Midnight Sun

Edward Cullen has a lot of thoughts.
Most of them are bad.

This book is especially fun if read simultaneously with Twilight, because the contrast between Bella’s sparse, vaguely curious inner life and Edward’s constant operatic existential screaming is completely unhinged. They are ostensibly in the same scenes, experiencing the same events, and yet appear to be living in entirely different genres (realities).

Say what you want to say about TWILIGHT (and I sure had a blast decimating NEW MOON for my paper on how YA authors need to step up and stop portraying women as weaklings who can only have their mental illnesses solved by falling in love) but Stephenie Meyer knows how to write in a really addictive manner. This is three times the length of the last three books I read yet I got through it in a weekend after having been in a pretty major book slump most of the year.

And oh my GOODNESS I think it's WAY more problematic reading it with some more critical lenses under my belt... the instalove! It's awful!I don't at ALL buy how they fell in love and how it was all-encompassing and needy. Teenagers should NOT be thinking that this is at ALL how show more love is! So terribly unrealistic.

But you know what? I enjoyed reading it, and there's that. So I'll throw it some stars. show less

Hace algunos años, de alguna manera, alguien filtro el libro de crepúsculo con el punto de vista de Edward ¡¡en español!!, siendo tan fan de esta serie como lo soy, no hubo manera de no caer en la tentación de leerla, a pesar de que se notaba que no era una edición terminada y que tenía algunos errores de redacción, fue totalmente un respiro conocer una de mis historias favoritas desde el punto de vista de alguien que no era Bella.

Si, lo reconozco, no la soporto, odio a ese personaje completamente, así que leer estos libros teniendo que aguantarme que todo viniera desde alguien a quien no soportaba, fue... raro.
Edward tampoco es que fuera uno de mis personajes favoritos de esta serie, pero al menos me gusta mucho más que show more Bella.

Entrando en materia, realmente me hubiera gustado que esa serie de inicio fuera contada por Edward y no por Bella, hubiera sido mejor para ese personaje conocerla a través de los ojos de él para que no me cayera tan mal como me cae y si bien es cierto que Edward ha resultado ser un personaje en extremo trágico, exagerado, demasiado negativo e inseguro para mi gusto, sobre todo considerando que el hombre tiene más de 100 años, ha sido mil millones de veces mejor esta historia desde su punto de vista.

Refrescante conocer detalles de los Cullen, la manera en que realmente funcionan como familia, la persecución de James y la manera en que dan con el paradero de Bella, la visión de donde y como se encontraba ella cuando la encuentran.

Si, Edward es de esos que se tira al piso y se flagela constantemente, pero de alguna manera he comprendido más su sentimiento de culpa al conocer desde su perspectiva lo mucho que le cuesta estar con Bella y su lucha interna constante entre amarla y quererla matar, ha sido … interesante.
Este libro fue un boom precisamente por mostrarnos a vampiros “buenos” y lo cierto es que no son tan buenos, sacrificados sí, mucho.

Me ha encantado leer como vio Edward a Bella al principio, mientras ella cayó rendida a sus pies desde casi la primera página, los pensamientos de él fueron verla y pensar “una humana insignificante” me parece más creíble la manera en que él se enamora de ella.

Ojalá que Meyer saque todos los libros desde esta perspectiva, creo que me encantará saber lo que pasaba por la mente de Edward en aquella tienda de campaña cuando Jacob fue a calentar a Bella, saber que hizo Edward cuando se aleja de Bella, también como llega y que les dice a los Vultirius para que lo maten, pero sobre todo quisiera ver esa última escena de todos contra los Vultirius desde los pensamientos y punto de vista de Edward.

Me ha encantado y honestamente por muy mal que me caiga Bella y por mucho que pase el tiempo, sigue siendo una de mis series favoritas. show less

(Full disclosure: Book abandoned at page 78, out of 658 pages.)

***SPOILERS HIDDEN***

It turns out that the vampire’s point of view is not intriguing. This book is massive, and I realized why shortly after starting. It’s not because there’s so much lively story here; it’s because Stephenie Meyer detailed every one of vampire Edward’s thoughts, sometimes stretching out one thought for pages. I lost patience when Edward first encounters love interest Bella and finds the scent of her blood so appealing that for pages he plots how to kill her and anyone else who may be in the room, wavering between figuring out the logistics and struggling mightily to control himself.

The Twilight quartet is beloved to readers around the world for show more many reasons, but the mystery and continual tension surrounding the strange vampire characters is a prime reason. Midnight Sun doesn’t work because spending time inside Edward’s head strips the story of mystery. Meyer tried to add tension in scenes where Edward struggles to not kill Bella and to figure out why she’s uniquely able to block his mind-reading. This unexciting tension is bad enough, but the bigger problem is that Twilight is a big fat spoiler for Midnight Sun.

This book started as an experimental side project for Meyer when she was in the middle of writing the Twilight quartet. She wasn’t necessarily intending to publish Midnight Sun, and when the little she’d written got leaked, she vowed to never complete and publish it. Disappointing responses to The Host and The Chemist may have changed her mind.

Given that Midnight Sun was a side project, it’s possible the first pages struggle with some growing pains and that the story picks up later; however, this is supposed to be Twilight rewritten from Edward’s point of view, so I have no faith that it won’t just be an achingly slow repeat. It’s time for Meyer to close the door on Twilight for good and publish long-awaited books two and three in The Host trilogy. show less

I was 30 years old when I read the Twilight series, and I fell hard for the series. For all its faults, I fell in love with Bella and Edward’s story. Not only did I see aspects of my teenage self in Bella’s awkwardness and self-esteem issues, but I also saw parts of my relationship with my husband in Bella’s and Edward’s interactions. I never really lost my love for the series even as it became rather gauche to admit it. So, when the news broke that Stephenie Meyer was finally releasing Midnight Sun, I preordered the novel that day. There was no way I was going to miss another chance to visit Forks and finally see the world through Edward’s eyes.

Given my feelings for the original story, I suspect there is some bias here, but I show more thoroughly enjoyed Midnight Sun. Seeing Edward’s anxiety and fears as he struggles to make sense of his feelings simply confirmed my love for him. More importantly, Ms. Meyers addresses the more problematic aspects of his behavior towards Bella in a way that feels genuine to both characters while acknowledging that the behavior is bordering on stalkerish.

What surprises me the most is that I feel Ms. Meyer’s writing now has a maturity to it that is missing in the rest of the series. I know Midnight Sun is a novel she struggled to write for years. Seeing her writing now, I surmise she struggled because she needed more life experience and maturity in order to capture Edward’s voice. After all, he is 104 years old. Whatever changed, whatever allowed her to write Edward’s story after all these years, it works. Edward’s voice is appropriately mature and world-weary with elements of confusion and befuddlement that are simply adorable.

I find Edward’s mindscape fascinating. His guilt and his excessive situational analysis are exhausting, but they shed so much light on the face he shows the world. Plus, we see how busy his mind is fielding through other’s minds, having entire dialogues without speaking a word, and being privy to Alice’s visions. In addition, he begins to view himself in light of human behavior after decades of not doing so. All of it makes for a very mind-bogglingly complex mind that constantly thinks of worst-case scenarios rather than hopeful ones. No wonder he comes across as overbearing and overprotective at times!

As Midnight Sun draws to a close at the same point where Twilight does, my biggest wish is that Ms. Meyer would write the rest of the series from his point of view. After the torture of New Moon from Bella’s viewpoint, it is only fair we see Edward’s anguish and heartbreak as well. I know this is simply a pipe dream on my part, but I do not want to say good-bye to Edward’s mind. It rounds out the story in a way I did not know I was missing. In the meantime, I thoroughly enjoyed my time in Forks again and hope it is not another fifteen years before another visit. show less

Disappointing. I knew going into this that there wouldn’t be a ton of new content, still I’d hoped it would veer from the Twilight template a little more than it did and reshape it enough to actually feel like Edward’s point of view of his own life rather than his point of view of Bella’s life.

I get that certain moments did need to be here to still tell the story of Twilight, however, the scenes where Edward watches Bella sleep as well as the many scenes Edward wasn’t even technically in that could only be included here in his POV because of his ability to “eavesdrop” (Bella shopping, Bella in classes, etc.), couldn’t those have been replaced with a few more new scenes where Edward would have been an actual active show more participant? Like why not show more of his time in Alaska (only one scene yet he was there for a week!) or how about showing more of the dynamics in the Cullen household, showing what else was going on in their lives aside from Edward’s romance, or showing more of this vampire’s everyday struggles in navigating small town life and high school and sunlight? If you go by Midnight Sun, Edward occupies most of his time by listening in on Bella’s conversations, which I mean, a) what on earth did he do with himself in the decades before she came into his life and b) I never thought I would say this about a character I loved, but all that listening in and not doing anything made Edward come across as exceedingly dull.

With a few exceptions, Midnight Sun mostly consists of cutting Bella’s thoughts out of the manuscript and pasting in Edward’s over top of them rather than truly digging in and transforming the story to reflect Edward’s Twilight experience. To make matters worse, Edward’s thoughts were repetitive to the point of tedious (he’s a monster, she’s fragile, he doesn’t want her to be a vampire) and those repetitive thoughts weren’t really anything that couldn’t already have been discerned in reading the original Twilight.

I understand that publishing is a business, I don’t begrudge anyone’s desire to make money or profit off of my nostalgia, however, I do begrudge it when I buy something that feels as though almost no work went into it, the bare minimum amount of changes were made to pass this off as a different book from Twilight. Much like the gender-flipped version of Twilight, Edward’s version of Twilight conceptually seemed like it could be interesting but in execution it didn’t feel like much creative energy or effort was spent on this book. show less

It's better than Twilight was but then again Twilight is bottom of the barrel so almost anything would be better than Twilight. Even a badly written POV of incel-sounding Edward.

Edward watching her sleep and watching her (at this point my phone generated heart emojis and I began to cackle)didn't get improved. It's still bad. He's still bad.

You'll never change my mind that the real love triangle should have been Jacob lusting after Edward for his sperm and Bella for her egg. Since supposedly he loved Bella die to Renesme being inside of her.

Still weird by the way, Meyer.
Even if a baby grows up fast, its brain doesn't. Renesme isn't a mouse or bug, in a week she's not functionally adult. Like no amount of Mormonism outside of the show more pedophilia section can explain that away.

I'm not going to go into the plot because it's Twilight's plot again.

So I'll talk about stuff other than the plot. Things like what stood out that I thought were neat aka...

Things I liked(mostly because it made me laugh):

-I like the Alice moments. Meyer might not like Alice but I think there's so much there. Her description of her visions and sorting them is good. I would honestly like just Alice in a book(not a POV retelling) of her own without anyone else. She's too good for this series.

-The insect part where he fixates on insects and just goes full ham into the amount of them, the genius. The fact he calculates insects like a weirdo.

-The hemlock tree math bs.

-That this leans into the creepiness of Edward and everything is wrong and icky. It's nasty gross, nope.

-Them meticulous two pages plan to cover shit up by spreading blood around and making it look like what they said happened did happen.

Things I didn't like:

-I will always hate Meyer's flowery writing and how her pretentious ass refuses to use SAID. Please just use said, Meyers! Said, said, said.

-The creepiness is somehow romanticized. It's not a good idea to have his love be shown this way. Things like him looming over Bella and thinking shit like 'as if you could fight me off'. No thank you.

-How vampires are OP in stupid ways. Their skin being as hard as diamonds alone is horrifying. That single aspect means that they are immune to knives, bullets, and likely most any manmade weaponry. Why do they live in the shadows? They could conquer the world.
Then you top it off with Alice's massive numerous visions. Edward's mind reading. It's all way too much for a being to have and be fallible.
Edward's the real Mary Sue.

-Bella and Edward's sensitivity drives me up a wall. They're oversensitive as hell and it's a repeated thing I despise. I don't mean emotionally -all of the time- I mean they're written like everything is overwhelming their senses constantly and there's something that often leans into the autism coding but done wrong.

-Also Edward's thoughts are dramatic whiny incel thoughts when it's about Bella. Ew. Stop.

-Obviously I can't ignore the Dad hating Edward so much he praises Jacob for forcing himself on Bella and breaking her arm. It's nasty!

-The obvious. Edward is a pedo stalker. He's an adult in a child body. He sees them as children. He's a pedo.

-The pedo point isn't helped by how they constantly carry her around or put her seat belt on. Both Jacob and Edward do all this carrying Bella around like she's a child. They infantilize her and this of course isn't limited to to this book(but the whole series).

-Pedo issue part two, electric boogaloo. Edward reading Jacob's pervert thoughts about his own daughter. Renesme isn't even a year old during this. And during her raising he's the groomer big brother, but as she starts growing, he's doing see sentence one. He's thinking about having sex with that child. No thank you! Jacob and Edward are nonces and need to go to jail.

This book is trash. But you already know that. Especially if you've read this far into my salty review.

Nobody has ever loved this series as much as Stephanie Meyer loves Twilight. I cannot be swayed on this belief.

2 stars.
It's the best of the Twilight series. That isn't really saying much. show less