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| Pearl of Great Price by Lindelea | 107 Review(s) |
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| Grey Wonderer | Reviewed Chapter: 15 on 12/27/2003 |
| I'm so happy for Pearl but poor Rosemary! Some of these Tooks are making life difficult! I still hold out hope for a happy ending. Author Reply: I always aim at a happy ending, for sure! Sometimes it shades into bittersweet, but I do my best. Thanks! | |
| Grey Wonderer | Reviewed Chapter: 14 on 12/27/2003 |
| I feel so sorry for Pearl missing her family and afraid that they won't be able to get there through the snow. I hope they make it as she really needs to see them or at least some of them. Author Reply: As Isum said, Paladin is the most determined hobbit he knows besides Mistress Lalia! Besides, Eglantine would probably nag him mercilessly to ensure Pearl is not "alone" at Yule. (Even though she'd be surrounded by Smials Tooks, it wouldn't be the same without her own family!) Thanks! | |
| FantasyFan | Reviewed Chapter: 15 on 12/26/2003 |
| Now we see the source of Rosemary's estrangement from her father. Old Ferdinand feels keenly the bite of having to take the Thain's charity, and in some way this is paying him back by giving him the only thing Ferdinand still has that Ferumbras could want - Rosemary. So Ferumbras is eager to get a heir? It is implied that his mother thinks better of him, for the plans that are being made. Perhaps Lalia wishes to mold the future Mistress to her satisfaction while she still can. I find it a bit curious that Ferumbras is so willing to oblige her. That relationship is rather strange - he either has no ambition at all for himself, and is content to remain under her thumb as a spoiled dandy, or he has to have a lot of really repressed anger to deal with at some time in the future. Marrying or not marrying seems like the last bit of control he has, the last card he could play against his mother. I wonder why he's so eager to spend it? Author Reply: Ferdinand is also under coercion, which I think becomes clearer later in the story. He's not thrilled about the situation, but he feels he has no choice in the matter. At this point, Lalia recognizes the lack of potential marriage partners amongst the gentry (Rosemary is descended from the Old Took, after all); daughters in the Great Families who are of child-bearing age are not likely to favor Ferumbras, and unmarried females of a similar age to the Thain are too old to bear children! I should also imagine none of them being willing to live under Lalia's thumb if they have any brains at all. So it may not be so much a choice to rob the cradle in order to get someone she can control but rather the lack of other candidates is driving her to take desperate measures. Ferumbras's reasons for what he does will become clearer as the story continues. Thanks! | |
| FantasyFan | Reviewed Chapter: 14 on 12/26/2003 |
| Isembold is living up to his name, isn't he? Pearl seems to be settling in well at the Smials. She's made friends among the girls and attracted the attention of the lads. Lalia is proving managable, and there's enough work to make Pearl feel useful as the Yule approaches. I love seeing a younger version of Everard - he's just as serious as he will be later. This whole chapter is a lovely character study - all the personalities are clear, except for Ferdi. He's still in his own world, and although we know he will recover, even later he has a tacturn and reserved quality to his speech, doesn't he? It's nice that you're writing these Yule scenes at Christmas time. The scent of cinnamon and pine in the background just seems to fit. Author Reply: I think she caught his eye on that first visit of his to the farm with Thain Ferumbras at the beginning of the story. D'you suppose he was one of the people who said a good word to Lalia about here when the subject of choosing a new companion came up? I love to hear your thoughts about the impressions the characters make on you. I find it so helpful to see them through someone else's eyes! I have to admit, it's been fun to imagine how Yule might be celebrated in the Shire. In the Great Smials, at least! I may have to think about how a farmer's family in a smallholding or an innkeeper or a craftsperson or a healer might celebrate, or what differences there are between the Tooks' and the Brandybucks' observances... Thanks! | |
| Lyta Padfoot | Reviewed Chapter: 11 on 12/22/2003 |
| The Woodcarvers are wonderful. I love your hobbit tradition of setting candles adrift - I did that with my Girl Scout troop as a child and it was amazing (even if the little holders kept capsizing!). Is this tradition a hint to the days when Smeagol's people, the ancestors of the Stoors, lived along the river? Author Reply: Belated thanks for reading and stopping to share your thoughts on the chapter. Y'know, I hadn't thought of it dating back to the ancestors of the Stoors, but that's a reasonable guess! | |
| Lyta Padfoot | Reviewed Chapter: 12 on 12/22/2003 |
| Poor Rosemary - its hard to have to be the strong one. Now that Ferdi is improving she'll have to grieve. Mother, uncle, and the entire life shes known gone in a night, plus her father and brother are forever scarred in ways she can't begin to understand. While having no dowry might be a problem for her, it could also be a boon since the Thain and his mother won't want a pauper for his bride. Young Regi was very much like his older self, he always seems to be protecting those who are unable to look after themselves as well as they need to. I adored his chapter even if it did mention fruitcakes; the best use I've ever found for one has been a doorstop. Author Reply: LOL! I actually had a good fruitcake once! My sister made it, and instead of those artificial-looking/tasting red and green cherries, she used apricots and pecans (and other fruit that I can't remember. Dates? Candied orange?). The cake part was light and golden in color. Like traditional fruitcake, it was baked ahead of time and cured with applications of brandy, I think, but I could be mistaken. Unfortunately, when I asked her for the recipe several years later, she didn't remember where she'd found it anymore. I do like Regi and how he's evolved over the course of the stories I've written. And twenty-some years after he first appeared, he's still evolving! I discovered rather recently that he has the heart of a poet and might have been a troubadour or whatever the Shire equivalent might be, if there is one, had his life worked out differently. Some kind of musician playing in the pub and at weddings and celebrations, possibly. This is a sad and difficult time for Rosemary, and I probably could not have written this part of her story if I didn't already know her outcome. Belated thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts about the characters and the story progression. Such good food for thought! | |
| Grey Wonderer | Reviewed Chapter: 11 on 12/19/2003 |
| I have been reading this one and it gets more interesting with each new chapter. The little boats with their candles sound like such a lovely tribute and remind me of the luminaries that are lit here for those that have died of cancer suring our yearly walk for cancer. I could picture all of the little boats floating in the water. You discribe it so well. Author Reply: Thank you! I appreciate the review. The luminaries sound beautiful, and sad somehow. I've lost grandfather, father, aunt, and brother to cancer. I have used "Remembering Day" in several stories, and it is beginning to seem the most natural thing in the world. Wonder what people would do if anybody set floating candles on the river for real? Have been enjoying (in an angsty kind of way) Pippin's knock on the noggin in your current story. Hope he gets his memory back soon... poor Merry! | |
| FantasyFan | Reviewed Chapter: 10 on 12/17/2003 |
| Oh, young Hally is here! How wonderful! Opening a chapter of one of your wonderfully-entertwined stories is like opening a Christmas box with another piece for a treasured collection. Each new bauble has its own facets, and it fits together with the others to make a sparkling whole. And not an old mathom in the bunch! So will this be Rosemary's story as well as Pearl's? Lalia intends to drive a hard bargain with Gundavar. Hopefully he is confident enough of his and Hally's skills to know what he can and can't do. Or will she go so far as to make it difficult for him in order to escape payment? I can't tell if Pearl was there for this conversation with the Bolgers or not - did she stay with the mistress after she returned to the study as she did the previous day, or was business first on this day and the outing just before noon? If she was there, how many of the subtleties does she understand? If she doesn't now, I imagine she soon will. Most likely, nobody hears more than the companion to the Mistress, quietly sitting by with the shawl and water pitcher, and unnoticed by any of the important people taking part in the conversations. Pearl can hold her own with the other girls in the dormitory, but she is going to have to modify her schedule a bit. She won't be able to be up with the dairymaids if she's got to also be sharp for her duties towards the mistress for hours after sundown. Might be tough to modify years of ingrained habit. (I find changing sleep schedules very difficult. I've always been a morning person; today I'm dragging after staying up late last night at the movies. Three hours of sleep just doesn't do it for me, and I can sympathize with Pearl.) Author Reply: I was going through and answering reviews, and I saw this one without an answer from long ago. (I also can tell that this story was deleted and restored from backup a few years after it was posted, and I wonder if maybe that explains why so many review replies are missing? Because I seem to remember making an effort to reply to reviews consistently to show my appreciation!) It has been awhile. I miss "hearing" your insights and snippets about life. Quite often, you uncovered elements I wasn't even aware of, and sometimes you shaped the direction of a character's development or an aspect of the plot. I hope that not hearing from you means you're well and busy and have moved on to other interests. In other words, what I mean to say is if you ever come by this way again and read this reply, I hope it finds you and yours well. | |
| Lyta Padfoot | Reviewed Chapter: 9 on 12/15/2003 |
| The thoughts on dresses made me laugh - I just did laundry and saw for myself how many clothes I actually own. Funny, it never seems like that many when I need an outfit for the day... Pearl's attitude surprised me a bit until my brain supplied information on how precious cloth was in the past and that a girl of Pearl's background would not have more than a handful of homemade clothes. You excell at picking up on those details; another excellent chapter. Author Reply: Yes, when you think of all the work it took to produce cloth in those days, not to mention hand-sewing every garment, it would be no wonder that a farm girl would feel rich to have a "company and visiting dress" in addition to her everyday dress. I had to think for a bit before I figured out how they'd handle washday. What would they change into? Then I remembered that they probably would have some sort of nearly-worn-out clothes for especially dirty work, or to wear when the other outfit was being washed. In pioneer days, ladies wore the same dress daily, sponging away dirt or odor if need be. To freshen up, they'd change to a fresh apron, not a fresh outfit. How spoilt the Smials Tooks are, and they don't even know it! | |
| Lyta Padfoot | Reviewed Chapter: 8 on 12/15/2003 |
| How sad about Esmeralda's sister. I'm glad I already know that Ferdi makes a recovery of sorts. Poor Rosemary - she is trying so hard to be strong for her brother that she risks a tumble herself. Author Reply: A recovery "of sorts"? Do you mean that Ferdi's still daft after this incident? (Well, in the minds of the other Tooks, perhaps he is) Rosemary is a dear, and she will get her reward, in time. | |