experience for Frodo. Thanks for the observations you made in this story. You know I appreciate them so!

Lindelea	Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 4/9/2026
Arrgh. Just as I began to read, something crashed in the kitchen. I must go and see what the cats have been up to. Will try again later. Author Reply: Ah! How many times my life has been interrupted by such unexpected crashes elsewhere in the house! Usually it's one of Penelope's progeny climbing on some structure where cats are not supposed to be. Good luck!

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