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When the King Comes Back ( Brandy Hall ) by Dreamflower	2 Review(s)
Cap Red	Reviewed Chapter: 6 on 7/2/2010
Hi, I read one of your stories a while ago and recently rediscovered you, and have to say that your writing is inspired! I don't normally stop in the middle of a story to review, but I find that if I don't say something now, then I might forget entirely amidst all my happiness. Your characterisations are brilliant and the little details that you include just fills me with glee. I particularly liked the image of the dwarf haggling backwards. It gives such a depth to the story which so many other stories lack. The thing that I enjoy most however, is how true you are to Tolkien and to hobbits in general. Well done, and keep up the excellent work! Cap ;) Author Reply: Why, thank you so much for the kind words! This was only the second story I ever wrote, so I was quite new to everything. It surprises me still how well it has held up-- I have many other readers who still list this as a favorite. But my first three stories were really the foundation for everything I wrote afterwards-- the two WTKCB stories and my Conspiracy story. I thought it quite fun to put Gimli in the position of having to argue the shopkeepers into taking more rather than less! I'm glad you enjoyed that bit! And I will probably keep writing hobbits for the rest of my life! Thank you very much for your comments!

Gryffinjack	Reviewed Chapter: 6 on 12/25/2005
My first comment to this chapter is not toward the story itself, but to your opening comment. You mean there really is such a thing as "healing touch" and it works? Do they use amulets that hang from their necks such as Poppy used on Pippin? How accurate is it? "“Now, Pippin, get out of that gear. I want you down to your smallclothes.” “Poppy!” the wail of protest sounded much the same as it had when he was seven and had just about the same effect. She turned a stern eye upon him, and grumbling, he began to undress." I do so adore your Healers! Poppy is fantastic, the way she brooks no nonsense from her Took patients or their family members. Poor Pimmie! Even though she had heard Pippin's tale of what had happened, he had left the worst parts out. Added to this was his recent injuries at the hands of the ruffians. It must have come as quite a shock to her to see any hobbit, especially her dear younger brother in such a state. I am afraid that there is another slight inconsistency between this story and one of your others, this time "When the King Comes Back (Great Smials)." In the Great Smial version, Poppy tells Paladin, "It’s a wonder he didn’t die. He must have had an excellent healer, for I doubt that I could have kept him alive with such grievous wounds." Yet, here in the Brandy Hall version, Poppy tells Pippin, "Young fellow, in a little more than seven months, you have healed well from injuries that most would take a year or more to recover from." Now, unless Poppy was just making light of Pippin's past injuries so as not to worry him (which I doubt, given Poppy's directness), or was making more of them to Paladin in the Great Smials version to get him to understand all that Pippin had gone through (which I also doubt, since Poppy is honest and forthright), this is an inconsistency caused by dealing with such wonderfully complex stories. "I was checking a detail in one of these the other day, and noticed a "gotten" and an "Esmerelda" I had missed. sigh Should have fixed it right away, not sure I can find them again." I'm sorry. I noticed those slips and meant to tell you about them. The "Esmerelda" misspelling is in chapter 4 of this story, where Estella says, "“That sounds lovely.” She hesitated. “Merry, Esmerelda said not to press you about all the horrid things that happened to you, but -- well, weren’t there some pleasant things you could talk about?”" I'll let you now if I come across the "gotten" one again. You know, your errors really are minor when you consider what wonderful stories you give us to read! Author Reply: Yes, indeed there is such a thing, and yes, it does work. My husband recently passed his Level 5 Certification in fact. If you are interested in more info, check out http://www.healingtouch.net/hti.shtml which is the site for Healing Touch International. My husband uses a buffalo tooth on a leather thong as his pendulum. For hobbits, I tend to use it mostly as a diagnostic tool, as I have seen that at work. My husband on more than one occasion has caught a particular condition in a patient, and advised them to get it checked by a doctor, and his diagnosis was correct. He's also caught the early stages of a pregnancy, and the baby's gender a couple of times. But there is much more to it than that. Healing Touch is not a cure, but it can and does alleviate pain and other symptoms. He always advises it in conjunction with regular medical practices. I think of "the hands of the King" as JRRT describes it as a form of Healing Touch and of energy work. It's not really an inconsistency. In the one, she is advising Pippin's parents of what his injuries were like when they happened: she has caught the signs of previous broken bones and other injuries, and knows that they must have brought him close to death to have left such traces behind. (Just the signs of the many broken ribs would have told her that--a crushed ribcage is massive trauma.) But in the other, she is advising Pippin of how far he has come. She is assuming that he knows how close he came to dying, and wants to assure him that he is more than well on the way to recovery now. In other words, she is letting each party know something they didn't know before: to Pippin's parents, just how bad it was, and to Pippin, just how well it is going now--Pippin's trusted Aragorn's healing, but after all his years of healers "tutting" over his weaknesses, it must be reassuring to know that even someone who has known him from childhood can see a difference. Because Aragorn's healing and the Ent-draughts have indeed given him a boost in his overall health, but even they could not erase the traces of the physical trauma he endured 100%. It's why I had him keep his "trick knee", for I felt that there should be at least one physical reminder of all he went through. I'll try and get in there and fix the "Esmerelda" today! In my early stories, apparently I had accidentally entered the incorrect spelling into my spellchecker, so that it was automatically changing the correct spelling to the wrong one. I must have posted about seven or eight stories before Marigold brought it to my attention, and I went back to dig them out. I'm constantly finding ones I missed. sigh

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