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ermartinez 's review for:
Roseblood
by A.G. Howard
I'm being generous with the two stars.
Rune is being sent, largely against her will, to a private school for gifted artists in France. Except, apparently in this world, "gifted" really translates to eccentric and at times just plain alien. Rune has her issues: she feels her sanity slipping through her fingers, mostly because she believes her father's death is her fault. Oh did I mention her grandmother tried to kill her? No? Oh... well she does and I still am not sure what the point of that information is other than to make the plot seem more dramatic. When she finally arrives at this school for the gifted, she starts seeing someone in shadows and feels watched. She soon discovers, after weeks and weeks go by where mysterious crap keeps happening to her, that there is a phantom abroad and he has special plans for Rune and her vocal talents.
This is my problem with this book; I loved what AG Howard did with Alice in wonderland in the Splintered series, and since I've had a love affair with the Phantom of the Opera all my life, I expected to adore this book. My god was I wrong. Rune, sadly, is your classic Mary Sue; she's really not special but the author continually bangs you over the head with her ingenuity, that you kind of start to believe it. But then you keep reading and growing more and more annoyed with her apparent willful ignorance that you lose all sight of her special-ness...
This book took me over two months to read. It's boring, not well paced, and in sore need of a serious edit, which I hope happens. I was hoping for a new, explorative rendition of The Phantom of Opera, but really,
POTO is just used as a guise for a bad plot and cliche YA characterization.
Rune is being sent, largely against her will, to a private school for gifted artists in France. Except, apparently in this world, "gifted" really translates to eccentric and at times just plain alien. Rune has her issues: she feels her sanity slipping through her fingers, mostly because she believes her father's death is her fault. Oh did I mention her grandmother tried to kill her? No? Oh... well she does and I still am not sure what the point of that information is other than to make the plot seem more dramatic. When she finally arrives at this school for the gifted, she starts seeing someone in shadows and feels watched. She soon discovers, after weeks and weeks go by where mysterious crap keeps happening to her, that there is a phantom abroad and he has special plans for Rune and her vocal talents.
This is my problem with this book; I loved what AG Howard did with Alice in wonderland in the Splintered series, and since I've had a love affair with the Phantom of the Opera all my life, I expected to adore this book. My god was I wrong. Rune, sadly, is your classic Mary Sue; she's really not special but the author continually bangs you over the head with her ingenuity, that you kind of start to believe it. But then you keep reading and growing more and more annoyed with her apparent willful ignorance that you lose all sight of her special-ness...
This book took me over two months to read. It's boring, not well paced, and in sore need of a serious edit, which I hope happens. I was hoping for a new, explorative rendition of The Phantom of Opera, but really,
POTO is just used as a guise for a bad plot and cliche YA characterization.