RoseBlood by A. G. Howard: A Phantom of the Opera retelling that . . . I think is good?

RoseBlood 

by 

A. G. Howard

              This is a Phantom of the Opera retelling. And a little bit of a sequel. Actually, it’s super sequel-ish but I have a feeling that sequels to classics are either illegal or super frowned on, while re-imaginings are perfectly fine... Okay, I’m sidetracked.

In modern day France, Rune is an operatic prodigy. The problem is that the songs she sings drain her of all her energy and leave her weak and sickly. Ignorant of her daughter's struggles, Rune’s mother sends her to an arts conservatory, RoseBlood, which used to be the famous opera house haunted by the Phantom.

              At RoseBlood, Rune discovers a mysterious violinist who, just like the phantom in the stories, helps her sing without growing sick. But, while Thorn’s only concern is Rune’s music, others have far more mysterious, and far deadlier, plans for her magical talent.

Characters

Rune: Alright, under normal circumstances I probably wouldn’t have liked Rune. She’s the kind of character who was very middling. She made intelligent decisions and had just enough personality that she wasn’t a wooden block, but she didn’t really stand out to me. Again, usually this annoys me, I prefer having strong feelings for my characters, even if I kind of hate their guts, but Rune was just so nice dang it! Even if she was really close to being meh, I still rooted for her because she was kind to the people around her. I mean, she was surrounded by weird paranormal phantoms and all kinds of gothic horror but she took the time to do trivial things like connecting with people and giving the demon-cat milk. She was just sweet okay! And, for some reason, it worked.

Thorn: Again, he started out as exactly the kind of character I’d hate. Thorn is a freakishly attractive and, in the beginning, mildly stalker-ish fella with, of course, a tragic backstory. Mix that up with a pinch of Insta-Love repainted as Destined-Soul-Mates and you’ve got a paranormal version of The Bad Boy.™ Blech! But, then it was revealed that Thorn’s tragic backstory was that he was a victim of human trafficking. 

[cries]

[a lot] 

I’m not made of stone okay! 

So, other than his terrible childhood actually being super terrible, Thorn surprised me with how much I grew to like him. I guess, he may be an ultra-beautiful Phantom but he’s a phantom who wears stupid socks with smiley faces on them. He takes care of random strays he takes in. And he called his cat ‘devil’ in French then put a stupid little collar on him. He even wears a little phantom mask even though he doesn’t need one. Basically, Thorn is alright.

Erik: I’ll be honest, I haven’t actually read/watched the Phantom of the Opera. [small text] sorry ‘bout that. I had to read up on Wikipedia just to know what the heck was going on. Given that, I don’t know if this Phantom was an accurate version of the original. But, I’m guessing not. Goodreads has a good many Phantom fans who curse this book to the moon and back. I liked him though. As an antagonist I found him interesting; but, more for his affect on Thorn and the other characters in the story than any kind of uniqueness. Besides, you can’t beat a villain whose voice can control people. They’re a special kind of terrifying. 

Likes

So the writing was really good: in that it could dump ridiculously stupid stuff in my lap and I’d buy it. like the Phantom of the Opera owning a friggen rave club. Yep, a rave club. Why? That seems really weird to me and I haven’t even read the original bloody book! There’s all kinds of things like this in the book! Weird out of place things that, while I’m reading, I barely even acknowledge. But, when I finally put the book down . . . they start to sound really, really, stupid. Like the phantom being an assassin?  Or paying to have the opera house converted into a school? It’s just odd. Still, you’ve got to give Howard some credit. I don’t think any other authors could have gotten through that kind of stuff with a straight face.

There was a cat character! I’ve talked about him a lot because he’s my favorite character. There needs to be more cats in books. They make great companions.

Dislikes

K? 

OK.

Everything turned out to be vampires: but not blood sucking vampires, psychic vampires. And they can draw people to them with their song and even control people with their voice.

Voice of Reason: isn’t that actually a siren?

Book: nope vampires!!

I just don’t like vampires, you guys! After their unseemly popularity in YA novels these past few years I can’t take them seriously. Plus, the whole thing was treated as a BIG but it was kind of obvious what he was when, you know, the original phantom showed up in the modern day. Even without all the negative vampiric connotations, these weird psychic vampires make no freaking sense.

They feed of people’s emotions but a lot of them do this by sneaking up on people while they’re sleeping and playing hypnotic music. What? First off, that’s all kinds of creep-tastic. Second, they don’t wake up? What kind of emotions can you get from a sleeping person? People have plenty of emotions when they’re awake, why don’t you just feed of people who are walking around? If they don’t notice it while they’re asleep why would they notice it when they’re awake?! None of this 

makes any sense!

 Let’s just say it wasn’t the most creative of decisions and leave it at that.

Despite my complaints, I really enjoyed reading RoseBlood. Does it have a crap-ton of problems with it? Yeah. Does it makes absolutely zero sense after the book is over? Most definitely. But, I can’t deny that I enjoyed reading it at the time. So, I guess this book gets a tentative recommendation. The writing is gorgeous and the characters have moments when they’re truly sympathetic, and moments when they aren’t but I digress. I think it’s worth a try at least.