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| Time by Bodkin | 20 Review(s) |
|---|---|
| Linda Hoyland | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/13/2007 |
| This was very moving and made some excellent points.Tolkien all too often neglects to name the wives and daughters!If only we all had an immortal Elf to remember us !I liked Faramir here too. Author Reply: Thanks, Linda. I find the namelessness of wives and daughters most irritating! (Although not very surprising.) Faramir is a great character - one of my favourites. I can just see him helping Legolas in this quest. | |
| TheDancingCavalier | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| That was such a sweet story. It showed an aspect of Legolas that is often assumed, but nobody really takes the time to write about it. this story was beauitful-it captured death and life, past and future. You're writing was beautiful, and something to be adored for a long time. Author Reply: Thank you. I'm glad you liked it. I think Legolas would have found it rather offensive that people mattered so little and were forgotten so quickly - but these people, at least, will be remembered. | |
| Gwynhyffar | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| I forgot to say that the old woman talking of the people who had lived there was wonderful. I personally find research much more rewarding when I can actually talk to someone who either directly or through oral tradition knows the story of an area. Author Reply: It is sad how we usually leave it just that bit too long to talk to those who were there. So often, interest in family history is stimulated by a death - and then there is no-one who can answer the questions. | |
| Gwynhyffar | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| Oh my gosh, what a pleasant surprise, Bodkin! I absolutely love Legolas trying to piece together a small, personal piece of history that otherwise would have gone unknown to everyone-especially to have it linked to something like a doll. Things like that say so much when you find them, and yet create more questions than answers-as you showed so well. Legolas caressed a sapling that was growing between the grassy cobbles before the doorway. ‘The past should not be forgotten.’ He sounded sombre. Something about this ruin grieved him. He had seen the wreckage of battle and the destruction that had touched the White City, but this small tragedy touched something in him. It was personal, he decided. Not the great sweep of history, not even a footnote: a single bloom rather than a field – and so it made more impression. That made me cry! It's so true! So is the part about how men are good at record keeping-of those they deem significant. Thank you for this, I very much enjoyed it and I loved getting a tiny glimpse of Those Who Came Before. Gwyn Author Reply: Thanks, Gwyn. I have been so bad about replying to things over recent months. I have no excuse but drowning in paperwork. I love the whole thought of archaeology/history - and have spent enough time in record centres trying to seek the name of a mother or the record of a death to know how easily people are forgotten - and how little ordinary people mean in the sweep of history. I don't think Legolas would like that. I'm glad you liked the story. | |
| Ellie | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| That was beautifully told! The chasm between elves and men can be looked across but not always very well bridged. Poor Legolas is trying though! His offer to remember is a noble and heart-felt one and he has the right of it - holding the memories in his heart for all time. Hope that made sense, I'm tired. Nicely done! Author Reply: Thanks, Ellie. Looking at elven time from a human perspective is ... odd, and I think looking at men from an elf's viewpoint would seem just as peculiar. It takes so few years to obliterate all recollection - the offer to remember would ease a lot of people's minds. | |
| Larner | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| Bodkin, one of the most profound looks at the differences between first- and second-born I've seen yet. Moving and enduring and--needful. Author Reply: Thank you, Larner. I doubt the Secondborn expected to understand the Firstborn - they could be rather too dazzling at times. But Legolas, I think, wants to understand, only his introduction to living among men is recent and I doubt he really comprehends mortality. He knows death in battle - of course he does: he is a warrior from a land at war - but he doesn't understand children growing to adults and aging and dying peacefully in their beds. And possibly never will, for all that it will hurt him every time. | |
| elliska | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| I love Legolas's determination to learn about the people lost in Ithilien, despite their own people's lack of information. It is a wonderful contrast of the values of elves and men / men of different regions, since you worked in Rohan too. And I love Faramir here--he is such a good person, and you really show that here in a number of ways. The end had me in tears. Memories are such an important thing, indeed. Great story! Author Reply: I can so imagine Gondor's records being clinical and concerned with rents and land-holding and military levies. While Rohan's bards would have tales of heroes and recited chains of kinship - and the elves just knew everybody. Amazing to meet someone who had met Gil-galad - but such an elf would also have known thousands of ordinary people and their partners and children and parents. Faramir is such a good person - my first LotR hero (and I'm still sweet on him a bit! Although I'm happy to leave him to Eowyn.) Memories are important - and we often don't realise what we lack until it's too late to fill in the gaps. Thank you, elliska. Glad you liked it. | |
| Imhiriel | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| I feel with Legolas: it is sad that people should be forgotten or be deemed unimportant so easily. But I think he does not fully appreciate the (sometimes dubious) advantage Elves have over Mortals - their infallible memory and their longlevity. It is easier to remember if you don't have to rely on written records who might be incomplete or faulty, or on tales passed on which might change with every teller. I really, really like Thimbriel. May I hope she will appear in some future stories of yours? And I'm glad she did not turn out to be a descendent of that family - I think it makes the way she tells the story more poignant if the feeling she can express is and evoke is based on sympathy for a fellow human being, not on personal interest (that's expressed rather badly, but I'm having trouble finding the words to explain...). Your portrayal of Faramir was wonderful, striking for all its subtlety. I had the feeling that he is guiding Legolas for a better understanding of Mortals in that he didn't just tell him of "official records" and "personal memories" and what might be contained and not contained in each form, but in that he let him discover and experience it for himself. And I loved the little reminder of how respected and beloved he is among his men. The story left me with a feeling of melancholy, but also of peace. Author Reply: Melancholy always seems to work so neatly in considering the relationship between elves and men! Men are remembered in their descendants, I suppose - although it is sad how quickly people are forgotten. And it could be said - has been said - that history forgotten becomes history repeated. It irritates me, when indulging in my passion for family history, to find that no-one bothers to record the women and children ... although, in some ways, not being a matter of record could be an advantage at times, in all probability. I liked Thimbriel - it's surprisingly liberating to write about someone who is very old. I think it's true that age removes a lot of the layers people load on themselves in self-defence. I feel that the refugees from Ithilien probably made up a community and would know each other as refugees often do - but it would have been too coincidental to make her a member of the same family. Faramir is such an intelligent man - a real renaissance man, really. Scholar, warrior, loyal friend, honest, caring. The whole package! He would do his best to understand what the elf sought - and try to make sure he found it. Thank you, Imhiriel. I'm glad you liked it. Sorry to be so long replying. | |
| daw the minstrel | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| Oh my goodness, what a perfect story for Gwyn! You're so clever, Bodkin. And it makes sense too, given Legolas's reaction to the stones of Hollin. I love the way he treasures each individual no matter their age or sex or value to the realm. Sadly, Tolkien too seems to record mostly men except for noble houses. Author Reply: How to brink together my experience of County Record Offices with fieldwork ... I imagine elves would have found the anonymity of the poor - and particularly of women and infants to be rather offensive. And children, I think, would have been an Achilles heel. Yes. And Tolkien didn't generally bother to give mothers to even the most noble of men. Or sisters and daughters. And when he did he often didn't name them. (It seems mean to complain, since he did make his world so complex - but IT DOES ANNOY ME!!) | |
| Lindelea | Reviewed Chapter: 1 on 6/12/2007 |
| Ah. I've often thought about Ithilien. Beregond's family came from there, you know, until they were driven out and went to Lossarnach. (I found it very interesting that Beregond was tall, as Bergil promised to be, and yet the Men of Lossarnach were shorter than the Men of Gondor--until I re-read Beregond's conversation with Pippin some time ago.) I like the old woman, not afraid to speak her thoughts in front of one of the Fair Folk! The story evokes many different, and yet related, emotions in the telling. Yet hope lingers in the essence after the last word has been read. And I love this glimpse of Faramir. Author Reply: Ithilien must have been full of reminders of the past - and most of them mournful. It's not surprising that Legolas's elves were drawn to the place! I doubt there were any left who had actually lived there, but certainly there were those whose grandparents had been - and Thimbriel illustrates, in a way, the difference between paper history and people. I did think about making her Beregond's mother, but decided it was a bit too obvious, so Mablung got elected. I don't think he has recorded family. Legolas would not have been very well acquainted with men before his time in the Fellowship, I think. And he would have found children touching - even though he would have soon been horrified by how swiftly men aged. Faramir is gorgeous. My first LotR hero. (I love most of them now.) Sorry to be so long replying. Thank you, Lindelea - glad you liked it. | |