queen of the damned - oh god, GTTFP already!

[qthewetsprocket]

help me, f'list! i'm about 2/3 - 3/4 of the way through, and this thing is finally starting to annoy me...the bit at the beginning with the domestic stuff between daniel and armand, and the massacre at the rock concert, and the bit with laurent and baby jenks; that was all cool

Comments

[qthewetsprocket]

i do get impatient with rice's loving, lengthy descriptions of furniture and interior decorating, especially when they haven't got a thing to do with the plot. ironically, then, i also get impatient when she uses more obscure/antique terms for facets of interior design that her less wealthy/less-educated-in-the-ways-of-the-interior-decorator readership (ie, me) might not be familiar with. then i just want her to say, 'there were some heavy purple velvet curtains in front of two arched, hinged windows'. there. simple, descriptive, to the point. that is, if you even need to know about the windows at all...which, frankly, most of the time in rice's writing, you don't.

as for qotd, i feel like i'm over the worst hump of the novel ('the story of the twins, part 1'). nothing could be longer and more boring than that, could it?...could it?? *bites nails* we'll see how my stamina holds up, but jesus, rice's editor really needs to grow a pair. there's a plot hidden in this book somewhere - with the characters valiantly trying to advance it, depsite the verbal diarrhea of their author - but damned if i've stumbled across it yet. (btw, he - *points to your icon* - is who i've been imagining as marius. rowr.) :)

btw, re: the characters - rice really missed a trick, here. she's said herself that vampires don't often congregate; and it would have been glorious if the majority of the plot would have taken place at the little 'vampire summer camp' in the sonoma woods. you're right about the characters; they're rich and interesting people that we've spent two previous books getting to know. we care about them, and want to know more about them...NOT waste our time with some secondary characters who rice is inexplicably fascinated with, and who really have no relevance to the overall series except in this one particular book.

ironic note: i have just derided rice's long-windedness in a comment that was almost longer than my original post. hee. :)

In honor of Anne Rice let's ALL be long winded

[sisterjune]

See I can understand if she wanted to create crisp vivid imagery of the setting, and so she wants to describe the buildings, curtains, etc. But the problem is descriptions often lose their vividness when they are drawn out or peppered with obnoxiously pretentious language. I mean what's frustrating is these are writing errors that a successful writer like Rice should have been able to avoid, these are the things we are taught NOT to do, in writing classes. They really do weaken whatever point or picture you are trying to make/create. In rice's case though, they did more than that, they were ANNOYING and took me right out of the story many times.

You have amazing patience, I dont. After a few pages of the ridiculous twins story and other such boring plot expositions, I was just like "FUCK this" and skipped a bunch of chapters. I have no regrets either. I will say that Qotd was exceptional in that respect, as in I dont remember ever having to jump so many chapters in any other rice book I read. So if you can get through this one, you can get through any of them.

You know the thing that annoyed me the most about qotd, we finally got several female characters with prominent roles, and all of them were UTTERLY DULL and I ended up feeling nothing for them from start to finish. exception being pandora and lestat's mom who are pretty cool but still not nearly as interesting and important in the series as the male characters :(
Marius as Bowie *___* I would be all for that! Even though I've wondered before if Lestat was inspired to Rice by Bowie, since bowie was a glam flamboyant and controversial figure in his heyday the way lestat often is.

Re: In honor of Anne Rice let's ALL be long winded

[qthewetsprocket]

In honor of Anne Rice let's ALL be long winded

:)

the thing about the long-winded descriptions is, not only are they often lengthy distractions from the main plot; they're often thrown in regardless of character appropriateness. for example, i can see lestat or marius caring about the specifics of lavish furnishings, and knowing the exact proper names for such things. but there's a lot of that stuff in the vampire armand as well, which doesn't really belong there, considering that rice herself wrote in qotd that armand is kind of ADD and doesn't really notice those sorts of things; living more in the moment and not processing little details like furniture or decoration (i think her exact wording was that he liked clothes for 'what he thought they meant' instead of what they really meant).

agreed about the female characters too. i read a blurb in rice's coming-back-to-jesus book (called out of darkness, i think?) about how she never really wanted to identify with female characters, because they were often weak or silly. which i can abundantly agree with...but you'd think, with that kind of attitude, that she'd come up with bright, vibrant, original, strong female characters when she had the chance to create them herself. but i guess not. and yeah, gabrielle's the only female character of rice's to have made an impression on me thus far.

re: bowie - the conventional scuttlebutt is that rice based lestat on her husband stan. i can sort of see bowie being lestat in his younger, hippier days when he had the long curly hair; but i like his 'calmer, more mature older man' vibe much better for marius. probably that scene with bowie in the last temptation of christ planted the seed in my head a little; seeing as how marius is supposed to be from ancient rome and all.

Re: In honor of Anne Rice let's ALL be long winded

[sisterjune]

she never really wanted to identify with female characters, because they were often weak or silly.
See now that just explains so much. because seriously, one or two female characters turning out to be duds, I can understand. but the vast majority of her female characters, and she's had quite a few through the run of the series were utterly forgettable. I cant even remember most of their names. Makes me sad. That being said, I really liked gabrielle and so of course after the 3rd book she barely ever shows up again in the series, if at all.

Wow her husband? Man I'd have never guessed, cause lestat seemed like such a grandiose character he seems like the sort you wouldnt run into normally. But she must have had a very interesting husband. I agree that older bowie would be a perfect match for marius, he definitely has that "been there done that and I know all the tricks" vibe to him. and OMG bowie in a jesus movie, in roman garb, now I have seen everything. *cracks up*

oh and random but since you mentioned it up thread. I wouldnt recommend tale of the body thief, it was one of her weakest books in the series IMHO. Memnoch was decent though, and it had a semi-interesting female character in it! Dora, the daughter of some former mob dude. Mob dude engages in long philosophical convo's with lestat in the book at some point. Much to my deep irritation. Dora is way more likeable than the lady Lestat meets up with in Body thief though. Also body thief gave me the squicks in several places, if you choose to read it you'll know what scenes I mean.