Xanadu’s Reviews > Rose Madder > Status Update

Cool animal motif in this book, and plenty of DET-RET Hodges parallels.

Pretty clear that the mask was going to end up being the minotaur, but the RL Stine reveal is cooler than I expected.

What a weak ending for a major character:
"Strong arms enfolded her. She tried to scream again, but the arms tightened, and her breath came out in a silent rush...then Norman’s teeth were on her throat, he was nuzzling her like a horny kid parked on Lovers” Lane, and then his teeth were in her throat, and something was spraying warm all down the front of her, and she thought no more."

His first impulse was to throw the goddam thing away, but he restrained himself.

So he shaves his head and pretends to be confined to a wheelchair in order to infiltrate an event and commit violence...
Is this the Dark Tower crossover stuff that fans love so much? It's a cool parallel, but I definitely don't think there's any real connection between Hodges/Brady/Holly and Rose/Bill/Norman. If we are supposed to read that into it because of some Ka reference, it doesn't interest me.

None of what’s happening here is happening because poor Rosie has had such a hard, hard life.” He hesitated and then said, “It’s happening because I’m in love with you.”

“You can’t know that. Not yet.”

“I know what I know,” he said, and she found the gentle insistence in his tone a little frightening.

“Now that’s enough soap opera. Let’s eat.” They did.

I don’t care so much about what you can stand or what you can manage as I do about what you like and want to have. Those are the kinds of things I want to give to you...

She really wasn’t seeing anything she couldn’t see from a car, after all. Except I am, she thought. I am because I’m not looking at it through a window and that makes it stop being just scenery. It’s the world, not scenery, and I’m in it.

King does know how to bring an experience to life, and his passion for motorcycles comes through strong here. The romance is so well written, too. Madder has many flaws, but the strengths are impressive.

"Strange, how hard it was to remember (what you have to remember) how she’d come by this trinket."

The theme of awareness or awakening has been inconsistent, but at least here he's continuing in the context of dreams versus reality.