Well that was fast.  I cracked it on Tuesday and finished it last night.  Nice to know I can still read a book at warp speed.  Granted it helped that it was as dense as air.

This is one of the most thoroughly superficial books I’ve ever read.  I’ve already voiced my concerns about the book up to a certain point so I’ll just go on from there.

By the end of the book both Edward and Bella are as one dimensional as they can be as characters, and I think that’s giving them too much credit.  I didn’t care about them in the slightest.  I wanted more information on Alice, who had no idea what her human life was like until watching a short video on Bella’s beating.  Or Jasper who’s the newest member of their group and has the hardest time controlling his hunger.  There’s conflict, there’s unknown, there’s at least a second wall to the makeshift cube.  Carlisle, Rosalie and her obvious conflict, Alice and Jasper, were far more interesting than Edward and Bella ever hoped to be.

I’ll give Meyer credit in giving the vampires something new to pine over and some new characteristics.  I liked the skin in the sunlight idea even though it was a little too floofy for me.  The whole “vegetarian” (in a fish-eating sort of way) concept, while isn’t new, is front and center so points for that even though I’m much more interested in drawing the beast out of Edward instead of watching him pine his way through 3 more books.  But that’s just me.

The writing itself was nothing to write home about.  Very mediocre and elementary, words in their simplest forms to portray characters in their simplest sketches.

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