Young Adult Spotlight: Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer (Little, Brown)

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Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
544 pp. Little, Brown Young Readers. $10.99
Pub. Date: 9/6/2006
ISBN-13: 978-0316015844

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer
608 pp. Little, Brown Young Readers. $10.99
Pub. Date: 5/31/2008
ISBN-13: 978-0316024969

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer
640 pp. Little, Brown Young Readers. $19.99
Pub. Date: 8/7/2007
ISBN-13: 978-0316160209

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer
768 pp. Little, Brown Young Readers. $22.99
Pub. Date: 8/2/2008
ISBN-13: 978-0316067928

Reviewed by Lindsay Stotts

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I will be the first to admit, I am not the kind of person to necessarily jump on the pop culture phenomenon band wagon right away. Even Harry Potter took years before I finally gave in to that one. The Twilight series had held no appeal to me until recently. When the movie was released, my family members (those of the female gender specifically) seemed to have been “bit” (lame joke, I know) by the Twilight bug. After much harassment from them and their praising of it as the greatest series in a long time, I decided that I would read it, if only to get them off my back. I saw the movie before I read the books, and after seeing it I hoped dearly that the usual adage that the book is better than the movie held true.

“Twilight” is the first book in the series where we are introduced to Bella Swan. Bella is the daughter of divorced parents and has recently moved from her mom’s home in sunny Phoenix to live with her father in a desolate, rainy, dreary town called Forks. On her first day at her new high school, she’s the object of everyone’s interest, and has quite the impact on Edward Cullen. Edward just happens to be a vampire and goes to high school (for like the 20^th time) with his four “brothers and sisters.” The first time he meets her and smells her, she very narrowly escapes being his next meal even though he and his siblings are self proclaimed “vegetarians” (they drink animal blood, not human). From this moment on, Bella can seem to do nothing other than get herself into terrible danger, whether it’s being around Edward, tripping on flat ground, trauma in biology and gym, or, oh yeah, almost getting hit by a van. Good news though, Edward was there to save her! From then on, the story spirals into a heart warming love story between a vampire who didn’t think he could love, and a girl who seems to love things that can kill her. This goes on for a few hundred pages. Then, some not so friendly vampires come to town, smell Bella’s lovely aroma, and decide she’s the next meal. The Cullens go through great lengths to save her and her family from these crazy vampires (is that redundant?) and of course, in the end, Edward saves her and they live happily ever after, least for a few months.

In book two, “New Moon”, Edward decides that, after a terrible accident at Bella’s birthday party with his family (involving a paper cut, and six hungry vampires), that it’s time for them to leave in hopes of keeping Bella safe. So his family packs up and leaves town, leaving Bella in a depressed catatonic state in which she never wavers from going to school, cooking dinner and studying. In this time, she re-discovers an old friend Jacob Black and they start off a nice friendship that perks her spirits up. She also discovers that when she is doing stupidly dangerous things, she hears Edwards voice in her head telling her not to do them. And Bella being Bella, she decides to do more and more dangerous things to hear his voice. Eventually she does something so stupid that Alice (Edward’s “sister” who can see the future) sees something very troubling. Edward reads her mind, and this sets off a chain of events that culminates in Edward thinking Bella is dead. Depressed, Edward then goes off to find some bad vampires who will help him off himself because life without Bella isn’t worth living. Well, jokes on him as she didn’t die, she’s just stupid. Now Alice and Bella race off to save Edward, and eventually once again, there’s a happy ending.

“Eclipse” is where the conflict between Jacob Black, now a werewolf, and Edward, a werewolf’s sworn enemy, comes to a head. They spend the whole book fighting over control and protection rights to Bella. Meanwhile, there’s a psycho vampire (once again, is that redundant?) that’s out for revenge on Bella. Since Edward killed her mate, she sees it as only fair to kill Edward’s mate. This evil vampire is amassing a small army of newborns (new vampires minus the pacifiers) that are running rampant, killing tons of people while waiting for their prime directive—the attack on Bella. Once the Cullens, Bella and Jacob figure out that this crazy bloodsucker is coming for her, they band together and fight the newborns and their vengeful leader. Once again, Bella is safe and there is a happy ending with no one even getting killed off (other than all the bad vamps). The book ends with Bella finally agreeing to marry Edward, although she is still trying to figure out how to get him to turn her into a vampire (yes, she actually WANTS to become one and has since “New Moon”).

“Breaking Dawn”, begins with Bella and Edward’s wedding. A grand affair, very little conflict, mostly warm fuzzies. Then they go away to Esme’s Island (Edward’s mom has her own island) for their honeymoon. Edward grapples with the issue of consummating their marriage without killing her in the process, manages to do it, and she only comes out slightly worse for wear. A week or two later while still on vacation, she realizes that she hasn’t had a certain visitor. Then, the dawning realization, SHE’S PREGNANT! Who would have thought that was possible? Well, Edward whisks her home to Carlisle, they whip up some lame excuse as to why no one in her family can see her and they try to figure out how to keep this thing inside her from killing her. The time comes when the baby needs to come out and it wasn’t going to go peacefully. So they sedate Bella, get the kid out of her, and to save her they make her a vampire using Edward’s venom. When she’s done transforming she seems to have no problem with the change, and has an amazing amount of self control. Everything went just peachy. Her baby girl, who is growing at an astounding rate, gets seen by another vampire who thinks she is something that she’s not, something very forbidden, and goes and tattles to the vampire watch dogs. They decide they need to come check it out and dish out some good old-fashioned vampire justice. The Cullens prepare a response and implement it. Everything goes off perfectly and no one important gets hurt. Once again, Edward, Bella, their daughter and the rest of the Cullens live happily ever after.

Okay, so if you stuck through the synopsis of the four books, good for you, and if it saves you from reading the books, be thankful this is all you had to read.

Let me start with the movie and how it compared to the book. The movie followed the book nearly exactly, nothing really was edited out of it. This should tell you right away that the director was really good or the movie was really long, OR the plot was so thin in the book there’s nothing to cut out. Well sadly the last statement is true. The book and movie contained about 10 minutes, or 10 pages of plot, and the rest was just the babblings of teenage lovers. The acting was terrible! It was over exaggerated and painful to watch. I spent the whole movie with a huge grin on my face trying not to laugh out loud at the absurdity. The concept of the book/movie was sweet, vampire finds the ability to love and would do anything for her, etc etc. Execution left something to be desired. There was nothing remotely edgy to the book, definitely not the typically dark, bloody, gory vampire stuff. It was almost like the vampires were Disney-fied. Made all cute and adorable. I didn’t know whether to fear them or pet them. The writing was unfocused at times, running on when events could have been summed up more concisely. There was also a great deal of typos and errors in all the books. My recommendation is that the editor read the book more than once, although that may have been painful to do.

“New Moon” was not much better for plot. In fact, I would say it had about the same amount except it’s mostly near the end. Until that point the narrative just wanders. The interaction between Bella and Jacob in the book was nice, almost human and normal. The thing that bothered me is that no matter what happened in the series, the books ALWAYS had a happy ending. The best thing author Stephenie Meyer did was bring Edward back. Once again the end held all the excitement.

I found “Eclipse” quite annoying. It would have been a lot shorter if the repetitive back and forth between Edward and Jacob was cut out. It only takes one or two incidents for the reader to see that there’s a problem between the two of them. Did it have to be beaten to death? By this time, I was getting annoyed with Jacob and wanted very badly to skim over the parts about him. In true Twilight fashion, the plot was almost entirely at the end, and the conflict was resolved with no problems….Yawn! Put some drama in here, kill someone important off, let someone get hurt, let SOMETHING happen! Geesh. These books are great for the faint-hearted because nothing ever goes tragically wrong.

Now “Breaking Dawn” just seems to take a header off the edge of sanity. The wedding was enjoyable, no major drama there not surprisingly. The twist with her getting pregnant by a vampire, not much of a twist, but curious none the less. Once again, so much potential for things to go wrong, for the happy balance to be upset, and yet they all come out of it just fine. Even when Bella was turned into a vampire, her transition was flawless, no trials or tests that she couldn’t easily handle. It was all too easy, too perfect. There really needed to be some challenge. I think this aspect hurt the book. It would have been more relatable if she had to struggle at least a little.

Last Word:
The series was a different take on vampires, a very…tame…take on vampires. It was definitely a series for the female reader, most if not all men would be lost when they got to the sparkly vampire part. It flirted with a nice romantic story, forbidden love spanning two worlds that just happens to work out flawlessly. They needed more conflict and a heck of a lot more plot. It also wouldn’t hurt if the book was proofed for errors. And for everyone’s sake I hope that the actors get some acting lessons by the time the next movie comes out. My advice, save your money on the movie and read a synopsis on the web if you’re really jones-ing for a Twilight fix.

Final Score: 58 out of 100