ooc; Ehhh, she just felt very out of place, we got literally no explanation as to of who she was and why Lestat was there (which I guess we might get that in Blood Paradise), and her story read very much like Mary Sue fanfiction I would have read when I was twelve years old on fanfiction.net. But, of course, as I’ve stated before, Lestat himself is a Mary Sue, so I guess I can’t put a whole lot of judgement there.
I think my issue with Rose is just that I don’t see what she actually gave to the story. She seemingly had a major part, yet I feel like if she was subtracted from it all, the story would remain the same. Anne’s guilty of doing this thing where she introduces a bunch of new characters, yet never actually fleshes out any of her previous characters. We got all of this stuff about Rose, and yet we had chapters where Armand, Bianca, and Daniel were all within the same house and didn’t even acknowledge each other’s existence. Hell, Armand was practically not there throughout most of the book. And I would have honestly taken chapters of Bianca explaining what she’s been up to over Rose’s seemingly random story.
But that’s also just my opinion.
Same. I have a problem with throwing in a pointless female character just to have more ladies. Especially when you’re literally adding 6 or 7 people to the cast (or bringing them back from the dead). A lot of the stories were redundant or totally pointless (Killer… Cyril?) but Rose not only felt exactly like a low-rent Mona or weird new Jesse, she never serves any purpose or does anything interesting (this is also true of several of the men, especially Killer.. why Killer? We don’t care. We liked Baby Jenks, not this dick.) We’re supposed to care about her because we’re told Lestat and Louis do, but that’s it. It’s just not enough. If I were her editor, I’d have begged her to cut the Rose stuff for the sake of pacing. There’s no immediate need to pair Vikki up with anyone.
And yes, if she wanted to add more ladies, Gabrielle was a bad ass – give her a chapter. Lestat is her son. We would care way more about her. Or Bianca! She’s seeing Armand for the first time in forever, seeing his fledgling for the first time, etc. etc. So many better options with established characters we already care about.
That said, I get why people might like Rose. If she was a side-story, if she were part of a different book, she has some potential. Like Jesse, a girl raised unknowningly by vampires in some fashion is a cool concept. I just feel like it didn’t fit at all in this book. It needed more explanation and characterization than it got.
I agree with you. Looking back, I liked Rose/her story well enough (though I felt she had too little personality) until she was treated as being irreparably!broken! by the knowledge of vampires – I’m sorry, she lived through all that horrible abuse at the school, but semi-sleeping through Lestat cutting off Rhosh’s hand and arm is the thing that breaks her? As someone once said, puh-leeze, babycakes!
Also, Lestat of all people ought to know after what happened to Nicki that turning someone who’s having a mental breakdown involving vampires is not an automatic solution!
^PREACH
I-want-my-IWTV 