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labingiThis is the first self-published book I have ever read a good chunk of without realizing it was self-published. [EDIT: This is not a dig at self-published writing. I am self-published and hope my books are roughly comparable to traditional in quality, but it is a mountain to climb to do all the traditional publisher work yourself on your own dime, so I'm impressed when a work does it, and I want to uplift that it's possible.] The book is as well written as a number of recent traditionally published books; it’s well edited, proofread, designed, nice cover art. It looks professional.
But in retrospect, it had to be self-published because it’s a Silmarillion fan fic with the names changed, and a traditional publisher wouldn’t take it for fear of being sued. Its premise (I’ll just render this in Tolkien terms) is one of the exiled Noldor returns to the Undying Lands after dying (?) in Middle-earth. That’s a fantastic premise for a fic! With some alterations, it’s a great premise for an original story. That’s why I bought it! I don’t think it fully exploits this premise, though. It’s a goldmine for psychological and philosophical development, and it has fairly little of either, in my opinion.
It does have a great original addition in the idea of a male and female elf who are well-matched “professional/vocational” rivals to such a degree they can be almost interchanged with each other. That concept may be the story’s strongest, and again, I felt it wasn’t fully exploited.
But some of my discontents are discontents with the source material (The Silmarillion): 1) the style is, for my taste, too expository—too much “telling,” not enough “showing”; 2) I just don’t get the concept of the Undying Lands on any deep level, because my cosmology is very different from Tolkien’s. Goddard is, I think, trying to follow Tolkien here, and part of my difficulty suspending disbelief may come from my just not getting it. I give her marks, on the whole, for showing respect for Tolkien’s work and not altering his Elves in any bizarre ways.
One the whole, I find the book conceptually fascinating but not developed deeply enough to fully engage me. Spoilers follow...
In essence, this is a future fic about Fëanor’s son, Maglor (here, Tamsin), dying and returning to the Undying Lands. Now, this is not literally a fan fic, and it changes some premises. At least as far as I recall, the sons of Fëanor never got to return but were stuck in Mandos, except for Maglor, who sort of wandered off. This book does the wandering off part; it just goes further. And it does allow all seven brothers to return, which is nice, I think. The kind of mercy is an interesting theme to explore.
The whole book is Tamsin on the road to a tournament, with a couple of young elves he meets, and it culminates in his being reunited with his loved ones. I appreciate the story for daring to take place 100% after the horrible conflicts have happened and really leaning into the idea of healing and peacemaking. It’s kind of like a cozy Silmarillion fic, with some First Age horror backstory thrown in.
I’m not a fan of cozy fiction, in general, so perhaps that’s my problem, but the difficulty for me is that nothing much happens. I don’t mean that a Balrog should attack or everything should be horrible. But I bought the book to find out how this ancient warrior deals with all the horrors that lie behind him and finds his way to healing. The answer I got was, “It’s pretty much fine; the Undying Lands (Elfland) just sort of make everything better and/or Tamsin and his soulmate being spiritually reunited just sort of makes everything better,” and there’s no little-to-no process showing this.
A key word may be “showing,” because I think Goddard’s fans might answer that there is process, especially with the soulmate character, Klara. There’s a whole section of the book devoted to telling her version of events—again, great fic idea to spend time with the Elves who stayed in Aman. But this book truly is like its source material in being very expository with relatively few novelistic scenes. I enjoy novelistic scenes; they are why I prefer LotR to the Silmarillion. I find them a good way—maybe the best way—to let a reader feel what is happening with a character: the details help me understand. There are precious few details here.
Even with Tamsin taking over a hundred pages to walk to a tourney, there’s surprisingly little “there there.” There are some nice moments, like when he’s startled he immediately goes for his sword by instinct. That’s a plausible detail, and I really wanted more of that. I wanted the whole story to be a tapestry of that kind of engagement with what his experience might be like, and how others might respond to it. As to others, his traveling companions consistently respond with “It’s okay,” which is admirable but not very interesting, or necessarily plausible for a couple of young elvish girls who have never seen a person like him before. It may be said with justice that I just like my fiction grim, so maybe it's a matter of taste, but I felt a lack of psychological realism or at least of depiction showing why it's realistic.
But, again, I may find it unrealistic because I just don’t get “God’s grace,” which is what this kind of miraculous healing is predicated on in Tolkien. It’s not a concept that jibes with my life experience or observations. I intuitively relate more to the Buddhist paradigm, where you have to deal with your karma. No deity is punishing you with bad karma, and no deity (or Buddha, etc.) can just take your karma away. It is, in essence, your psyche, and you need to deal with it: its ups, downs, guilts, lessons, gifts, and obstacles. The idea that a place can exist, thanks to God and/or the Valar, that just heals you is foreign to me. I don’t get it with Frodo, and I don’t get it here either, and maybe that’s on me.
But then again, for this cosmology based on grace to work, someone has to be granting the grace, and the one place where I think the Professor would most vigorously turn over in his grave is this story’s erasure of God. There’s a vague mention of “the gods” being said to live in some mountains, but basically this story is theologically really weird in that it has all the bad “celestial” stuff and none of the good. It has an Old Enemy (i.e. Morgoth); it has Balrogy creatures, goblins, trolls, etc. But it has no real presence of the Valar or concept of God/the One. In other words, it has demons but no angels. It has a blessed land, but blessed by whom? How? We see it have two elvish kings but neither is especially amazing, certainly not the source of the blessedness of Elfland. There’s no figure like Mandos, just Halls of Rest people pop back from. It’s a fractured cosmology that doesn’t hang together, and it, therefore, doesn’t help me understand how the grace that heals Tamsin works.
Okay, some stuff I liked: Goddard does a nice job imagining “future Aman,” how it would change under the cultural influence of Elves returning from Middle-earth. It is Tolkien-esque in its general sense that Elves diminish over time: the young ones are not as impressive as the old ones. I generally liked the cultural difference of the young elves, River and Ash, though their characterizations were thin. I liked the touch that elvish naming conventions had simplified and “River” and “Ash” simply are their names. (I like the place name “Sawwalith”: it’s just cool.)
I like the concept of the character of Klara as the bard whose voice magically shapes Elfland’s main city over the thousands of years that Tamsin is gone. There’s a great story in there about their bond and their parallel evolutions. It’s just a story that’s not fully told; it’s like a detailed outline waiting to be given life.
I am gratified to see Fëanor’s wife be taken seriously, as she’s a character I have always thought had potential to be very interesting. However, the potential is not explored here. She’s presented as a wise and talented person, and that’s about it. I like that she has a mother-daughter relationship with Klara, but, again, it’s not much developed.
I really do appreciate some of the ways Goddard stayed true to Tolkien, especially in keeping Elfland truly good and healing.
In terms of its being an originalized fan fic, the story fell into an uncanny valley for me of neither fic nor original, and I kind of wish it had picked a lane. It could have been an interesting pure Ao3 Silmarillion fic, and it could have been an interesting original story about the two soulmate bards with some more attention to its own unique worldbuilding. As it is, I can’t stop seeing Silmarillion characters, yet I also can’t stop seeing changes from canon and wanting to say, “That’s not how it works,” when, of course, Goddard can make her original fiction work however she wants.
Niggles: Real world names for elves—like “Klara” and “Alina”—jar me. It works for hobbits because hobbits are evoking rural English folk. For me, it doesn’t work for elves, who aren’t supposed to evoke ordinary humans. Goddard also sometimes drops Tolkien Easter eggs, like a “brace” of rabbits or ending the story on “I’m home,” and it’s really, really distracting. Overall, I think her prose is fine, and some of her lines have really beautiful metaphors or turns of phrase. The line editing is generally quite good.
I guess that’s about it. This is a story that appeals to me very much in its premise but disappoints in its execution. Fans of cozy fiction may enjoy it more. It’s fascinating as a fan fic concept but difficult to accept as a standalone work because it is so clearly a fic. On the plus side, I find the experience of reading it interesting, and I won’t forget it.
But in retrospect, it had to be self-published because it’s a Silmarillion fan fic with the names changed, and a traditional publisher wouldn’t take it for fear of being sued. Its premise (I’ll just render this in Tolkien terms) is one of the exiled Noldor returns to the Undying Lands after dying (?) in Middle-earth. That’s a fantastic premise for a fic! With some alterations, it’s a great premise for an original story. That’s why I bought it! I don’t think it fully exploits this premise, though. It’s a goldmine for psychological and philosophical development, and it has fairly little of either, in my opinion.
It does have a great original addition in the idea of a male and female elf who are well-matched “professional/vocational” rivals to such a degree they can be almost interchanged with each other. That concept may be the story’s strongest, and again, I felt it wasn’t fully exploited.
But some of my discontents are discontents with the source material (The Silmarillion): 1) the style is, for my taste, too expository—too much “telling,” not enough “showing”; 2) I just don’t get the concept of the Undying Lands on any deep level, because my cosmology is very different from Tolkien’s. Goddard is, I think, trying to follow Tolkien here, and part of my difficulty suspending disbelief may come from my just not getting it. I give her marks, on the whole, for showing respect for Tolkien’s work and not altering his Elves in any bizarre ways.
One the whole, I find the book conceptually fascinating but not developed deeply enough to fully engage me. Spoilers follow...
In essence, this is a future fic about Fëanor’s son, Maglor (here, Tamsin), dying and returning to the Undying Lands. Now, this is not literally a fan fic, and it changes some premises. At least as far as I recall, the sons of Fëanor never got to return but were stuck in Mandos, except for Maglor, who sort of wandered off. This book does the wandering off part; it just goes further. And it does allow all seven brothers to return, which is nice, I think. The kind of mercy is an interesting theme to explore.
The whole book is Tamsin on the road to a tournament, with a couple of young elves he meets, and it culminates in his being reunited with his loved ones. I appreciate the story for daring to take place 100% after the horrible conflicts have happened and really leaning into the idea of healing and peacemaking. It’s kind of like a cozy Silmarillion fic, with some First Age horror backstory thrown in.
I’m not a fan of cozy fiction, in general, so perhaps that’s my problem, but the difficulty for me is that nothing much happens. I don’t mean that a Balrog should attack or everything should be horrible. But I bought the book to find out how this ancient warrior deals with all the horrors that lie behind him and finds his way to healing. The answer I got was, “It’s pretty much fine; the Undying Lands (Elfland) just sort of make everything better and/or Tamsin and his soulmate being spiritually reunited just sort of makes everything better,” and there’s no little-to-no process showing this.
A key word may be “showing,” because I think Goddard’s fans might answer that there is process, especially with the soulmate character, Klara. There’s a whole section of the book devoted to telling her version of events—again, great fic idea to spend time with the Elves who stayed in Aman. But this book truly is like its source material in being very expository with relatively few novelistic scenes. I enjoy novelistic scenes; they are why I prefer LotR to the Silmarillion. I find them a good way—maybe the best way—to let a reader feel what is happening with a character: the details help me understand. There are precious few details here.
Even with Tamsin taking over a hundred pages to walk to a tourney, there’s surprisingly little “there there.” There are some nice moments, like when he’s startled he immediately goes for his sword by instinct. That’s a plausible detail, and I really wanted more of that. I wanted the whole story to be a tapestry of that kind of engagement with what his experience might be like, and how others might respond to it. As to others, his traveling companions consistently respond with “It’s okay,” which is admirable but not very interesting, or necessarily plausible for a couple of young elvish girls who have never seen a person like him before. It may be said with justice that I just like my fiction grim, so maybe it's a matter of taste, but I felt a lack of psychological realism or at least of depiction showing why it's realistic.
But, again, I may find it unrealistic because I just don’t get “God’s grace,” which is what this kind of miraculous healing is predicated on in Tolkien. It’s not a concept that jibes with my life experience or observations. I intuitively relate more to the Buddhist paradigm, where you have to deal with your karma. No deity is punishing you with bad karma, and no deity (or Buddha, etc.) can just take your karma away. It is, in essence, your psyche, and you need to deal with it: its ups, downs, guilts, lessons, gifts, and obstacles. The idea that a place can exist, thanks to God and/or the Valar, that just heals you is foreign to me. I don’t get it with Frodo, and I don’t get it here either, and maybe that’s on me.
But then again, for this cosmology based on grace to work, someone has to be granting the grace, and the one place where I think the Professor would most vigorously turn over in his grave is this story’s erasure of God. There’s a vague mention of “the gods” being said to live in some mountains, but basically this story is theologically really weird in that it has all the bad “celestial” stuff and none of the good. It has an Old Enemy (i.e. Morgoth); it has Balrogy creatures, goblins, trolls, etc. But it has no real presence of the Valar or concept of God/the One. In other words, it has demons but no angels. It has a blessed land, but blessed by whom? How? We see it have two elvish kings but neither is especially amazing, certainly not the source of the blessedness of Elfland. There’s no figure like Mandos, just Halls of Rest people pop back from. It’s a fractured cosmology that doesn’t hang together, and it, therefore, doesn’t help me understand how the grace that heals Tamsin works.
Okay, some stuff I liked: Goddard does a nice job imagining “future Aman,” how it would change under the cultural influence of Elves returning from Middle-earth. It is Tolkien-esque in its general sense that Elves diminish over time: the young ones are not as impressive as the old ones. I generally liked the cultural difference of the young elves, River and Ash, though their characterizations were thin. I liked the touch that elvish naming conventions had simplified and “River” and “Ash” simply are their names. (I like the place name “Sawwalith”: it’s just cool.)
I like the concept of the character of Klara as the bard whose voice magically shapes Elfland’s main city over the thousands of years that Tamsin is gone. There’s a great story in there about their bond and their parallel evolutions. It’s just a story that’s not fully told; it’s like a detailed outline waiting to be given life.
I am gratified to see Fëanor’s wife be taken seriously, as she’s a character I have always thought had potential to be very interesting. However, the potential is not explored here. She’s presented as a wise and talented person, and that’s about it. I like that she has a mother-daughter relationship with Klara, but, again, it’s not much developed.
I really do appreciate some of the ways Goddard stayed true to Tolkien, especially in keeping Elfland truly good and healing.
In terms of its being an originalized fan fic, the story fell into an uncanny valley for me of neither fic nor original, and I kind of wish it had picked a lane. It could have been an interesting pure Ao3 Silmarillion fic, and it could have been an interesting original story about the two soulmate bards with some more attention to its own unique worldbuilding. As it is, I can’t stop seeing Silmarillion characters, yet I also can’t stop seeing changes from canon and wanting to say, “That’s not how it works,” when, of course, Goddard can make her original fiction work however she wants.
Niggles: Real world names for elves—like “Klara” and “Alina”—jar me. It works for hobbits because hobbits are evoking rural English folk. For me, it doesn’t work for elves, who aren’t supposed to evoke ordinary humans. Goddard also sometimes drops Tolkien Easter eggs, like a “brace” of rabbits or ending the story on “I’m home,” and it’s really, really distracting. Overall, I think her prose is fine, and some of her lines have really beautiful metaphors or turns of phrase. The line editing is generally quite good.
I guess that’s about it. This is a story that appeals to me very much in its premise but disappoints in its execution. Fans of cozy fiction may enjoy it more. It’s fascinating as a fan fic concept but difficult to accept as a standalone work because it is so clearly a fic. On the plus side, I find the experience of reading it interesting, and I won’t forget it.
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Date: 2025-08-11 11:05 pm (UTC)Anyway, HotE is brilliant, despite the weird time stuff and the moon.
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Date: 2025-08-12 01:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-08-12 05:52 am (UTC)