"Snowhawk" by Deborah Koren

I spent the whole of this book terribly worried for all my favorite characters that I'd grown to love dearly during Balefire... and the ending was wonderful.  More wonderful than I ever hoped.

Whew!

The refugee Rain needs to learn all she can about the magical relic she wields.  Former palace guard Reece Railey takes on the responsibility of leading and caring for a whole city and its people.  Count Lenzky tries to use his newfound magical powers to help others instead of always for his own gain. 

And as for Orin Balefire, new king of Estera?  He is trying desperately to appease his new allies while angling for more power.  Meanwhile, his sister Kora Snowhawk is missing, presumed dead, and the people of Estera are fighting amongst themselves as Orin's control of the kingdom wavers.

And it all has a happy ending!  Miraculously!

(from my Instagram account)

I think the thing I loved best about Snowhawk, aside from the happy ending, is the theme of every person being able to work toward making things better for those around them with whatever skills or resources or materials they possess.  It's only by working to help others that they truly are able to change their own lives and circumstances for the better, and I loved that message.

Particularly Good Bits:

"Rumors?" Rain smiled.  "Rumors can do the work of an army" (p. 233).

Reece looked around at the citizens packed into the main floor of the lodge.  It was going to be a long night.  The closest ones looked at him, wide-eyed.  He knew he should say something.  Make a little speech, encourage them.  Tell them it was going to be all right.  But he was too cold and tired for lies (p. 317).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-16 for violence and torture, including repeated scenes of people being burned or threatened with burning.  No smut, no actual gore, no cussing, but still a bit much for younger teens.

"Streams to the River, River to the Sea" by Scott O'Dell

I loved this book as a teen.  I loved this book again now.

Streams to the River, River to the Sea is a fictionalized account of Sacagawea's life.  It begins with a fictional description of her life beginning as a pre-teen when she is captured by an enemy tribe and literally groomed to become the chief's son's wife.  A half-French trapper named Touissaint Charboneau wins her in a gambling game and decides to make her his second wife.  Shortly before she gives birth to their first child, the Lewis and Clark Expedition shows up at the village where Sacagawea lives.

From there on, the book mostly follows the known account of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, but tells it from Sacagawea's perspective.  

Things I particularly love about this book:

+ the extremely well-researched depiction of American Indian life

+ getting to see a real-life adventure through the eyes of a young woman

+ Sacagawea herself.

Things I'm not so fond of in this book:

+ the portrayal of Sacagawea as a young teen, maybe 14 or 15 -- she was actually more like 19 at this point in her life

+ the portrayal of romantic feelings between Sacagawea and William Clark -- they're not historically accurate, they're based on a novel from the early 20th century that has since been debunked by historians as having fabricated a lot of things, including the supposed romance between Sacagawea and William Clark

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for a non-detailed depiction of childbirth, cruelty to animals, and for the portrayal of domestic abuse.  No bad language or spicy scenes, but does contain some frontier violence.

"Autumn Chills" by Agatha Christie

Over the past few years, HarperCollins has put out four seasonal collections of Agatha Christie short stories.  I've collected them all up, and I decided to try to read them all over the coming months, each during the season where they take place.  I began with Autumn Chills because I wanted to read it for the #AMonthOfMystery challenge on Instagram.  I didn't finish it before November, so it didn't count for that challenge, but that's okay!  I had a lot of fun reading one of these short mysteries every couple of days.

And then this review sat in my drafts for a month.  Because my life has just been so blasted busy!  That means I don't actually remember which stories were my favorites anymore, except that I wholeheartedly loved "The Case of the Rich Woman."

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for murder, mild innuendo here and there, and I think maybe a couple instances of mild cussing?

This was my 28th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

Beware the Black Friday Book Sale!

WARNING!  You could be tempted to fill your e-reader with wonderful books if you read this post!

I have joined forces with Perry Elizabeth Kirkpatrick and dozens (maybe hundreds) of other clean fiction authors to bring you the best deal on our books of the year!  The Black Friday Book Sale starts today and runs through Cyber Monday.  There are more than 700 books on sale for 99 cents or less, and you can find them all at BlackFridayBookSale.com .  

As part of this sale, the Kindle editions of ALL of my full-length books will be only 99 cents each!

That means you could buy all six Once Upon a Western books, plus A Noble Companion, for less than the price of one of my paperbacks.  If you've been wanting to buy the three books I released this year, right now would be a smart time to do that!

I'll be shopping the sale myself this morning.  It's such a fun way to try new authors or fill in gaps in a collection.  I'm not quite finished with all the e-books I bought via last year's sale, in fact!  But that's okay, I definitely need to pick up a few more ;-)

"Lonely on the Mountain" by Louis L'Amour

Well.  Hmm.  What in the world is up with the ending of this book?  It's a cracking good Sackett adventure for 23 chapters, and then it's like someone else finished it off from Louis L'Amour's notes.  Everything gets wound up ridiculously quickly, and the writing gets patchy.  As in, it jumps from first to third person within paragraphs or scenes, with zero reason.  There were other Sackett books published several years after this one that weren't that way at all, so it's not like this was L'Amour's last book and he just didn't get it edited properly or something.  Maybe the editors were on strike?  I don't get it.

Aside from the vexing last two chapters, I liked Lonely on the Mountain a LOT because it has Tell, Orrin, and Tyrel all working together to help their cousin Logan, and Cap Rountree is there too, and yeah... I love it when the Sacketts assemble to help one of their own.  In a lot of the books where that happens, we focus on the guy in trouble and the assembling Sacketts just show up to help, but this is like the reverse, where we get to see the helpers heading out to rescue the one in trouble.  That was nifty.

But, man, those last two chapters.  They feel like first drafts that never got revised. What in the world.

Particularly Good Bits:

"There's two kinds of people in the world, son, those who wish and those who will.  The wishers wish to be rich, they wish to be famous, they wish to own a farm or a fine house or whatever.  The ones who will, they don't wish, they start out and do it.  They become what they want to or get what they want.  They will it" (p. 95).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for lots of western-style violence, as well as danger from nature and animals, and a smidgeon of cussing.

This is my 27th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.  AND I have finished my own personal challenge to read all of the Sackett novels in two years!!!

"The Annotated Emma" by Jane Austen (annotated and edited by David M. Shapard)

This is the first time that I have truly enjoyed reading Emma.  I've read it twice before -- once in high school in the 1990s, and once in 2012.  Both times, I laughed my way through it, but I also cringed my way through it.  Emma Woodhouse's meddlesome ways just annoyed me so much!  And, truth be told, they still do.  

But the annotations by David M. Shapard are wonderful, and they added so much to my enjoyment.  He pointed out a lot of places where Emma is extremely kind or sensitive toward her father, and he also highlighted a lot of places where she starts to grow and change much earlier than I had realized.  So, I liked that.

This will never be a top favorite Jane Austen book for me.  My rankings of her books haven't changed over the course of this year's #JaneAustenDeepDive adventure with friends on Bookstagram.  But I did enjoy both Emma and Mansfield Park a lot more this time around, which I think is a big plus!

Particularly Good Bits:

And yet she was a happy woman, and a woman whom no one named without good-will.  It was her own universal good-will and contented temper which worked such wonders.  She loved every body, was interested in every body's happiness, quick-sighted to every body's merits; thought herself a most fortunate creature, and surrounded with blessings in such an excellent mother and so many good neighbours and friends, and a home that wanted for nothing.  The simplicity and cheerfulness of her nature, her contented and grateful spirit, were a recommendation to every body and a mine of felicity to herself (p. 34).  (And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is why Miss Bates is my favorite character in this book.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for the text (illegitimate children are mentioned) and PG-13 for the annotations (which discuss sexual mores and customs a bit more frankly than Austen herself does).

This is my 33rd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

My New Book is Out Now!

My third new release for 2024 is here at last!  A Noble Companion retells Hans Christian Andersen's "The Ugly Duckling," but by focusing on side characters from the original fairy tale, not the ugly duckling himself.  

A Noble Companion is part of a multi-author project called The Cornerstone Series, a collection of sixteen fairy tale retellings by sixteen different authors.  Each book focuses on a character who is NOT the main character in the original story.  And all of the books in the series are non-magical fantasy novellas, which means that, yes, I have written something other than historical fiction!  

Well, sort of ;-)  I set A Noble Companion in a fantasy world based on Spanish California of the very early 1800s, in a place I call Costa Nueva.  This book has talking animals and dragons, but it is definitely low fantasy, or historical-esque fantasy.  I am a historical fiction author at heart, so this has a lot of similarities to my Once Upon a Western series, in that I did lots of research into the time and place I was basing my fantasy world on.  But it has little fantasy elements, too.

If you buy a copy of A Noble Companion before the end of November, you can receive some book swag related to it!  All you have to do to claim your swag is fill out this form and wait for me to email you to request proof of purchase and an address to send the swag to.  The swag includes:

• 1 double-sided bookmark
• 1 piece of dragon treasure
• 3 vinyl stickers

Here's what the goodies look like:

This swag bundle is available worldwide!  And you can buy either the paperback or the e-book.  Or, if you are a Kindle Unlimited reader, you can also get this swag if you read the entire book on KU before the end of the month.

If you want to know more, here's the official synopsis:

Raid a dragon's hoard for her dowry? It seemed like a good idea at the time... 

Madelena isn't in love with her friend Armando, but his marriage proposal offers the security she needs. She sympathizes with him—his father insists Armando must either find a bride or join the army. Armando would rather become a husband than a soldier, but his ugly face has scared away all other eligible ladies despite his family's wealth. Although she harbors only friendship for Armando, Madelena agrees to marry him on one condition: she insists on acquiring a dowry worthy of his family's noble standing in the land of Costa Nueva. But as a humble stablemaid, Madelena has no idea how to find such wealth. That's when the talking burro Terco mentions he's heard how to find a dragon’s treasure. 

Javier, Armando’s younger brother, has loved Madelena in silence for years. When he learns of their impending marriage, he offers to help her find the treasure, even though succeeding may cost him the chance to spend his future with her. Together, they face a dangerous wilderness, a charming bandit, and a dragon’s lair, forcing Javier to confront his feelings and Madelena to re-evaluate her heart.

I promise that's the last book I'm releasing this year ;-)  I'm tired and need a little break!

"One Must Die" by Candice Pedraza Yamnitz, Amber Lambda, Sarah Everest, Claire Kohler, Lydia Mae, and C. C. Urie

I'm not sure I've ever read a novel co-written by six people before.  Not an anthology, but a single novel!  It's quite the ambitious endeavor, but I think it worked really well.

It's hard to describe One Must Die succinctly.  As the cover says, it's a steampunk murder mystery.  Set in a mansion floating above earth that's filled with robots.  And hidden keys.  And secret passageways.  And, somewhere, a treasure vault.

A whole bunch of strangers are invited to try solving a mystery and finding the treasure in the mansion... and then it turns out they're not all strangers after all.  Someone must die before anyone can claim the treasure, and there's a time limit, too.  You have to find the correct key to open the vault, and you have to find the vault.  Lots of treachery and trickery ensues.

This book is kind of like if you put The Westing Game and Clue and Murder on the Orient Express and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in a blender.  It's a fast-paced ride, but never gets too scary or too bloody or too intense.  I'll be handing this off to my tween and teens to read now that I've finished it.

Particularly Good Bits: Dread seemed to settle over the large dining room like spider threads, wrapping us too tightly for any chance of escape (p. 50).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10 for violence, some romantic interludes (all tasteful), and talk about illegitimate children.

"The Bookish Bandit" by Erica Dansereau and Britt Howard

Awww, what a cute romcom this is!  It feels as autumnal as a pumpkin spice latte, as New York City-esque as a bagel with lox, and as bookloving-ish as a bookstore with a cat.  

An aspiring author impulsively sends her novel to a big city publishing house.  It lands in the slush pile, where it catches the eye of the publishing house's heir apparent, who falls in love with the book and demands it get published.

But then... mistakes happen.  Identities get mixed up.  The book is published, but with the wrong author name on it!  Equally furious and forlorn, the real author rushes to New York to take on the publisher and force them to admit they've wronged her.  And then ends up starting to fall in love with some guy who works for the publisher... and you can see where this is going.  But that doesn't make it any less fun to see how everything gets unsnarled in the end!

One of the things I liked best about The Bookish Bandit was how naturally faith was woven into the story.  Never preachy, always organic, the Christian themes were an integral part of the characters and their behavior, and I applaud how well Dansereau and Howard did that.

Particularly Good Bits:

The nerves return, but in the rare form of butterflies rather than fear.  I marvel at the way this woman both unravels and remedies me at once (p. 166).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG.  No cussing, no violence.  Some kissing and a great deal of swooning.  The main characters make it clear to each other and the readers that they will not be sharing a bedroom until they get married.  So, no smut, but definitely a 1960s rom com level of kissing and holding.

This is my 26th book read off my TBR shelves for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Summon the Light" by Tor Thibeaux

My dad died three weeks ago yesterday.  While traveling to Iowa for his funeral, I read Summon the Light by Tor Thibeaux, a retelling of Shakespeare's The Tempest that's part of the Classic Retold series.  This is a slender novella, barely a hundred pages, but it was exactly the representation of hope and healing I needed at the time.

Nick works as a smuggler after barely surviving the epic fight between mighty forces of evil and good.  The fight killed most of his friends and left the spirit Ariel in a magical coma.  Nick goes through his days feeling numb and detached until he begins to hear a beautiful song that urges him to return to the island he once called home.  Once there, he strives to rebuild the island's ruined chapel.  With each stone he replaces, the song grows stronger, and so does his hope.  

The book's message is one of not giving up even when you are devastated, of doing the next task that comes to hand even if it seems meaningless.  That confidence that even mundane things are still important in the face of great tragedy is something I absolutely needed reinforced during that road trip to Iowa.  I'm so thankful I grabbed this particular book off my TBR shelves, seemingly at random, when I was packing things to read on the trip -- I think the Lord must have guided my hand at that moment.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for fantasy violence.  No objectionable content.

This is my 25th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR reading challenge.

"The Stories of Edgar Allan Poe" (Manga Classics) by Stacy King, et al

My kids are getting old enough to not be too creeped out by classic horror stories anymore (at least, so they claim), so I've finally pulled out a few Manga Classics titles that I had avoided until now.  Including this one!  (I knew once I read them, they'd demand to read them, so I just had to bide my time.  Mom life, yo.)

This volume has four stories and one poem, all by Edgar Allan Poe.  Each one was illustrated by a different artist, but all were adapted by Stacy King.  The stories and illustrators are:

"The Tell-Tale Heart," art by Virginia-Nitouhei -- this one was appropriately weird, and I liked how some of the angles of the artwork made me think of film noir.

"The Cask of Amontillado," art by Chagen -- I love this short story, but I feel like this retelling could have been a bit cooler and darker.  Maybe it just paled in comparison to the excellent weirdness of the previous piece.

"The Raven," art by pikomaro -- Really, really, really well done.  This has the full text of the original poem and brings it to live with wonderful vividness.

"The Masque of the Red Death," art by Uka Nagao -- another favorite short story of mine, and I think they brought this one to life quite well.

"The Fall of the House of Usher," art by Linus Liu -- never been a favorite of mine, and I feel like this retelling rushed things a little bit, at the expense of the suspense.

Overall, this was super enjoyable, and not as gruesome as I feared it might be.  Definitely less scary than the stroll we took through the Halloween costume section of Party City yesterday :-b

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13.  Nothing toooooo gross or graphic, nothing smutty, no bad language... but definitely creepy on purpose.

This is my 25th book read from my TBR stacks for the 2024 Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

"Misty of Chincoteague" by Marguerite Henry

I reread Misty of Chincoteague and King of the Wind because I decided to use them both for the literature classes I teach at our homeschool co-op.  I read all four of the Misty books as a kid (Misty of Chincoteague; Stormy, Misty's Foal; Sea Star, Orphan of Chincoteague; and Misty's Twilight), and this one and Sea Star are the two I remember best.  Will I reread the other three in the near future?  Possibly.  They are charming, uplifting, wholesome, and educational -- what more could a horse-loving bibilophile want?

Misty of Chincoteague is about a brother and sister, Paul and Maureen Beebe, who live on Chincoteague Island off the coast of Virginia.  They hope to buy a wild Assateague pony called Phantom and her little foal Misty during the Pony Penning Days that take place each July.  Together, they do extra jobs for months and months to earn the $100 they figure Phantom will cost.  (That's about $1800 today...)  It's a lovely story about siblings cooperating, people who love horses, and the friendship and joy that a horse can bring to a child.

Because I was teaching this book for a literature class, I looked up the real history behind this book.  Misty was a real Chincoteague pony, and really belonged to the Beebe family, but the story in the book is largely made up.  Marguerite Henry actually bought Misty from Clarence and Ida Beebe, and they helped her with a lot of research about the wild ponies on Assateague Island in return for her writing their grandkids, Paul and Maureen, as the hero and heroine of her new book.  Although the books about Misty are fiction, they are grounded in fact about Chincoteague and Assateague, and about the people and animals that live there.  You can learn more about Misty, Marguerite Henry, and this book on this fansite, as well as on other sites such as Wikipedia.

I've had the pleasure of visiting Chincoteague and Assateague myself, back in my late teens.  We weren't there for Pony Penning Days, but I did get to see a few of the wild ponies!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  G.  Good, clean family fun for all ages!

This is my 32nd book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

"Ride the Dark Trail" by Louis L'Amour

I'm coming close to the end of my personal "My Years with the Sacketts" challenge.  Only one true Sackett novel left, and one that's tangentially related (or so they tell me).  

Ride the Dark Trail is a galloping good time.  You've got Em Talon, a fiery old woman holding off a host of greedy landgrabbers.  You've got Logan Sackett, a somewhat shiftless gunfighter discovering he's related to the old woman and coming to her aid.  You've got the Sackett version of the Bat Signal going up, and the Sackett version of "Avengers, Assemble!" happening, which is never anything less than delightful.  Smart and savvy folks on both sides, pert young woman to keep everyone on their toes, and a batch of rousing fights and brawls -- good stuff, friends.

Particularly Good Bits:

Now we Clinch Mountain Sacketts ain't noted for gentle ways.  The way I figure it is if a man is big enough to open his mouth he's big enough to take the consequences, and I was getting tired of talk (p. 11).

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for mild cussing, lots of violence with guns and fists, and very mild innuendo about a young woman leaving an employer because he made improper advances.

This is my 24th book read from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"The Solitary Summer" by Elizabeth von Arnim

I didn't realize until I started reading it that this is a sequel to Elizabeth and Her German Garden.  Imagine my delight when I discovered that was the case!  It was published a year after Garden and has a similar playful, refreshing feel.  And it shares the fact that it's written as if it is nonfiction, but is actually highly fictionalized.  

Elizabeth decides she wants to spend a summer in solitude, which her husband (always referred to as the Man of Wrath even though he comes off as fairly genial in a stoic German sort of way) thinks will be a disaster.  By "solitary," she doesn't mean she wants to be entirely alone all summer.  She just means she doesn't want to invite people out to stay at their German manor all the time.  She wants one summer with only her husband and children and servants around, to enjoy their home life, basically.  

The bulk of the book is her funny and insightful musings throughout the summer (and into the fall) about books, solitude, nature, gardening, and family life.  I didn't love this quite as much as Garden thanks to an extended section about the immorality of village young people, which felt more snide than funny.  But it's definitely a book I'll be rereading.  It did make me laugh aloud repeatedly.  I tried to read it entirely outside, mostly on my swing in our back yard, though I also read it on a bench outside my daughter's ballet studio a few times.

Elizabeth von Arnim was the pen name of Countess Mary Annette von Arnim-Schlagenthin, an Australian who married into the German aristocracy and used a pen name so as not to scandalize her in-laws.  While the character of Elizabeth is loosely based on herself, just as Elizabeth's husband the Man of Wrath is loosely based on Count von Arnim-Schlagenthin, and the children described here are presumably based on their children.  But what she recounts in the book is pretty much fiction presented as fact.

Particularly Good Bits:

...how can you make a person happy against his will?  You can knock a great deal into him in the way of learning and what the schools call extras, but if you try forever you will not knock any happiness into a being who has not got it in him to be happy.

Books have their idiosyncrasies as well as people, and will not show me their full beauties unless the place and time in which they are read suits them.

What a blessing it is to love books.  Everybody must love something, and I know of no objects of love that give such substantial and unfailing returns as books and a garden.

I believe a week of steady drizzle in summer is enough to make the stoutest heart depressed.  It is to be borne in winter by the simple expedient of turning your face to the fire, but when you have no fire, and very long days, your cheerfulness slowly slips away, and a dreariness prevailing out of doors comes in and broods in the blank corners of your heart.

And was there every such a hopeful beginning to a day, and so full of promise for the subsequent right passing of its hours, as breakfast in the garden, alone with your teapot and your book!

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-10, mainly for the aforementioned part about immoral villagers who go around getting pregnant out of wedlock and getting married later and seem to think this is fine.  It's not salacious at all.

This has been my 31st book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list, and my 23rd from my TBR shelves for the 2024 Mount TBR Challenge.

"King of the Wind" by Marguerite Henry

It's funny -- I remember this being one of my favorite books as a youngster... but I only remembered the first third or so of it.  As far as I could recall, the whole thing took place in the Middle East, but that's not true at all!  Most of it takes place in France and England.  Huh.

King of the Wind tells a fictionalized version of the life of the Godolphin Arabian, a horse whose bloodline runs through a huge number of race horses right down to modern day.  Both Secretariat and Man O'War came from his line, if that means anything to you.

In this book, a stable boy named Agba raises an orphaned Arabian colt he calls Sham in the stables of a capricious sultan.  Sham is faster than any other horse in the stables, leading Agba to nickname him King of the Wind.

The sultan decides to send some stallions to King Louis XV of France as a gift.  He chooses Sham as one of the gift stallions, and Agba gets to be one of the stable boys who accompany the horses.  They arrive in France looking terrible after the long voyage, and King Louis XV has Sham used as a cart horse.  One thing leads to another, with Sham being sold from one owner to the next, used for menial jobs and never valued for the race horse he ought to be.

Agba manages to stay with Sham through all the changes of ownership, and acquires a cat friend called Greymalkin along the way.  Agba is mute, and horses and cats don't talk, so the story gets told without loads and loads of dialog -- and it works beautifully.  Eventually, Sham gets sold to the Earl of Godolphin, and finally is recognized for the valuable horse he originally was.  Now, the real history of this horse, known as the Godolphin Arabian, is not quite so complicated or so fraught with misery, but most of what Henry adds is there to emphasize the theme of a person or a horse's true worth sometimes being hidden or unrecognized.

Gotta say, I suspect that much younger me probably read the whole book once or twice, but reread the first third over and over and over, when things were all going really well and both Agba and Sham were happy and valued, and that's why I remembered that part, but had forgotten the rest.  And I did still like that part best :-)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some depictions of cruelty to horses, mentions of a sultan having people beheaded, and a sequence involving jail.  Nothing too grisly or horrible, but might be hard on readers younger than 8 or 9.

This has been my 30th book read and reviewed for my fourth Classics Club list.

Wrapping Up the 2024 Tolkien Blog Party + Giveaway Winners

Thank you for joining me in celebrating J. R. R. Tolkien and his creations with me this week!  I'm sharing the link-up here one last time so you can easily find each others' posts without scrolling back and back through my feed.  Also, the party runs through today, so you are welcome to still add new post links to this!

And now, the winners of this year's giveaway!

Prize One: The Fellowship of the Ring audiobook on CD read by Andy Serkis -- Makenna Marie

Prize Two: 2 Shire Pub Sign Stickers -- Bethani Theresa

Prize Three: 3 "postage stamp" stickers -- Rosa

Prize Four: 4 LOTR "postcard" stickers -- Ivy Miranda

Prize Five: 1 leather "leaves of Lorien" mini blank book -- Victoria 

Winners, I'll be emailing you to notify you of your win and ask for a mailing address, so check your email for that!

Answers to the Ladies of Middle-Earth Unscramble

Here are the answers to Tuesday's game!  And everyone's scores are below.

1. newar steervan = Arwen Evenstar

2. onewy = Eowyn

3. sireo noctot = Rosie Cotton

4. anblerice = Celebrian

5. heriot = Ioreth

6. hitlune livenuti = Luthien Tinuviel

7. dragaliel = Galadriel

8. glewin = Elwing

9. greboldry = Goldberry

10. beliola lackviles-gangbis = Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

11. ilrange = Gilraen

12. anavyan = Yavanna

SCORES

Rosa -- 12

Olivia -- 11

Fundy Blue -- 10

Ivy Miranda -- 10

Miranda -- 6

Answers to Who Said It? Quotation Quiz

Here are the answers to Monday's game!  Everyone's scores are at the bottom of this post.  Thanks for playing!

1.  "It was a compliment, and so, of course, not true." (Merry Brandybuck, The Fellowship of the Ring)

2.  "Yet dawn is ever the hope of men." (Aragorn, The Two Towers)

3.  "I have never allowed anyone to stand me on my head." (Pippin Took, The Return of the King)

4.  "Short cuts make delays, but inns make longer ones." (Frodo Baggins, The Fellowship of the Ring)

5.  "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens." (Gimli, The Fellowship of the Ring)

6.  "If you think that I have passed through the mountains and the real of Gondor with fire and sword to bring herbs to a careless soldier who throws away his gear, you are mistaken." (Aragorn, The Return of the King)

7.  "Ah! the green smell!  It is better than much sleep.  Let us run!" (Legolas, The Two Towers)

8.  "Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life." (Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring)

9.  "I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!" (Samwise Gamgee, The Return of the King)

10.  "May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!" (Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring).

11.  "As for me, my way home lies onward and not back." (Boromir, The Fellowship of the Ring)

12.  "Go where you must go, and hope!" (Gandalf, The Two Towers)

Scores

Victoria -- 12

Ruth -- 11

Bea -- 10

Rosa -- 9

Astrya -- 7

Lissa -- 4

Miranda -- 4

Over the River and Through the Woods: A Party Game

One last game for this year's Tolkien Blog Party!  I hope you've all been enjoying the festivities thus far, and I look forward to catching up on reading all your posts soon.  But, for now, let's play a storytelling game!

All you need to play this game is a six-sided die (or an online number generator that will give you results between 1 and 6).  Simply roll your die once for each question, and the number you roll determines the path your adventure takes.

Who are You?

What Middle-earth group do you belong to?

1.  Hobbit

2.  Man/woman of Gondor

3.  Wizard

4.  Rider of Rohan

5.  Dwarf

6.  Elf

The Quest Begins

Where are you when you receive the call to adventure?

1.  The Shire

2.  Rivendell

3.  Minas Tirith

4.  Edoras

5.  Erebor

6.  Bree

The Call 

What is your quest?

1.  catch a runaway gingerbread man

2.  help a harried mother put her kids to bed

3.  find the owner of an abandoned glass slipper

4.  rid a village of some pesky giants

5.  find the queen's stolen tarts

6.  stop a talking wolf from waylaying travelers

The Helper

Who's going along to help you on your quest?

1.  Frodo

2.  Aragorn

3.  Gandalf

4.  Galadriel

5.  Tom Bombadil

6.  Eowyn

The Adversary

Who's trying to hinder your quest?

1.  Saruman

2.  Old Man Willow

3.  Shelob

4.  Gollum

5.  Lobelia Sackville-Baggins

6.  Sauron

The Conclusion

How does it all end?

1.  You succeed and are rewarded for your efforts.

2.  You succeed, but nobody really cares.

3.  You succeed, but you're badly injured in the process.

4.  You succeed, but you and your companion are both injured.

5.  You fail, but you resolve to try again later.

6.  You fail, and your reputation is forever tarnished.

Now you simply put it all together into a little story!  Like this, based on how my rolls went:

I am a hobbit, and I'm visiting Rivendell when I'm asked to stop a talking wolf from waylaying travelers in the surrounding woods.  My friend Gandalf and I are confident we can take care of this pesky little affair before tea, but we soon discover that Gollum is intent on stopping us!  Apparently, he's made friends with the talking wolf and thinks it will help him regain his Precious.  After a great deal of annoyance and not inconsiderable danger, we succeed in convincing the talking wolf that it would be wise to go waylay orcs in Mordor instead from now on.  But I am badly injured in the process when Gollum bites me while Gandalf is "persuading" the wolf to leave.  I have to remain at Rivendell for simply weeks while my wound heals, which I don't mind a bit ;-)

Your turn!  Comments are still on moderation thanks to the previous two games, but I will publish your answers to this game as soon as I find them in my inbox so we can all get a good chuckle reading them.

Ladies of Middle-Earth Unscramble

By popular demand (okay, two people demanded it), our second game this week is an unscramble!  I'm muddled up the names of 12 women from J. R. R. Tolkien's books about Middle-earth.  These include The Silmarillion, The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings.  Some of these will be easy, some will be hard.  (To be clear, I did not include any characters who appear in the movies but not the books, such as Bard the Bowman's daughters.)

1. newar steervan

2. onewy

3. sireo noctot

4. anblerice

5. heriot

6. hitlune livenuti

7. dragaliel

8. glewin

9. greboldry

10. beliola lackviles-gangbis

11. ilrange

12. anavyan

Put your answers in a comment.  I'll reveal the answers and people's scores at the end of the party!

Who Said It? Quotation Quiz

Welcome to our first game for the 2024 Tolkien Blog Party!

Below are twelve quotations from The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.  They were all spoken by members of the Fellowship of the Ring.  Your challenge is to figure out who said each one.  (These are all from the books, though some are used in the movies too.)

Put your guesses in a comment on this post.  (I've put all comments on full moderation so I can hide your answers until the end of the party, so no one will be tempted to cheat.)  I'll post the answers and your scores on Saturday!

1.  "It was a compliment, and so, of course, not true."

2.  "Yet dawn is ever the hope of men."

3.  "I have never allowed anyone to stand me on my head."

4.  "Short cuts make delays, but inns make longer ones."

5.  "Faithless is he that says farewell when the road darkens." 

6.  "If you think that I have passed through the mountains and the real of Gondor with fire and sword to bring herbs to a careless soldier who throws away his gear, you are mistaken."

7.  "Ah! the green smell!  It is better than much sleep.  Let us run!"

8.  "Many that live deserve death.  And some that die deserve life." 

9.  "I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!"

10.  "May your beer be laid under an enchantment of surpassing excellence for seven years!" 

11.  "As for me, my way home lies onward and not back."

12.  "Go where you must go, and hope!"

The Tolkien Blog Party 2024 Kick-Off Post + Tag

Greetings!  Welcome to my twelfth annual Tolkien Blog Party!

Let me explain how this sort of BYOBP (Bring Your Own Blog Post) party works, in case you haven't participated before, or it's been a while, whatever.  I will provide a couple of games for you to play (starting tomorrow), a giveaway (which you can enter here), and the official party tag (see below). 

Everything else is up to you party goers!  Everyone gets to share posts on their own blogs that relate somehow to J. R. R. Tolkien or his creations. We will spend the week celebrating not only the author and the books he wrote, but also the world of Middle-earth, the movies based on his stories, and so on!  I encourage you to use any of this year's official graphics in your posts -- you'll find all five of them here in my announcement post. 

The only real rules are: 

• your post must be related to Tolkien and his creations somehow, 
• your post should contain a link back to this post so people can find the party and join the fun, and 
• your post needs to be respectful and family-friendly (this is a celebration, so please don't contribute any rants or whiny posts). 

If you don't have any ideas of things to post, you can always simply fill out the tag, which you'll find below this handy link-up widget. Enter each of your posts in the widget (including posts of tag answers) so we can all visit each other's blogs and share the Tolkien party fun!

This year's tag is inspired by some of the most famous locations in Middle-Earth.  Here it is:

1. The Shire:  What place in Middle-earth do you think you would feel the most like home for you?

2. Bree:  If you could create a Middle-earth-themed restaurant, what would you serve there?

3. Rivendell:  Where in Middle-earth would you like to hang out with your friends for a week or so?

4. Moria:  Have you ever delved into the history of Middle-earth (or the history of Tolkien's creative process)?  If so, did you learn anything cool you'd like to share?

5. Lothlorien:  Would you like to sleep in a tree?

6. Edoras:  Do you like horses?

7. Minas Tirith:  Have you ever dressed as a Tolkien character, whether for a convention or Halloween or anything else?  (Bonus fake internet points if you share a photo!)

8. Erebor:  Do you have any Middle-earth merchandise you particularly treasure?

9. Mordor:  Have you ever read anything by Tolkien that wasn't about Middle-earth?

10. The Grey Havens:  How long has it been since you last ventured into Middle-earth via book or film?

Simply copy those prompts and paste them into your own blog post, answer with as much detail as you wish, add party graphics and a link back to this post, and illustrate as much or little as you like! Once you've posted your tag answers, come back and add a link to your post to the list above so we can all visit each others' blogs and enjoy their answers. And don't forget to visit other people's blogs too, to keep the party going strong!