Drina mocks ever for a while, talking about how much fun it’s been watching her descend into addiction.  Although, really…how does that count as fun?  It was too easy and smooth to make for a good bit of revenge-drama, and it’s made barely a blip on her life as far as consequences go.  Might as well go on about how much fun it is to watch paint dry.

Also, what is this?  It feels like it wants to be dramatic villain payoff, but it’s just out of the blue instead.  So Drina had it out for Ever this whole time?  Um…okay?  It’s not like she ever did anything.  She didn’t push Ever into drinking or get in the way of Ever/Damen.  (Well, the book thinks she did, but all evidence points to the contrary.)  So this doesn’t feel like someone coming by to gloat about/reveal all their plans.  Instead it feels more like Drina is a member of the audience, stepping to heckle Ever after being forced to watch her insipid attempts at romance.

The most Drina can lay claim to is tricking Ever into coming to the canyon by switching out the painting (and maybe mind-muckage?  Hard to tell), but she keeps calling it an ‘elaborate ruse,’ when it really doesn’t feel that elaborate.

OMG, Drina is still going on with her mocking villain speech.  Even Syndrome would be rolling his eyes at this point.  She does mention that she’s killed Ever in each of her lifetimes, so I guess this girl keeps getting reincarnated and Damen falls in love with her over and over.  *yawn*  Wow, never seen that before.  Don’t hurt yourself with all that creativity, book.

And Drina continues her fucking monologue.  She goes on about how she’s going to play with Ever for a while before killing her.  Yeesh, just get on with it.

Pages and pages and pages of talking.  Fucking Drina, man, just kill Ever and shut up, that way you both stop annoying me.

“Well, I suppose you’ll want all the details, even though you won’t remember them the next time around. Still, it’s always fun to see the shock on your face when I explain it to you.” She laughs. “I don’t know why, but for some reason, I never bore of this particular episode, no matter how many times we re-run it.

She admits to killing Evangeline (boy, that whole plot line went nowhere, didn’t it?) and ‘stealing’ Haven.  Even though she goes on and on and on for ages, she doesn’t explain why she did those two things.  She got Miles his part in the school play and hooked up Sabine with her new beaux.  Why?  Seriously, what’s the point of all this?  It’s like the book suddenly realized that Drina didn’t do anything, so it’s just going “um…fuck it, yeah, through that in there, too.”

“I wanted to show you how lonely your life can be. I wanted to demonstrate how easy it is for people to abandon you in favor of something better, more exciting. You’re all alone, Ever. Isolated, unloved, alone.

…considering the fact that Haven, Miles, and Sabine DIDN’T FUCKING ABANDON HER, that’s a weak excuse.  In fact, all three of those people were more eager to spend time with Ever than Ever was to spend time with them, even after moving on to ‘better’ things, so that was just a total fail of an excuse.

Naturally, all of this is just because Drina wants Damen to herself, because of course this all about fucking Damen.  That’s all this book has been about before, so why stop now?

Also, Drina has Wolverine-healing powers.  Sure, why not.

Ever figures she’s about to die as Drina advances on her, so she closes her eyes and thinks really happy thoughts really hard.  For…some reason, this makes her have instahealing, too.  (She’d gotten bloodied up from running around and falling over a lot.)  Her suddenly-bettter-ness shocks Drina for long enough that Ever can lunge at her, only…

But just as I spring forward, I see this shimmering veil of soft golden light, a luminous circle just off to the side, glowing and beckoning, like the one in my dream. And even though Drina planted those dreams, even though it’s probably a trap, I can’t help but veer toward it.

Um, how random?

The veil leads her into ‘Summerland,’ where everything is warm and sunny and perfect, and also Damen is there.

“It’s a sort of-place between places. Like a waiting room. Or a rest stop. A dimension between the dimensions, if you will.”

Well, that just clears everything up, doesn’t it?

Also, Ever can do “imagine something and it tots becomes real” magic.  All I can think is “damn, I’d be fucked in that place, my imagination doesn’t exactly turn off.”

They spend a while imagining up stuff and then talking.  Damen sent the veil to let her escape Drina, but Drina couldn’t see it to follow.  Why couldn’t Drina see it, too?  Fuck you, that’s why.

God, they’re just going on forever with this “let’s invent things at a whim” trick.  It doesn’t even add anything, they’re just pulling up stuff for funsies.

Finally Damen gets around to telling her that Summerland here is where her soul was when he found her after the car accident.  Apparently, pulling her out of there turned her into an immortal like him, and eventually she’ll have to drink the weird red drink like he does.  Also, apparently he was watching her run away from Drina that whole time, but he didn’t save her until she ‘wanted’ to be saved.

But then, in the canyon, when you filled yourself with such love, well, that love is what saved you, restored you, and it’s then that I knew.

What bullshit is this?  She only started thinking happy thoughts after she’d given up on running away and was getting ready to die.  That’s like the opposite of wanting to be saved.  Why didn’t running away from Drina count?  He then explains that all the magical stuff he’s done this book have been because of magic.  Duh.  Once she’s been immortal long enough and has the hang of things, she’ll learn how to do said tricks as well.

When Ever confronts him about Drina’s “I’ve killed you lots” comment, he claims to have never known about that.  So…wait.  Damen, your girlfriend dies young and violently in every incarnation, and…this never seemed suspicious to you?  Wow are you a shitty immortal.  I could sort of forgive two or three times as being an idiot, but ‘countless’?  You’ve got to be either lying or lead-eating levels of stupid.

He then explains that his father was an alchemist, and he finished his father’s work after daddy-dear died, and the result of that alchemy was immortality.

I know you prefer the frozen in time vampire theory, but this is real life, Ever, not fantasy.”

…you know, real life, where you can imagine up charging elephants and turn them into butterflies.

What, you can’t do that?

They talk some more and it’s so ungodly boring that I can’t even bring myself to tell you what about.  Like, reincarnation and shit. 

By the way, that’s this whole chapter.  We had some potential for action last chapter with Drina, and that got resolved by simply pulling her through a veil and then playing a more wordy version of 20 Questions.  This is so fucking dull, so anticlimactic, so moronic, I don’t even know what to say.  I don’t even know how to properly rail against this as a narrative decision, because even writing newbies know you shouldn’t do this.  It’s like, even if you’ve never read a book at all, you should know that this is a monumental let-down.

Did you try at all, book?

And why couldn’t Damen have said any of this before now?  What was stopping him from explaining everything as soon as he pulled her out of the car crash?

Though I think it’s obvious why I couldn’t be quite so forthcoming at the time.”

…it’s not.

Are you going to leave that there, book?

I hate you so much.

“You have to guard against the misuse of power; Drina’s a good example of that. And you must be discreet, which means you can’t share this with anyone, and I mean no one, understand?”

Because…?

Fucking Damen!  You have the secret to immortal life and a magic potion that can cure any illness and WHY ARE YOU NOT SHARING THAT?  Why was your first act not “HOLY SHIT, MIDEVAL WORLD, I CAN TOTS CURE THE BUBONIC PLAGUE! :D”?

Don’t tell me it’s because of Drina.  If everyone was on the same level, then she wouldn’t be overpowered, would she?  No, she’d be just as powered as everyone else.

I bet we’d be colonizing space by now if everyone was immortal.  I mean, we would have filled up the planet, so focusing outward would be more of a priority.

Damnit, now I want a fantasy-space-travel story.  Let’s get those 17th century folk on Mars!

Guys, this is a really long chapter.  Now Damen is infodumping about alchemy, as if dropping all this mumbojumbo now excuses the fact that it’s utterly nonsensical and has been missing from the rest of the book.

They talk about love for a while, Ever isn’t sure she’s up for immortality, they make out, Damen says she’s got time to think about it for a while and then give him an answer.  I guess that means she can turn down the immortal thing.  Then she magical ends up back in her room at home.

God this is so bad.  This is so bad that I don’t even know where to begin with how bad it is.  This doesn’t even feel like a book anymore.  This is clearly someone’s rough draft, or NaNoWriMo project.  This is just wordvomit.  There’s no attempt to make the story cohesive or have elements build on each other.  Things get brought up and dropped again at random.  This isn’t a story, this is two people making out, occasionally interrupted with random stuff, and then an attempt to explain it all gets tacked on the end.