Well, friends, I promised it was coming, and here it is: all my thoughts on Midnight Sun, the good, the bad, and the confused. I have a lot of criticism for this book, but on the whole I really enjoyed it, and my primary reaction to this is that I want more Edwardian Twilight please give me more Edwardian Twilight!
Before we go on, I just want to flag that the real Quileute tribe is currently seeking donations to move to higher ground. I’ve learned since posting my last Twilight post that a lot of people didn’t think the Quileute tribe featured in the Twilight books is in fact a real tribe. They are a real Native American tribe, living right on the water’s edge in Washington, and they are attempting to move their at risk communities to higher ground to secure the survival of their tribe. If you’re a fan of the Twilight books, or have recently purchased Midnight Sun, please consider a donation.
For those who don’t know, Midnight Sun is Twilight told from Edward Cullen’s point of view. Stephenie Meyer started the project more than twelve years ago, while she was working on the original Twilight series. But in 2008, someone leaked her unedited, unfinished draft on the internet, and she set the project aside, much to everyone’s disappointment, because what we did see was so great. I found out recently (I didn’t know it at the time) that there were rumors she had picked up the project again and it was going to be published in 2015 with the tenth anniversary edition of Twilight, except then the Fifty Shades book from the guy’s point of view came out. I never got into those books and so know literally nothing about them except they exist and started as Twilight fanfiction, and I’m going to keep it that way because I’ve gone far enough down this rabbit hole. Anyway, when that came out apparently Stephenie Meyer set Midnight Sun aside, again, and we ended up with the gender-bent Twilight book, Life and Death, which I also just recently discovered and don’t really want to talk about (but I probably will, more on that later). Which brings us to 2020. It feels like everything in the world that could possibly go wrong has gone wrong, and everything is awful, but finally, finally, Midnight Sun has been published!
When I heard Midnight Sun was finally going to be published, I reread all the Twilight books in preparation. You can find my post about my feelings about the Twilight books over here.
There will be spoilers in this post. I’m assuming you’re familiar with the first Twilight book, at the very least. If not, read on at your own risk.
As I said, I really enjoyed Midnight Sun, against a lot of my better judgment. Because as we’ve already established, when it comes to Edward Cullen I’m apparently still sixteen and I don’t care how awful he is I love him so much.
Lots of people have gone through all the problems with this book. I don’t really want to tear it apart, because others have done a really good job doing that, but there are some things I just have to point out, in no particular order.
This book is still about the start of a toxic, abusive teenage relationship. There’s just no getting around that. Also, the way Edward thinks about female characters is pretty gross. Rosalie and Jessica come to mind in particular, but they are by no means the only ones in this book. Also, I don’t care what justification Edward has, it is still really bad that he is sneaking into Bella’s room to watch her sleep. He says he’s there to protect her and there’s nothing creepy about it, but he’s a vampire with super senses, and he can protect her from the front lawn or the roof or something, I don’t care. He’s in Bella’s room, while she’s sleeping, without her knowledge or consent, and that is creepy and wrong and not romantic at all. Also it’s made weirder by the fact that his whole family knows what he’s doing and is okay with it. Yikes! And finally, while it might have been okay to include Orson Scott Card on your list of favorite authors in 2005, when Twilight is set, that isn’t really an okay thing to say now in 2020, when the problematic issues of Card’s books and the fact that he is really homophobic have been common knowledge for a long long time. Disclaimer, I haven’t read Ender’s Game or any of his other fiction, and at this point I probably won’t, so I don’t feel qualified to say more than that. But the fact is that Stephenie Meyer’s readers are living in 2020, and I never really got a strong sense of time in Twilight anyway. Like if someone hadn’t told me it was set in 2005 I wouldn’t have guessed that year, and it could just as easily have been set in 2020 without too many changes (like maybe there’s better internet in Forks in 2020, but there’s still a massive digital divide in this country so also maybe not). Anyway, my point is that including Orson Scott Card on Bella’s list of favorite authors felt too deliberate not to be a point Stephenie Meyer was making, and it made me uncomfortable.
Like I said, there are certainly many other problems with this book, but I’m really not here to rant about how problematic it is. Others have done that much more eloquently than I could. These are the problems that really jumped out at me, and I wouldn’t feel right not pointing them out up front. But Midnight Sun also did a lot of really cool things and brought a whole new perspective to Twilight for me, and what I really want to do in this post is talk about why.
One of the coolest things, as a writer, was being able to see how Stephenie Meyer has actually grown as a writer from the first Twilight to Midnight Sun. The writing isn’t bad in Twilight, in my opinion, but it certainly isn’t fabulous. Because Midnight Sun is essentially the same story, it’s really easy to see how Meyer’s writing has improved. I’m sure some would disagree with me, but I would actually say that Midnight Sun is quite well-written. Okay Edward says Bella has translucent skin a few too many times, and since a friend started referring to the monstrous part of Edward that wants to eat Bella as the eldritch horror living inside him, I can’t help cracking up every time Edward refers to the monster. But Meyer uses metaphors and symbolism and deliberate repetition in this book, along with other techniques she didn’t use in the first Twilight book, and she uses them well. She also captures Edward’s angsty teenage boy/hundred-year-old vampire voice really well.
Also, I have to give Meyer points for pulling off what had to be a really difficult point of view to write. She’s writing in first person, but it’s also kind of an omniscient style because Edward can hear everyone’s thoughts, with one notable exception, of course. Which makes Midnight Sun not only Twilight from Edward’s point of view, but almost Twilight from everyone’s point of view.
The new scenes that were added were pretty cool too, like the family conference after the car accident when Jasper and Rosalie are arguing for killing Bella because she saw too much, or how Jasper is actually using his powers at the baseball game to hide Bella. And the bit in the end where Alice is going through how she’s going to fake Bella’s accident, seeing how each decision will play out and making new decisions to make it go just right, is super awesome.
There were also some points in Midnight Sun where I felt like Meyer was actually taking this opportunity to respond to some of the criticism Twilight has faced without actually changing what happens in Twilight. This was a really intriguing idea to me. Obviously this might not be the case, but it’s how I interpreted it. The big ones that stood out to me in this regard were Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep and Bella’s character. As I said earlier, Edward’s justification for watching Bella sleep still doesn’t make it okay in my opinion, but I accept that Meyer couldn’t just rewrite that part out of the book or significantly change it so that Edward asks Bella permission and she says yes. Still not okay though. As for Bella’s character, in Midnight Sun we get to hear Bella’s side of the Q&A chapter, which is glossed over in Twilight. Bella has things she likes and dislikes. She has plans for college and dreams of becoming an editor or a creative writing teacher. It makes sense that we don’t see this exact scene in Twilight, because we’re from Bella’s point of view and it would have been boring and very telly, but I do wish we had gotten these details from Bella’s point of view in other ways, because we have literally no inkling of any of this in Twilight, which of course is one of the criticisms of Twilight. So I’m glad we get the details in Midnight Sun, but it does feel kind of like Meyer is trying to say “look, Bella is a fully developed character,” while trying to retcon in all her hopes and dreams. As I said, I could be totally wrong on this, but it kind of does feel like Meyer is trying to respond to some of the critiques of Twilight, and even if it didn’t work as well as she may have hoped, I think it’s really brave of her to accept that she could have done better in the first Twilight and to try to show how she would have done it if she was writing it now. Again, just my interpretation.
Finally, I want to talk about the end of Midnight Sun and why I want more from Edward’s point of view. The ending was definitely the right ending for this book, but it wasn’t a good ending for Edward’s story. Spoilers ahead. Basically the book ends with Edward deciding, while Bella is in the hospital, that he is going to leave her. Not now, but some point soon. And as we know from New Moon, he does indeed leave. End of spoilers. So I know that everything works out, but I want to see the rest of the story from Edward’s point of view. At the very least, I want to see New Moon and Eclipse from Edward’s point of view. I really don’t care about seeing Breaking Dawn from Edward’s point of view honestly but I would read it if it were to be a thing.
I am aware that Stephenie Meyer has said she isn’t planning to write more of the Twilight books from Edward’s point of view. I’ve read various interviews where she’s said that writing Edward has made her anxious (and New Moon would be even worse) and that she didn’t enjoy not having the freedom she would have writing a completely new book. I appreciate both of these sentiments, but just in case Stephenie Meyer or anyone who has the power to change her mind is reading this, I just want to say that I kind of feel like I’ve been left hanging by the end of Midnight Sun, even though I have the rest of the Twilight books and I know it works out. And I would love, love, love more Edwardian Twilight. I know New Moon would be super depressing, but since Edward is apart from Bella, it would also basically be a completely new book. And I feel like Edward has the most character growth of the series in New Moon and Eclipse and I want to read that so much! So I will continue to hope.
I would also take any of the Twilight books from Alice’s point of view. Just saying.
In the meantime, since I’ve already reread all the Twilight books, the end of Midnight Sun left me listening to the last chunk of New Moon (from the point when Alice returns to the end) on a loop for days and days. I only managed to get out of the loop and start reading other books again by reading The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner and Life and Death, which I’ll talk about in my August reading roundup post soon. I also made a deal with myself that if I reach my goal of reading 100 books by December, I’m allowed to reread all the Twilight books again, reading Midnight Sun between Twilight and New Moon so things feel more resolved.
I could go on and on about Midnight Sun, but these are my main thoughts. As I said, on the whole I really enjoyed the book, despite its flaws, and I’m really really hoping for more from Edward’s point of view someday. If you’ve read Midnight Sun, I’d love to know what you thought of it.
One thought on “Midnight Sun Madness”