Let's Read Tolkien 90: The King and the Steward 20-22

Ithilien, Emyn Arnen 

May 3, 3019 

“What time is it?” Éowyn asked sleepily.

In this, the second part of The Last Ringbearer, the point-of-view character is Faramir. We've heard about him before: he was handily indisposed when Gandalf took over in Minas Tirith, and Tangorn mentions his forced retirement to Ithilien. That's where we find him now.

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There's a little introduction where Faramir and Éowyn are being cute, and then we take a flashback to the battle of the Pelennor. As in the Lord of the Rings, he's shot with a poisoned arrow, but here it's very strongly implied that the shot came from his own side. He's then taken to a hospital in Minas Tirith, paralyzed by the poison, and Aragorn eventually comes to see him and monologues at him like a B-movie villain.

The upshot is that Faramir is sent into exile to Ithilien. Éowyn is in love with Aragorn, but he has her care for Faramir and sends her off to Ithilien with him. There Faramir supposedly rules as the Prince of Ithilien, but is actually held hostage in the fort of Emyn Arnen by Beregond and the soldiers of the White Company.

Eventually it dawns on Éowyn that Aragorn has discarded her, and she hears about his marriage to Arwen. So then when an envoy arrives to summon her to Minas Tirith, she refuses to go. Faramir is already in love with her, and soon she reciprocates.

However, Faramir suspects that Aragorn won't leave them in peace, and starts plotting. It turns out he has the palantír that was in Minas Tirith. In this story, anyone involved in the murder of Denethor who looks into it only sees his burning hands. Thinking the stone useless, Aragorn and his co-conspirators let Faramir take it with him. Faramir now uses it to test Beregond's loyalty, and once he determines Beregond wasn't involved in the murder, they start intriguing.

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As ever with Yeskov, the prose is clunky at best, but his strength is in writing an adventure story, and once we get past Aragorn's monologue, that's what we get. On the other hand, Yeskov is at his worst when he's trying to write something clever, and Aragorn's monologue is just bad. His portrayals of Faramir and Éowyn are humane, though, and we're definitely rooting for them. Hopefully the story keeps rolling along with a minimum of metaphysics and clever politicking.

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Next time: trolls.