Henneth Annûn Story Archive

Bugger.  Because greywing's name was mentioned in the last chapter, I mistakenly addressed the review to the wrong person!  

G.A., your story is positively wonderful.  

Well.  My mistake just means I was so eager to read it that I skipped over all niceties like who wrote it.  Quibbling little detail, that. 

Apologetically,
Allie

My ego is now hugely inflated from being confused with the illustrous G.A.!   You can imagine my elation when G.A. decided to use my lowly scribbles for her appendix. This is such a wondrously creative collection of stories. Let's have another round of applause for her, please!

Thanks, everyone, for your comments on "The Blue Book." I've been dodging thunderbolts and giant eagles all week.

Freyalyn: I hope you have stopped choking by now.

Oshun: I think Feanorian obsession rubs off onto Feanorian fans.

Meril: no sweat on author identity: I'm proud you can't tell me apart from greywing!

Greywing: keep the madness coming.

Dear kenaz:

Thanks for your kind remarks on my story--it was great fun to write. Tolkien's intent to create a living mythology is one of the strongest aspects of his work, and I wanted to make the connections with "real" mythology more explicit--and tell jokes in the process! Greywing is now illustrating the entire piece--I'll post a note as her pictures go up.

Hi, GA!
Congrats on your positive reviews!  This suite of stories certainly deserves it.
Your plan to expand the "living mythology" is wildly successful.  I'm not sure what JRRT would have thought of it, but I think it's fabulous--and hysterical!
DW

ROFL wow.... Thurender the Thilmaril ROFL ...... GA, you are blessed to be able to write something this gorgeous. When/If I'm able to calm down from laughing like mad I'll try another comment on this.

Very pleased to see that you are beginning to post these here. I can't wait to read upcoming additions.

Also, like Bilbo's voice here and what it reveals about Aragorn that he is trusted with these tales that are "as much part of the story" as the "cleaned up" tales in the Red Book.

Hey, I like this! It has the real mythic quality of explaining how things of varied nature came to be (aitía) that I find lacking in Tolkien´s legendarium.

And the lady could put things clearly, LOL! I love the idea of the Númenor babies becoming dolphins. Only that I wonder why they left that story out from the Red Book... if the storyteller dresses Uinen up for narrative purposes and leaves out the paragraph about forbidden loves, it contains nothing objectionable.

Hello, oshun, Maeve and Vilwarin: thanks for commenting! 

Maeve: Uinen's defiance of Manwe is pretty blasphemous by Tolkien's standards, don't you think? Aside from the forbidden love, of course.

The next few stories in the collection will push the envelope a bit further.

Uinen's defiance of Manwe is pretty blasphemous by Tolkien's standards, don't you think?

 I suppose so. Only that now, I wonder; Aulë defied Eru creating the Dwarves and he didn´t get his scenes cut... hmmh, methinks the Dwarves must have been a powerful lobby at the time of the Red Book´s publication. ;)

And I´m quite anxious to see the envelope pusshed a bit further, indeed I am!

I don't know why it took me so long to get around to reading this story because it is beautifully written. You have certainly given the tale "Of Uinen and the Children of Númenor" a voice that would not be amiss in one of hte good Professor's own collections.

I am most fond of "just so" stories and the like and this is certainly one of my favourites so far. I have bookmarked this so that I can re-read it at leisure, for it is a tale worth enjying again and again. 

Oooh, so you've got Idril leaving Maeglin for Tuor!  Very clever--no wonder he was pissed!

Excellent tale, nice reworking of both traditions.

A very worthy end!

You have given poignancy to the mostly boring babblings and arguments of experts on the Mediterranean Great Mother. But the touch of evemerism in the end is a bit too blasphemous. Not that I am going to complain. ;)

One little thing that made me "euh?" was how the women are called Women and then the men are called Men. It´s the fault of English that the word "woman" comes from "man" and not the other way round, so the effect is a bit curious. I imagine it´s a translation from an Elvish text, and yet this is one of the very few ocassions where I could use an Elvish word. :)

This story has definitely grown much since it started, and this does not mean I´m complaining about the beginning. Your ability to weave myths into seamless patterns has increased, both in delirious and in "reasonable" mode. ;)

I think you'd better go and sit down now with a nice cup of tea and a biscuit.  Perhaps you might like a cold compress for your head, and put your feet up.

I'm sure you'll feel more normal shortly.....

(I certainly won't - I'm still choking....)

The translator's notes made all the previous chapters suddenly and inexplicably hilarious. THANK YOU.

 As a side note, my condolences to the realm of Doriath.

OMG I think I almost hurt myself laughing! I cannot believe that last bit by Greywing. That girl is a nut!

"I thaid, thurrender the Thilmaril!"

Then this line killed me...

"So that was what you wanted?" he rasped. "Why didn't you just ask—"

Oh, this is so funny, GA!  So that's where LaCE came from....

The tales cheered me up -- and the artworks did, too.

Very nicely done, thank you for sharing this!

- Barbara