Shadowland

Ms. Noel has accomplished a grand feat in her Immortals series.  She has surpassed The House of Night and the Twilight saga as the lamest in the Mariana Trench of lameness.  God, that sounds mean.  I don't mean it to be.  Some parapseudo authors would love to be among the ranks of such bestsellers.

In the tradition of my Blue Moon: Review in Haiku!, I had planned on writing a sonnet about the unfurling love story of Ever and Damen.  I got about 8 lines in before I realized that it was demanding 10,000 times more thinking power than reading the novel did, and since I'm not getting paid for my creative writing expertise, I quit.

For future reference, "masturbate" is a great match for "consummate" when you're dealing with iambic pentameter about teens who can't knock boots.

Just a quick plot update:  Ever and Damen can't exchange any DNA or Damen will burn up, so no kissing and other hanky-panky; Roman lurks around and moves in on Haven, Ever's gothical blue-banged friend; Jude--dreadlocked, tanned, toned, and only slightly imperfect (apparently, he didn't visit the orthodontist)--emerges on the scene as yet another young man who wants to diddle Ever.

THE MERIT (Yes, only one this time)

• Humor.  Though it's unintentional, the author threw some pretty funny stuff on the page.  For example, since Ever and Damen can no longer swap spit, Ever gets lost in Damen's telepathic embraces and melts into his telepathic kisses.  Hahahahahahaha!  See?  That's the funny stuff for sure.

THE JUST STOP ALREADY!

• Dudes.  Instead of bringing another guy into the already annoying mix, why not just work on wrapping things up with the ones we've grown to despise?  What's the point of further complicating a love triangle by constructing some sort of love trapezoid?
• More of the same.  They pine.  They grumble about pining.  They look for a way to be together.  They question their loyalties.  The end.
• Manifesting.  Cheap trick.  They can just use the immortal power (why are they like Superman?) to conjure up anything they want.  Ever manifests a Lamborghini when she needs to drive fast.  They manifest plasma screens and images of people--images so real that they can dance a minuet with them.  But then there's this one scene that pissed me off.  So Ever manifests herself a parking place in downtown Laguna Beach--a place notorious for no parking and quarter-hungry meters.  Wouldn't she have to extend the sidewalk for that?  How does one just add a parking space when there's no road left to occupy?  Even worse, when she gets out of her car, she has to feed the meter.  Huh?  Why would she manifest a meter?  And then why didn't she manifest one that was always full?  And then why didn't she manifest the quarters to push in?  
• The Twilight trick.  It's almost as bad as "It was all a dream."  I'll call it the Psychic Condom.  Damen manifests a mind film that allows them to touch and kiss and cry on each other without fear of flaming Damen to hell (a.k.a. Shadowland)--just like Bella's massively important special vampish power turns out to be a giant psychic jelly shield.  Therefore, Ever and Damen are free to get it on whenever they want.  Very, very lame.
• Writing.  I really almost can't take it.  It hurts me in the way that freshman composition research papers hurt me--deep in my soul, where no spectacular psychic condom can save me.  I can't really blame Ms. Noel for this, though.  Her editor must be shit.  I can see that what she's trying to do with the adverbial phrases.  I really can.  But it's annoying when 1/3 of the whole damn story is written in distracting sentence fragments.  And then there's the flipside:  the hideous comma splice.  It has no place in a story that sells on a bookshelf with the brag-line of "The New York Times Bestselling Author."  
• No one ever goes to the damn Shadowland.  In fact, all we see of it was a quick Spock-like mind-meld, blink-of-an-eye glimpse.  And it's basically just a dark, lonely hole that one falls into (somewhat like reading the novel...).

I really could go on, but I don't want to.  Shadowland is a bummer, and the more I think about it, the more annoyed I get.  This novel may be the one that breaks my rule of finishing all series that I begin.  I don't care about what happens to Ever, Damen is no longer sexy, Roman is a caricature, and Jude is boring.  Without at least one sympathetic character, a story has nothing.  And no matter how many new characters an author pops into a plot, that doesn't change.