Sunday, May 13, 2012

Review: Midnight Sun (Draft) by Stephenie Meyer



THE DETAILS:
Pages: 216
Publisher/Release: Not officially published
Where I got it: Goodreads

THE BLURB:
Midnight Sun is the much anticipated retelling of Twilight from Edward Cullen's perspective. An unedited partial draft was illegally leaked onto the internet in 2008; consequently, author Stephenie Meyer put the project on indefinite hold.

Shortly afterward, she posted a letter to her fans on her website including a link to the entire partial draft of the book so that those who wanted to read it could do so legally and with her consent; see URL for more information.


MY REVIEW:
I'm not the biggest 'Twilight' fan in the world, but I still couldn't wait to read this. Obviously, being afraid of bright screens and all and the book only being available in ebook form (unless I wanted to waste ink on printing it out, then I would just have to live through my life having only read the first chapter (as provided in some copies of 'Twilight'. Recently(as in the past week) I discovered this magical thing called e-ink (I have been living under a rock) and bought myself a kindle.'Midnight Sun' was just as quick and fun a read as I expected, but surprisingly I think I enjoyed it more than Twilight.

The freaky thing about this text was the perspective. Twi-hard or not, I felt that Edward Cullen was on a pedestal of sorts and I didn't know if his mind would reach the expectations I had of it or if I really wanted to see into his mind; some things seem so much more romantic when they are mysterious. I also found that I had to remind myself that I was in Edward's head and not Bella's a few times. The two perspectives were in no way similar. I guess I just associated that storyline and those characters with one Point-of-view.

As weird as it was I think I preferred Edward to Bella. For once it was interesting to see what a guy (fictional or not) found attractive in a girl (damsel or not). I also thought that he seemed smarter and more old-fashioned than Bella which I felt that I could relate to more. There were a few times when Edward questioned Bella's sanity which made me laugh. you definitely can't help who you fall in love with.

I know a few people who didn't enjoy what they read of 'Midnight Sun' because they thought that Edward was too arrogant. I definitely agreed with that after just the first chapter. When he was talking about snapping the necks of everybody in the classroom in some ridiculous amount of time he was a bit smug, but I definitely warmed up to him as the novel (?) went on.

One thing that definitely got a little bit confusing was the mind reading. Sometimes I was a little unsure of who was thinking what. Was Edward thinking that? or was he reading someone else's mind? And, if so, who's mind was it? I think this made the reader think a little more. I'm not sure if all the tweenagers out there would enjoy that, but 'Twilight's older readers might be into the challenge.

Because 'Twilight' and 'Midnight Sun' were pretty much the same story told through different eyes it shared a lot of the same dialogue. This got a little boring, but what can you do?

Overall I give it 4/5 stars. A fun read. Please Stephenie Meyer, please write more! Edward is so much better at narrating than Bella is. There were some little surprises in there that I enjoyed too. I suggest that anyone out there who even half-way liked 'Twilight' should give this one a go.

P.S. I'm putting this in the Novella/Short stories side bar because it's only like 216 pages long.

Your Favourite Blogger,
Natalie

3 comments:

Hayley said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Hayley said...

I read the draft of Midnight Sun and I found myself enjoying it a lot more than the twilight series, which I was very iffy on. Seems like you liked it too!

Teenage Fiction

Born Bookish said...

I loved Midnight Sun as well. It was so different getting to look through Edwards eyes, I felt Stephenie could have re-written the whole series from his point of view. I would have read them all, that's for sure!