[Diamond, I understand your reasons for posting this topic on this forum - it's a very interesting question - and am quite content to leave it there. I'm not really on ogre, you know! [img]smilies/smile.gif[/img] *looks at her avatar* Well, at least not during the daytime! [img]smilies/wink.gif[/img] ]
It's been many, many years since my first reading, but I do remember crying over Gandalf's death and not expecting his resurrection. I was shocked over Frodo's 'death', but don't remember if I thought he was still alive. And I did recognize Éowyn as Dernhelm - those clues I caught early on. What really shocked me was the 'sudden' ending of the story - I had expected it to go on, not realizing that there were so many pages of Appendices at the end of RotK! The pillage (and subsequent scouring) of the Shire and the bittersweet ending took some getting used to, before I realized that they were absolutely essential to the story.
Yes, there's nothing quite like the suspense of reading the story for the very first time!
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth.. .'
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