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Thain  by Lindelea 4 Review(s)
BodkinReviewed Chapter: 31 on 5/21/2006
Cirdan was right - the moment wasn't ripe. And now Bucca is off home to fetch hobbit archers. Fingers crossed he finds some - and that his family is coping in his absence.

‘I will go,’ Bucca said although I do not know the way.... An echo of a future event there, it seems.

Courageous and loyal creatures, hobbits.

Author Reply: Exactly; you caught the "echo" as I meant it to be heard, but didn't want to club anyone over the head with it.

He'll get to see the Shire soon. Or what's left, anyhow.

I was thinking the other day that this is about 1,000 years before Frodo & Co.? I might be totally "off", not having looked at the timeline or Tale of Years in weeks. But if it is, 1,000 years would be enough time for quite a bit of healing to be accomplished, to the hobbits and to the land.

LarnerReviewed Chapter: 31 on 5/20/2006
"The world has changed" actually is book-verse first, although at the moment my mind can't remember if it was Treebeard or Tom Bombadil who said it. I want my radio changed out for the one with the CD player so I can listen to my Rob Inglis reading as I have to drive back and forth to work.

Bucca now has a purpose, at least.

I am SOOOOOO glad to see this update, as you know. I love it so much! One of my favorites of your works.

Author Reply: Oh, hurrah, am glad to hear that I'm still more-or-less in book-verse.

Have checked out Rob Inglis' reading on CD from the library more times than I can tell. Sure wish I had my own copy! One of the young hobbits was just saying the other day that she wished we'd check it out again.

Happy to oblige! Now if I can just whip that draft "Pippin" chapter into shape, you'll have another.

Garnet TookReviewed Chapter: 31 on 5/19/2006
I knew that opening had a familiar "feel" to it.

Ooo, this was one of the best "Thorn" chapters yet. I'm really starting to be able to visualize this character. He's been kind of hard to wrap my mind around, but now I'm starting to see him as what he really is--a hobbit, just like the ones I already know, just from a slightly earlier time. I'd been having trouble seeing the Shire in its earlier days. I keep forgetting that this is 1000 years before the events that end the Third Age. A culture, even one as determined not to change as the Shire, can change a great deal in that amount of time. Now that I'm getting ahold of that fact, it's all starting to come togethr. It took me long enough.

Thanks for the update. Hope the next chapter is ready for posting soon.

GT.

Author Reply: LOL, very familiar!

Oh, I hope the earlier Shire wasn't too terribly different from the Shire at the start of The Hobbit... It was meant to be very much the same, except for having a King (far away, and hardly ever thought of) and being invaded and overrun by the Witch King's army fairly early on, I suppose it does indeed look like a very different Shire.

But Bucca is just a plain farmer, perhaps a *little* less shy of Men than your usual hobbit due to his father's being a leader of his clan and thus more likely to deal with the King's representatives. I hope that he came off as an ordinary farmer, forced into extraordinary circumstances, anyhow. I'm glad it's coming together!

I hope the next chapter is ready for posting, soon, too! (This story was in last year's MEFA awards in the "unfinished" category. Difficult to realise it has languished this long!)

DreamflowerReviewed Chapter: 31 on 5/19/2006
Wonderful chapter! I *do* like the "nod" to PJ at the beginning of the chapter.

I think I may go through and re-read the "Thorn" chapters--I had to think to remember what Bucca had been up to when you left off.

I also love the little bit of using gardening to eavesdrop outside a window, much like Sam would do, many generations later!

Bucca is so very much a hobbity hobbit, and his time among the Men and Elves has not changed that one little whit, I'm pleased to see--I love his comparison of the young princes to hobbit tweens!

Author Reply: It is fun to take the words of others and craft them into slightly different shapes... just so long as proper credit is given, I suppose it's not too wicked of me.

LOL, I had to think to remember what Bucca had been up to, as well, and had to re-read the Bucca chapters before editing this last into the posted form! So busy now, that the part of my brain that was taken over by hobbits is being encroached upon by everyday affairs.

Thanks for the good words!

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