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Review of Stephenie Meyer’s New Moon
Sep. 7th, 2006 02:02 pm(WARNING: SPOILERS)
I’ve been waiting for this book since I read the last page of Twilight. Yum. It was different from Twilight, but still yum. I’ve only read it once, and I like to read books several times through to really take them apart (once to devour them for story, then two or three more times to analyze and learn from them—I usually forget I’m analyzing and get lost in the story again). So this is off the cuff, from a single read. Please forgive me if I misremembered any details. I'll read it again, promise.
The biggest strengths of these books continue to be the well-drawn relationships and the high level of tension. The reader gets immediately sucked into the characters’ feelings, and when the characters are thwarted in their most desperate desires—well, then it’s not just the characters who feel high tension, but the reader as well. And what better automatic tension point can there be than love with obstacles? High marks for this.
I found Jacob extremely well-drawn, so much so that he reminded me of a real person (now if I could only figure out who!). The poor kid. I hope he can find a situation where he doesn’t feel second-best. I liked all the boys at La Push and could tell that Stephenie Meyer was writing from her own emotional experience on brothers (she named a lot of secondary characters after her own siblings, after all). In another writer’s forum recently there was a discussion on love triangles, and how you can’t forget the third leg of the triangle, the relationship between the two choices, so to speak. I thought Stephenie did a great job of this. Plenty of tension besides just the girl here!
I loved Alice in the first book, and I think I was almost as happy as Bella to see her show up here. I didn’t mind Edward being gone for much of the book (although I can’t for the life of me follow Bella’s reaction to his question at the end—Edward totally has the better grasp on logic there). From a plot standpoint, the book would go nowhere if Bella got what she wanted, so of course it was the right thing for Edward to disappear at this point. (He’d just better not do that again!)
I also liked how the book ended with a statement of all of the current, outstanding problems. Great little tangle; I’m looking forward to seeing how Stephenie gets herself out of this one. (Talk about an epilogue getting out of hand…)
And finally, three small things that bothered me. (Sorry, I do this with all books I read, even my favorites.) The first is one of the recurring events that ended up not being as real as I was convinced of. Okay, I realize that if it was real, it would negate some other facts, but I was totally convinced that someone was cheating on a bargain and was consciously causing these effects. That’s the thing that most bothered me. I’ll hold off too much judgment in case there’s a later plot reason for this.
Second, the middle of the book was filled with a certain dangerous person who just ran for the hills. I kept expecting this person to be back at the end, just when everyone had relaxed. Wrong on that count, too. That plot line sort of evaporated. I’ll forgive this on the grounds that Bella does list it as a complication she still has to deal with.
And lastly, this will probably not bother anyone else, but I wished the guy who died had had some deeper tie to the plot. Not just that he had a heart attack, but that the heart attack was caused by ________. Maybe he was out hunting the um, big bears and overdid it, or he got chased by—but escaped from—a vampire. Or something. He happened to die at just the right moment to facilitate a major plot turn, but he himself was incidental. He could have been anchored a little tighter to the plot itself. But that’s really very minor, and I only notice because I do two critiques a week on YA novels.
Overall, I loved the book and I’m waiting anxiously for Eclipse to come out. I think I’ll treat myself and buy Twilight when it comes out in paperback, too. Gotta support those LDS women writers! (My next book to look for is Shannon Hales’s River Secrets, which is also coming out any time now.)
I’ve been waiting for this book since I read the last page of Twilight. Yum. It was different from Twilight, but still yum. I’ve only read it once, and I like to read books several times through to really take them apart (once to devour them for story, then two or three more times to analyze and learn from them—I usually forget I’m analyzing and get lost in the story again). So this is off the cuff, from a single read. Please forgive me if I misremembered any details. I'll read it again, promise.
The biggest strengths of these books continue to be the well-drawn relationships and the high level of tension. The reader gets immediately sucked into the characters’ feelings, and when the characters are thwarted in their most desperate desires—well, then it’s not just the characters who feel high tension, but the reader as well. And what better automatic tension point can there be than love with obstacles? High marks for this.
I found Jacob extremely well-drawn, so much so that he reminded me of a real person (now if I could only figure out who!). The poor kid. I hope he can find a situation where he doesn’t feel second-best. I liked all the boys at La Push and could tell that Stephenie Meyer was writing from her own emotional experience on brothers (she named a lot of secondary characters after her own siblings, after all). In another writer’s forum recently there was a discussion on love triangles, and how you can’t forget the third leg of the triangle, the relationship between the two choices, so to speak. I thought Stephenie did a great job of this. Plenty of tension besides just the girl here!
I loved Alice in the first book, and I think I was almost as happy as Bella to see her show up here. I didn’t mind Edward being gone for much of the book (although I can’t for the life of me follow Bella’s reaction to his question at the end—Edward totally has the better grasp on logic there). From a plot standpoint, the book would go nowhere if Bella got what she wanted, so of course it was the right thing for Edward to disappear at this point. (He’d just better not do that again!)
I also liked how the book ended with a statement of all of the current, outstanding problems. Great little tangle; I’m looking forward to seeing how Stephenie gets herself out of this one. (Talk about an epilogue getting out of hand…)
And finally, three small things that bothered me. (Sorry, I do this with all books I read, even my favorites.) The first is one of the recurring events that ended up not being as real as I was convinced of. Okay, I realize that if it was real, it would negate some other facts, but I was totally convinced that someone was cheating on a bargain and was consciously causing these effects. That’s the thing that most bothered me. I’ll hold off too much judgment in case there’s a later plot reason for this.
Second, the middle of the book was filled with a certain dangerous person who just ran for the hills. I kept expecting this person to be back at the end, just when everyone had relaxed. Wrong on that count, too. That plot line sort of evaporated. I’ll forgive this on the grounds that Bella does list it as a complication she still has to deal with.
And lastly, this will probably not bother anyone else, but I wished the guy who died had had some deeper tie to the plot. Not just that he had a heart attack, but that the heart attack was caused by ________. Maybe he was out hunting the um, big bears and overdid it, or he got chased by—but escaped from—a vampire. Or something. He happened to die at just the right moment to facilitate a major plot turn, but he himself was incidental. He could have been anchored a little tighter to the plot itself. But that’s really very minor, and I only notice because I do two critiques a week on YA novels.
Overall, I loved the book and I’m waiting anxiously for Eclipse to come out. I think I’ll treat myself and buy Twilight when it comes out in paperback, too. Gotta support those LDS women writers! (My next book to look for is Shannon Hales’s River Secrets, which is also coming out any time now.)
