This was a fun surprise when it posted! I wasn’t expecting to be back continuing on from Dark Things so quickly, but I’m glad! And hoo boy, it starts out with drama in that ice crossing scene, which was ominous and suspenseful and established a real cliffhanger within the first few paragraphs of the whole work!
I’m loving seeing these characters again, even as there are some that I’m feeling conflicted about. Part of me is SO happy to see Halbarad and Aragorn together, but another part really wanted Halbarad to get some distance from that relationship for his own sake after how things went down at the end of Dark Things. And though Halbarad is a big boy who is accountable for his own decisions, I am giving Aragorn some major side eye for allowing him to go out in that condition! I may need to do some re-reading to remind myself when Halbarad first became aware of the fact that he would not outlive Aragorn, since they seem to reference that here (and it is referenced in later events) but I can’t remember the origin of that knowledge. Anyway, I’m also thoroughly enjoying seeing Meren and Hannas again, and I love the true rapport that Mir and Valya have built. Mir really figured out how to do the mentor thing with all the best of Anna’s influence but without her more misanthropic tendencies in tow! Lastly, I thought the glimpses into internal ranger politics was fascinating. These are such noble characters doing such hard and selfless work that it’s refreshing to know that they still have petty internal jockeying for position and the need to manage egos within the ranks. And the idea that there are some among them who don’t *really* want to be there and who everyone sort of knows *shouldn’t* be there, and yet they’re there regardless because of external emotional considerations — oof, what an intensely sad and relatable dynamic that seems destined to end in tragedy. I am hoping against hope that Daeron makes it out of that river, at least!
On the issue of notes, I seem to be in the minority but I don’t see the harm in them at all. They might be very useful to a reader who isn’t familiar with all the past works (or just to one who is bad at retaining names or details!), and if another reader doesn’t require that, it doesn’t seem like any imposition for them to just skip over the notes — don’t need, don’t read! This isn’t being published in the same form and process as a standard novel, so I don’t think it needs to adhere strictly to standard novelistic conventions. Just my two cents!
Haha, I'm glad it seems like a quick return to you! I've been frustrated with the slow pace of my writing recently (well, always, but especially recently!); I had been hoping to get a lot more done during the summer than I actually did. Eventually I decided to just go for it and start posting, though figuring out what to do for an intro was really hard. The river crossing scene and the action that follows it is actually the central incident around which I'm building the first part of the story; it's one of my "originals," the scenes I wrote years ago, long before I ever thought about sharing my writing with anyone, let alone posting it publicly, so my work in the last few months has been to figure out how they got there, and what happens afterward. So in the end, I guess that structure reflects my actual writing process - huh, I hadn't thought about that ;)
The presentiment about Halbarad's death is based on a head-canon scene that occurs decades before this, during their initial relationship before Aragorn leaves for Gondor. It shows up as a flashback in Aragorn's memory in an WIP that takes place a few years after this, so no, you haven't actually missed anything ;) Canonically, of course, we don't know anything about Halbarad until he shows up in Rohan and then fairly promptly predicts his own death...but in my version of their relationship, this vague presentiment has always been hanging over them. Okay, thinking about it, the actual line is important ;) In a conversation about the dangers of getting emotionally involved with each other given the inherently risky nature of their profession, Halbarad says, "I will die for you, Arya. I do not know where, or when, but it will be so. And I will do it gladly." Aragorn doesn't really know how to handle it at the time, and even now, this knowledge colors their relationship, rarely stated but always there in the background.
Political jockeying isn't something I enjoy writing (maybe because it feels too much like real life!), but it's a thread I slipped in there early in Not All Those Who Wander, so I decided to pick it back up again, at least in a minor way. Maybe it will eventually go somewhere, maybe not. If you're interested in more, Saelind does Dunedain internal politics REALLY well; you should check out her stories, if you haven't yet :)
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Showed_Up_Late_To_The_Muster on Chapter 1 Wed 04 Dec 2024 08:51PM UTC
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LauraGray on Chapter 1 Sun 08 Dec 2024 01:39PM UTC
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