Eve Dallas musings

[desertvixen]

 So I've been listening to my collection of Eve Dallas on CD.  I picked up Born in Death, unabridged on CD for under ten bucks, so that's the one up now.  And I've been thinking.

 Eve is a relative of Mary Sue.  I don't think anyone disputes this.  I mean, I love the books, and the characters are fab, but... Mary Sue alarms.  The books, however, are well-done enough that I don't mind, and because Eve is getting rid of some of her issues in a logical pattern.

 However, I don't think she's NR's actual character insertion.

 I think that's supposed to be Dr. Mira.  The closest thing Eve has to a mother figure.  She gets to get inside everyone's head, and she usually provides Eve with needed shoves.

 Any thoughts?

 DV

Comments

Mary Sue Dallas?

[the-blue-fenix.livejournal.com]

Well, the reason Roarke uses only one name is that if people called him Mr. Roarke it would be too obvious that he exists to fulfill the reader's every fantasy.

(I consider him a combination of Remington Steele and Bill Gates, myself. No, not Steele's brains and Gates' looks.)

Although both he and Eve have become alarmingly three-dimensional and grown up lately. The latest marriage crisis? "Yes, it's silly but I'm going to keep doing it that way because it's important to me." "Okay, I can live with that."

JDR is the literary equivalent of a milkshake -- not healthy or nutritious, but that's not what you bought it for.

[dunmurderin.livejournal.com]

I haven't read much of the [Word] in Death series, but yeah, Eve Dallas comes across as incredibly Mary Sueish to me -- though in J.D. Robb's favor, she at least manages to make the character and her world interesting and a lot of Dallas's Sueish traits aren't much different from those of any uber-badass cop out there. In a lot of ways, Dallas is a female Dirty Harry.

I've got a similar reaction with J.R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood. Part of me reads these books going "OMG! It's the land of Gary Stus!" but Ward manages to put in just enough twists to make the characters interesting enough to compensate for the silliness. And manages to make the silliness interesting in and of itself.