THE CONS
THEMES: Like I said before, the idea of what humanity is and its qualifications was an interesting twist. But it wasn't vastly explored. There's talk of emotion and violence and lying. But that's about it. It all seemed superfluous. The main character didn't do much philosophical thought about it and the other humans were absolutely no help. What's the draw here? You could say love, but there's no thoughts to qualify that either. I expect sci-fi to get into some nitty-gritty when it comes to things like this but Meyer chose to skip right over that.
THE ANTICLIMAX: I have to say, I was really upset when Wanderer didn't die. I like tragic ends and even if it did leave an unrequited relationship, so what? Life is like that. And it sort of betrayed Wanderer as a character. Just because the body she possesses in the end has been inhabited by another soul doesn't mean that she's any less of a parasite. And what about the soul that possessed the body before? Totally stealing from another soul. The humans brought Wanderer back, basically, because they were selfish, which they say themselves. And maybe I would have been okay with this answer if selfishness as human nature were introduced from the beginning.
Then there's the 30 pages after the climax. Talk about drawn out. Resolutions should be quick, in my opinion. And maybe 30 pages would have worked if it 1) wasn't so expository and 2) didn't attempt at another conflict.
LENGTH: I wasn't interested in the book until 400 pages in (this book is about 630 pages long). Although important things for build-up were happening in those 400 pages, I think they could have been handled better. And I already mentioned the end.
CHARACTERS: Stephanie Meyer has really shallow, almost archetypal characters. The main character is beautiful and strong, even though she doesn't know it. The two love interests are very similar in personality, opposite in looks, jealous and protective. There is a large cast of side characters who are given names and descriptions but they float around in the background, pop in to say a line or two, but they're not important (why bother putting them in at all, then?!). The female characters are all either antagonistic or ignored. Most of the main characters/important characters are male. There is one character who is cheerful, sympathetic to the main character, and sort of child-like (in this case, Jamie).
What kills me the most about the characterization is that there is absolutely no depth. These characters have no secrets, no flaws. They're completely flat. Any "secrets" in the book have no real punch to them. How to remove the souls? Well, obviously, but it doesn't seem like such a big deal, to the reader or any of the characters. The humans are killing people and souls in trying to find ways to remove the souls? We knew that from the beginning. The Seeker was having trouble with her own soul? Okay, that's sort of out of the blue but nothing interesting. (Also, that does not justify her behavior. For the souls' purpose of guiding species to perfection, they sure were flawed and malleable). Part of a good book is the human drama, the unexpectedness of our dark or light places, but Meyer severely limits herself to love triangles (or squares).
SEX: I saved this one for last because it might take a little explaining. My education about writing sex scenes (yes, I've been taught how to write sex scenes) is that less is more. You really only need a few sentences. There's no need for explicitness, and speaking personally, the longer you go on, the more bored I get. Talk about sex all you want. I'm okay with that. But don't show it to me. Does that make any sense? And if you can make a heart beat a little faster in a few sentences, you've got a good sex scene.
So back to the book. Firstly, there was no heart-racing for me in Meyer's scenes. When I read them, inevitably I end up thinking, "What the heck are you doing?" They're "passionate" but tame--which is understandable, given Meyer's religious background/personal limitations she puts on herself. But if you're going to be THAT passionate, you might as well go all the way and just stop talking about it.
Outside of the scenes themselves, sex seems to be a sort of plot arch all its own, which is really weird to me. Sexual frustration popped up early in the book but disappeared for the rest of the book until mention at the end. I mean, readers expect sex to pop up somewhere, whether mentioned or not. The book is about lovers, after all. But Meyer goes out of her way to talk about it. She devotes pages to it. It goes so far as Wanderer even lying about her new body's age, just so she can legally have sex. (The whole legal age for sex was also given a lot of attention and that seemed strange to me. Not that I think legal age is something to entirely ignore in real life but these characters are in a sort of end-of-the-world situation. 1) Who cares? and 2) who is going to enforce that?)
