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Forsaken Knowledge   by Rhapsody 4 Review(s)
Lady_RoisinReviewed Chapter: 1 on 5/23/2009
Oh wow, Rhaps! This was superb! The flow of the words, the imagery, all of it. I'm flabbergasted to be honest, and I don't say that much. I can see how much work you put into this. It's really a work of craftsmanship, much like Celebrimbor's rings. I absolutely loved the part concerning the gray showing the colors and light for what they are. I enjoyed that bit, especially the part at the end with Celebrimbor's father. The allusion to light, mist, and darkness is well played out.

This is truly a fantastic story. I am sure Pande will be proud to recieve this gift....Just....Wow! I can for sure see MZB's style in this.

((hugs)))

Raksha The DemonReviewed Chapter: 1 on 5/22/2009
A fascinating look at Celebrimbor. I thought the lore of the Elven-Rings, the connection between colors and powers quite interesting.

ArianneGReviewed Chapter: 1 on 4/1/2009
I liked this story--there's a sense of secret history, and the veiled softness of the end is well-done. very much like MZB. A question though: I think that somewhere in the Silmarillion, if not in LOTR itself, Vilya, the Ring of Air, not Nenya, the Ring of Adamant, is stated as the strongest of the Three, with Nenya being the fairest. I haven't the books to hand right now, but you might want to check that over...

Author Reply: Hello Arianne,

I am so glad that the mystery and secret history feeling came across. As to the rings, I did check canon quite thoroughly on that, especially since the professor contradicts himself on which ring he considered the strongest/chiefest. In Unfinished Tales, he states that UT Nenya was the Chief
of the tree, which ties in this story with the somesort of leadership
Celebrimbor sees in the ring to protect the other three as he wants to
hide them from Sauron. To add more to the fun, Narya is
called 'Narya the Great' in History of Middle-earth, part 9, Sauron
defeated. Oh boy! The key to this story is the use of colours and how the white ring negates the other two rings in the sense that they need to get out of Eregion in secret, Nenya as a ring (white adamant) ensures that the other two remains hidden. How the ring later on manifested themselves with the ringbearer is another story altogether, but I think I will expand a bit more on this in the to be attached author notes with stone research and so on. Thanks for your review though, I truly appreciated it!

LarnerReviewed Chapter: 1 on 3/31/2009
Oh, but I can see this happening, Rhapsody. In the eye of the mind such images play. As well wrought as the rings themselves!

One thing--coffin or coffer?

Author Reply: Hi Larner,

Thanks! Celebrimbor finally found a way to redeem his mistakes, even if it takes using that knowlegde his father passed onto him.

As for your question, I can imagine that with the modern connotation the word coffin sounds a bit morbid, however in medieval times both the word coffin and coffer carried the same meaning. Both words are derived from the greek word cophínos, via Latin, Italian and French words - all of which mean a ‘container’ of some sort. Since I was curious, I learnt that in modern Italian namely cofano, which means a strong-box or the boot (trunk) of a car, and the Spanish cofín are cognate words. Of course latin influenced germanic languages a lot especially during medieval times in Europe, so I can imagine that both versions somehow found their way in the English language. For me coffin sounds a tad closer to its roots and that is why I went with that given the setting in medieval times, and also because my trusty dictionary offered both words for the translation I looked up. I truly figured it wouldn't make a huge difference, but it would have if this would have been a contemporary piece of course. I hope this explains my choice a bit.

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