Novelish

This will contain some spoilers.

Everything I said about the characters and writing style - and, yes, being entertained - in my Twilight review is also true of New Moon. I won’t repeat myself.

For the first half (or two-thirds, or something like that) I was liking New Moon more than Twilight. The atmosphere of mystery/suspense/danger builds up really well. Bear sightings are mentioned near the beginning and get increasingly serious as time goes on; Jacob tells Bella that he’s worried about strangely-acting family, before starting to act a bit odd himself; et cetera.

I also really like the setting of rainy northwest forests - for whatever reason, I can imagine them all splendidly.

But as with the first book in the series, I felt that New Moon’s ending was too disconnected to everything else. This time it’s not vampire baseball but Bella’s decision to go cliff-diving that triggers a chain of events, but it’s still coincidental. Now, I don’t think Edward running off to Italy works very well, period. However, if he has to, it would have made more sense had it been the result of Bella getting in danger with something to do with the werewolves.

New Moon didn’t end soon enough. I think we can safely call the height of the action/conflict the moment when Bella runs to Edward through the Italian squares, church-bells tolling obligingly in the background - the subsequent chat with Italian vampires is more of an aftermath thing. That means there are slightly over 100 pages between the height of the action and the end of the book.

Having 100 pages of “post-action end material” is usually a bad idea - unless you’re Tolkien, of course - but I didn’t even think it was good end material this time. It would be better to have Edward and Bella hook up in Italy, strongly hinting that Bella will become a vampire soon, then pull down the curtains. The rest could’ve fit better in the third book.

Related Novelish entries:

• Twilight
• Eclipse (coming soon)