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Interrupted Journeys: Part 2 Journeys Perforce by elliska	6 Review(s)
Finda	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 8/1/2005
Hi:) It's me againlol I still love it. I like your battle scene and the fact that it holds 'surprises' for the elves they do not expect. An easy victory wouldn't have been that believable. I like the more romantic parts, too. So far you manage to combine romance and action very well. Another plus are the conversations and political discussions your character's have. That makes everything even more interesting and authentic. Author Reply: Hi, sorry it took me so long to reply to these. I was buried at work and everytime I opened the site to go reply, someone else would come drag me away. Grrr. :-) I'm glad you like the battle scenes. I find them really hard to write and make interesting so when people comment that they thought they turned out ok, it makes me so relieved and happy. :-) I like the romantic parts and discussions too. The political stuff had a place in this story and it helps set up a confilict that is going to pursue Thranduil throughout the rest of this series. And the romantic stuff is just fun. Again, thanks so much for the reviews. :-)

Bodkin	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 10/10/2004
Nice bit of a romantic interlude there! Aradunnon and Amoneth are clearly meant to be - perhaps they should just get on with it. Most people would consider a millennium a long enough courtship - after all, Thranduil and Lindomiel managed with a couple of years! Thranduil being scary with Uncle Engwe - what a good job he did on him. It is one thing giving advice, but Thranduil is an absolute monarch and his Council is not run by consensus. Could it be that Thranduil has been too tactful in his use of power? Surely not. Good for his naneth. And he is right (say we with hindsight). They do need the swords and the army and the financial security. Life is not just swinging in the trees and singing - they will be tested. Good idea to take Lindomiel to help placate the villagers. She probably won't have quite the effect she has on Men, but her agreement can't do any harm, especially if they know and trust her. Perhaps Thranduil should run day trips to Amon Lanc, so that reluctant elves can get a sight of why they need to be prepared to fight - and what they are facing. Author Reply: Your last line made an image flash into my head--a bunch of elves/weapons inspectors in a bus going to Amon Lanc to determine if there are really WMD there. It just made me crack up. It's 6:00am and I must be a little punchy. Need coffee... You're right though. Since we know what's going to happen in Mirkwood just 50 to 100 years after the date the story started on, we know Thranduil is right to buy the weapons and build the army. They will be tested for a very long time. I like Scary!Thranduil, I have to admit. When I first read the Hobbit I pictured him as someone who could enforce his orders with merely a look. Not Evil!Thranduil by any stretch. That never occurred to me and I can't see where it comes from, but definitely firmly in control. He is indeed an absolute monarch and he doesn't require consensus. Engwe just is an equally strong (and at the same time pushy and arrogant) personality and there are a few times when he just doesn't get that he's out of line until he's firmly told that. Thranduil won't hesitate to tell him. :) Absolutely monarchy is a tricky thing though. Day trips may not be a bad idea because people do need to understand why decisions are made. I actually cut a part out of this chapter where Dieneryn makes some comments like that to Thranduil in private but it sounded like something out of the Presidential Debates (although I wrote it before the Iraq War started) so I cut it just because I didn't want to sound like I was making political statements. But building consensus is important. Even an absolute monarch needs the support of the people. Ask the French. :) Amoneth and Aradunnon have taken a large step in the right direction. They could be very perfect for one another and I hope it did come across that they truly love one another. Both are a little selfish/self-centered in certain respects though. They need to think about that. It's not necessarily an obstacle--ask my husband. :) But it will need to be addressed. Thanks so much for the review and the laugh!

Picara	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 10/9/2004
I think I'll leave my review here this time. I like this chapter. There are a lot of gems of dialogue in it. You write dialogue pretty well. It usually engages me. I enjoyed the council meeting. If you were going for tense, I think you got it. I also liked Aradunon's conversation with Amoneth. He seemed surprised that Thranduil and Colloth were right but sometimes you do need to hear things a few times to get them. I also liked Thranduil's interaction with Lindomiel at the end. It's nice to see him with someone to take care of him. The only thing that concerns me is the idea of Engwe turning into some evil usurping uncle. I hope its not going in that direction. Author Reply: Thanks! I'm glad you like the dialogue. It is my favorite part to write always. I'm glad the council meeting seemed tense. That was what I was going for along with a comeplete lack of black and white decisions. I definitely agree that it is nice for Thranduil to have Lindomiel. I will tell you this much straight up--don't worry about an 'evil relative attempts to overthrow Thranduil and drag Mirkwood into despair' plotline. I have read a good many of those stories and I even liked some of them and would say they were very enjoyable and well written but I have never read one that I bought. That's not to say everyone will agree with every word out of Thranduil's mouth (where's the fun in that?). They may even cause him trouble. But no family members are going to intentionally plot his demise. He has enough trouble without it coming from his family. :) Thanks for the review!

Jay of Lasgalen	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 10/9/2004
Wow, that council meeting was tense! It reminded me of a few meetings I have attended. I hope Thranduil is right in his decision to cut the trees and trade with the dwarves! Jay Author Reply: It was meant to be tense so I'm glad it came across that way :) Unfortunately, I have had my share of meetings like that too so it wasn't very hard to write--just imitate life. I hope he's right about that decision too but things like that are rarely ever simply right or wrong in the end, are they? They almost always have repercussions that come out on both sides. Thanks so much for the review!

French Pony	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 10/9/2004
Oooh, what a nice meaty chapter! Wood-elf economics is not a subject I had ever expected to find fascinating, but it has turned out to be so. Go figure. What's interesting here is the way that Thranduil seems to be in the middling stages of learning the arts of combining international trade with domestic politics. Someone on that council -- Hallion, maybe, he seems to have the mind for it, or Aradunnon -- might want to start working on the art of "spin." Maybe tell the villagers that the trees are growing too thickly, or promise to plant one sapling for every tree taken, or something. It would seem that the issue is more one of the quantity of trees cut, not so much the fact that the trees are being cut; the Elves have clearly made this dye before, and it does require cutting living trees to do so. It's also interesting that Thranduil proposes to send Gondor the fiddlehead ferns and the mushrooms that go into the green dye. He could probably get a much higher price (therefore have to make less dye, therefore save more food for the Elves) by just selling them the finished dye. Raw materials always cost less than refined. He could probably command twice as much gold for the finished dye as for the raw materials, especially if he didn't let on what those raw materials were. He also doesn't seem to have gotten to quite the level of sneaky thought that the medieval French kings had about economics. One of the Henris, Henri IV, I think it was, had a similar situation to Thranduil's; he had a war to fight and he needed to raise money. He solved his problem essentially by perfecting the art of advertising. he just decided that he would advertise French products around Europe as inherently superior luxury products (French wine, French cheese, French brocades, that sort of thing), create demand, and meanwhile jack up production to justify that demand. Thranduil is nowhere near this devious, and I think I do like him that way, but he could probably manage to put a slick advertising campaign on, say, maple syrup. Convince the Dwarves that they really want gen-you-wine Mirkwood Maple Syrup on their morning hotcakes or something. It seems that Aradunnon was long overdue for a little chat about Women. Thank goodness he has an older brother; how humiliating would it have been for him to have to listen to Dieneryn give him That Talk? Now, Amoneth needs a companion Talk, probably from Lindomiel. It's good that they're getting together, but they need an extended courtship before anything happens. They've both got way too many issues to skip doing that. As an economic aside, I'm glad you liked the bit with the bear teeth and claws. It's all about the perceived value versus the intrinsic value here; something with a high perceived value to the men can be traded for quite a lot of glass beads, no matter how little intrinsic value the Elves see in it. The Men want the bear teeth and claws to grind into poweder to be used for purposes that are definitely not rated PG-13. Somehow, I don't think that the Elves will ever understand this fully. Author Reply: Did the French really do that and that's why we think they're so cool now still? That was really smart on Henris' part! I'm torn about whether I see Thranduil being that savvy when it comes to things like that. On the one hand, I think the elf must have been very clever to defend Mirkwood all those years. He must have made some very good decisions and learned some adaptability. On the other, I'm not sure I see him as a particularly good spin doctor. I think he'd need someone to do that for him--like you said, maybe Hallion. Poor Hallion. He gets all the rotten jobs. And now I have a picture of an advertisement aimed at dwarves for maple syrup running around in my head. It is too bizarre and I have you to thank for it. :) My husband is looking at me with that 'I think she's cracking' look. He usually does when I'm reading your reviews. :) But 'spin' is going to be an issue when selling difficult decisions, isn't it? On that topic, as for the trees, part of the conversation that got cut from this chapter was actually just something like you suggest--putting a 'forest management' spin on the whole thing. In retrospect, that might have been a bad cut because such things are going to be important later but the chapter was so bloody long. I do think they intend to sell the finished products though. Raw materials, especially of the heartwood variety, would be impossible to transport and not as valuable, as you observed. Ooo ack! Dieneryn having That Talk with Aradunnon. Now that would have been painful and ugly. Thank heavens it didn't come to that. Yes, it was looong overdue, though its hard to imagine some version of it didn't happen repeatedly before--sometimes it takes a while and repetition to penetrate the male skull. :) And yes, I agree they need an extended courtship to see that they really do understand one another. They definitely have issues and that is why they are not yet betrothed. And yes, I chuckle every time I think about poor Thranduil mystified over the use of bear claws and teeth but perfectly willing to sell them in your story Masque of the King Stag. I burst out laughing when I read that. No, the Elves will never get that. :) Thanks for the reviews. Again, I have learned something. At the risk of sounding condescending, and that is most certainly not my intent, I bet your professors love you. You seem very well read. I always enjoyed students I could learn from when I taught.

daw the minstrel	Reviewed Chapter: 5 on 10/9/2004
I am very interested in the romance of Aradunnon and Amoneth. They seem to be edging toward one another very slowly. It was good that they talked to one another. The council meeting was very tense. You could see both sides of all the questions. Author Reply: I'm glad it seems interesting. It was kind of hard to work out because so much of the romance developed over the 900 odd years between this story and the last one that we don't see. So the only way to show where they are now is through dialogue (or at least I couldn't think of anything else). Now, we are together and we can follow them along as it goes into its final stages. It is a slow thing by necessity. They are not perfect people and they have things to work out. Furthermore, they are not living in a perfect world. It was definitely good that they talked. They didn't quite talk about everything they needed to discuss though, did they? I'm glad you could see both sides to the issues in the council meeting. I intended that because I want to show these are not easy choices and there isn't one obvious solution. I don't think anything involved in this developing situation would be a simple cut and dry decision for poor Thranduil and it will only get worse, it seems. Thanks for the review!

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