Comments on Songs of Power

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I've enjoyed this more than anything I've read in quite a while. I loved your Finrod - sometimes oblivious but eternally hopeful and well meaning - loved all of them. (Anyhow, there is no way I couldn't enjoy a story containing the line *my little sister invented unfreezable shampoo*). I wish there was more, feel that I've just got to know these people and they're wonderful.

Some of your touches are really inspired, things like Aredhel as a healer, the way they divided the time into waking and sleeping periods by the stars. Enjoyed the mix of humour and the more serious, and found the differences between the Noldor and Telerin way of looking at music. and that you could no more own a song than you could a child, wonderfully authentic. I live in Africa, so the concept of music belonging to everyone, where how it feels matters more than getting it 'right', resonates.

The bear fight was very well written. Poor Teleporno - he tries but he's not good at the 'hero' thing, I guess. I liked that you brought him along, it was another of those touches that appealed to me. The end of the bear fight - Galadriel the Brave and Fingon the Valiant, indeed - was absolutely, perfectly right and showed the real power of the Eldar in action --- working with light, not darkness. And the end hurt my heart. Thank you for posting here. Finding this made my day.

~Kei



Thank you so much!  I'm really glad my characterizations worked for you, and I'm so happy to hear that the music stuff came across as authentic--I'm a musician myself, and was definitely thinking about the divide in attitudes between Western classical traditions and the folk traditions of so many other cultures.

I'm also relieved you liked Teleporno--I actually like him a lot, and don't think it's fault that he's not very good in a fight.  (I certainly wouldn't be!)

This was a great story.  You made all the characters feel relatable, yet still very Elvish - which isn't easy!

I particularly liked Finrod's moral uncertainty about eating seals. As an on-again, off-again vegetarian myself, it rang very true! Perhaps Finrod later had a discussion about this with Beren, and that's why Beren became vegetarian?

Thank you for posting!



To continue--some  of the things I like about this:

That you found space for so many of them! Many Helcaraxe fics I've read basically feature an exchange between two characters (or even the monologue of one) and the rest are mostly background--which is actually fair enough, but it's still lovely to see more group dynamics: Aredhel and Galadriel come across as vividly as Finrod and Fingon. It also well reflects the breadth of Finrod's sympathies.

The music theme! The description of Telerin music partly reminds me of what I've heard of Indian ragas, but other things also.

Polar bear maiar and seal poets!

And your hunting scene really works as action.

(There would be more--but I'm running out of steam and also time...)



Thank you so much!  I've noticed the same thing about many Helcaraxe fics--people tend to write vignettes and introspective pieces, which perhaps fits better with Tolkien's descriptions of the trip as unmitigatedly terrible experience...  But I had a lot of fun writing scenes with characters who, later in the book, won't have much to do with each other.

I'm glad that you enjoyed the music theme (that's really a compliment coming from you, you write music stuff so well!), and that it suggested something a bit beyond traditional Western music.  Thanks again for commenting twice!