Reviews FanficRecs / The Wizard In The Shadows

By The Enmity Of Ages 1994

• Starts off as an ordinary Tenth Walker fic, but quickly shifts up the gears and begins making genuine changes to canon. The Rohirrim gets A Day In The Limelight with numerous sections about what is happening in Rohan, giving us an interesting and well written Theodred. Who lives! Harry is powerful, having taken a further level or 3 in badass, developed into a Knife Nut and enjoys Playing With Fire. He opens up after a beginning as the Quiet One, acting as a Deadpan Snarker and Aragorn's foil, while Aragorn functions as something of an emotional Restraining Bolt and a Big Brother Mentor to Harry, a role shared with Boromir. Though he is presented as a genuine power house who earned his reputation as The Dreaded to the forces of darkness, he is far from invincible, getting his arse handed to him on several occasions and remains vulnerable both emotionally and physically, with it made very clear that even the strongest willed character dropped into a violent world like Middle Earth with no hope of return is going to be, sanity wise, at best only a notch above Death Seeker, particularly one who has suffered as much and been as love starved, platonic or otherwise, as Harry. The narrating owes more than a little to the Discworld and The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy in tone, but blended with gentle handling of the quieter scenes. While far from perfect, though displaying a strong grasp of the characters voices and a well above average ability to spell and use grammar correctly even at the start, it develops as the writer does into a well written, funny and clever fic that handles battle scenes with particular skill.

Continued in comments.