T.01.20 Impatience

In Which We Loiter in a Hotel Room

Bella wakes up in a hotel room still fleeing James with the help of Jasper and Alice. She's in Phoenix and road weary. We get some chit chat between Bella and the still undeveloped Alice and Jasper where they try and reassure her that she's not in immediate danger. We get more description of the room than the two vampires, but it is a nice description.

Bella asks Alice about becoming a wahmpire, naturally, and Alice fights her for about half a paragraph before launching into the gist of it. We  get vampies = poisonous, so put that on your checklist. This is key as an envenomed victim will eventually become a wahmpire after suffering for quite a while and, one assumes, not dying. Then the heart stops (add that to the list) and you're done. So now we have the wall of pain between Bella and her eventual wahmpiredom.

There's some vision by Alice regarding James. He's stopped following the bait and is headed back to Forks where something something vision cloudy insert 25cents ask again later. Then Edward calls. Finally, they figure out Alice's vision indicated a dance studio near Renee's house in Pheonix, which implies that James knows where it is. Bella calls her mom and leaves a message.

SumUp: C+

That's really it. The chapter builds moderate tension and advances the hunt a bit, but given a  chance for Bella and Jasper or Alice to bond or argue or grow in any way we instead get phone calls from Edward and Alice's plot-powers. Making us more aware of Bella's fear is good, making us more aware of her love is just piling on. While Alice is the most developed of Edward's siblings, she's still barely more than a name and a description. Here, she's somewhat helpful and thoughtful, but her main job is to have visions and to describe what's going on with the rest of the Clan.

In fact, the most developed characters outside Bella and Edward are still Charlie and Mike, and we haven't seen Mike in 9 chapters. I miss Mike. Oh, and did Bella's truck survive OK?

So this is wasted opportunity on top of wasted opportunity. We've finally got things moving forward in this new plotline but the chapters are getting shorter and shorter! Is Meyer just anxious to wrap it up? You've got a sympathetic vampire in Alice, how about some conversation? How about some of that endless Q&A from Bella?  Have Jasper tell us his background as a way to distract Bella from the endless waiting. Have the two vamps argue about something or share some sort of emotional moment to show they're not simply plot mechanics. Jasper was supposed to be somewhat opposed to Bella and Edward, although not nearly to the level of Rosalie. Why? How When? SOMETHING? Anything? You love conversations, Meyer!