Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Interesting fact: A vampire bat will consume up to 30% of its body weight in blood making it too heavy to fly off the ground.  Because their diet consists entirely of fluids a vampire bat needs to urinate shortly after feeding to reduce its bloat enough to fly.  Kinda makes vampire prose a lot less romantic huh.  Also I wonder if the Twilight werewolves mark on trees like real wolves.

Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer

Vampire mythos are a tricky thing, they differ from author to author, movie to movie, and culture to culture.  Just to get one thing out of the way not all vampires turn into dust when light hits them.  Stephenie Meyer’s unique decision that not only do they not turn to dust but they sparkle is a good example of this.  I think just about everyone knows that by now, what not everyone knows about is apparently vampirism is a beauty enhancer… I am not making that up.  If I didn’t know any better this is what would tip me off that a woman wrote this.  I’d hate to play the gender card here but only a woman would be this hung up on such a trivial superficial quality, a very shallow woman who probably has body or appearance issues.  Stephenie Meyer wastes an entire chapter explaining this through exposition by one of the most self-obsessed characters I’ve ever read in any book.  From a biological standpoint I just can’t understand what advantage a vampire or any predator would have for looking pretty.  After all aren’t peacocks and brightly colored fish easy targets.  I can understand being able to foretell the future or reading minds or being super-fast or strong. 

The superpowers remain inconsistent as well.  Not every vampire has them but some of the ones who do don’t work on the main character Bella.  The book tries to explain this by saying that only psychic powers work on Bella but that doesn’t make much sense either.  Either all vampire powers work on her or none do.  Regardless they don’t explain why the non-psychic powers work on her.  I know I’m putting way too much thought into something that was devoted to a certain group of people whose minds aren’t finished developing but since Stephenie Meyer didn’t think about these considerations someone ought to.

For a 629 page book the plot is really thin, so thin it’s hard to describe.  At the end of the last book Edward, a vampire, and Bella, his human girlfriend, reunite after a brief hiatus leaving her new suitor Jacob, a werewolf, in the lurch.  This is where it gets a little tricky.  I don’t know if I should call the main plot a side plot or the side plot a main plot.  Either way Edward and Bella pick up where they left off as if nothing ever happen.  Meanwhile Bella tries to renew her fractured friendship with Jacob who is trying to resolve the conflict of his feelings for her and his hatred for her boyfriend both as competition and a natural enemy.  In the midst of this corpses are piling up in Seattle which leads the vampires to the conclusion that someone is amassing a vampire army.  The book climaxes with Jacob and the werewolves and Edward and the vampires fighting this army and finding out why it was assembled and who’s behind it.

The reason I have such a hard time differentiating between plot and subplot is a love triangle that only gets more complicated as the story wears on is hardly what you’d call a plot(more like a plot device) but so little time and effort is devoted to the vampire army and how that plot is resolved.  To me the vampire war is more interesting but that’s over in two chapters and most of that happens outside the scope of the main character and narrator.  The main plot is so simple it can be summarized thusly:

Bella: I love you Edward!

Eddie: I love you Bella!

Bella: I love him!

Jacob: I hate him and I hate you for loving him!  I WISH YOU WERE DEAD!

Bella: Sorry…

Jacob: I forgive you.  Please forgive me.  I still love you too. Pick me PICK ME PICK ME!

Bella: I love you too Jake but I love him more.

Jacob: Don’t we have a bunch of vampires to kill?

Bella & Edward: Who cares if innocent people are dying and vampires are running wild we have to finish our selfish teenage soap opera melodrama!

It goes on and on like that chapter after chapter until your eyes bleed.  Aside from the nonexistent plot Eclipse also has some of the most awkward transitions I’ve ever seen.  The book is dull, I mean really boring, so I phase out from time to time.  I’ll be reading and suddenly wonder why the setting and characters have changed.  Unfortunately I didn’t have my highlighter on me during these times but a lot of times it’ll be like this: Bella and Edward are at his house making out.  Oh no I’ve got to get home and make my dad dinner(on top of being a martyr she’s also unbelievably subservient for a teenage girl).  The next sentence she’s at her house cooking dinner with no explanation about how she got there.  It always feels like there was a sentence or two that are missing.  It’s very disorienting and often caused me to read the same page 2 or 3 times to makes sure I didn’t miss anything.

As hard as it is to believe (and harder to say) all things considered I enjoyed reading “New Moon” but this book sucks and it’s boring.  Nothing happens as the backstories for several characters are exposited sometimes for entire chapters.  Eclipse is a terrible book that mostly feels like the author didn’t want to put that much effort into the characters or plot.  You’d think it would take a lot of effort to write such a thick book but mostly it rehashes things from the previous two books.  It’s not the worst book I’ve ever read and Stephenie Meyer certainly isn’t the worst writer either but she sure is the laziest.  At best this book can be considered nothing more than a wedge between the book that preceded it and the final book in the series. Even if you’re a “Twilight” fan this book can easily be skipped.  25/100

Just like the last book “Eclipse” has some of the dumbest most contrary quotes I’ve ever read.  I don’t have time or space to put them all down but here are just a few:

“I’ve never been much of a masochist.”

Bella Swan Page 601

(yeah unless you count the numerous times you blame yourself and apologize for things that are far beyond control or weren’t really your fault to begin with.  This is why the Bella Swan character cannot exist outside fiction.  I have never met a woman so willing to accept blame.  She’s the perfect example of battered woman syndrome.  I’ve also never met a woman willing to realize that she was leading me on and later apologize for it.  In some ways Bella Swan is the perfect woman but in most ways she’s also the perfect doormat and one of the most incredibly flawed characters in all of fiction.  When I read that line once again I could barely believe my eyes.  I also realize the irony and hypocrisy of accusing Bella of being a masochist when I’ve read 2 Twilight book so far.)

“Well, there was the first night.  The night you stayed.”

“Yes, that’s one of mine, too.  Of course, you were unconscious for my favorite part.”

Edward and Bella comparing their favorite times together. Page 511

(Umm… creepy.  I have no doubt a date rapist has said this to/of a victim at some point.  Is this romantic to Stephenie Meyer?)

“I could quite literally kill him for saying that to you.  I want to.”
 Edward to Bella Page 192

(so… hmmm.  I think what you meant to say was I could literally literally kill him.  It doesn’t get more literal than quite literal and you don’t get much deader than literally dead, except for maybe quite literally dead.  Oh fucking hell!)

“The linked deaths include a nearly even 18 women and 21 men.”
 News clipping Page 279-280

(Maybe I’m nit picking here but something about the structure of that sentence pisses me off.  Even more that it’s supposed to be a news article.  This forces me to ask myself a question, is it harder to believe that this article would have gotten past the editor of a daily newspaper or that it got past the editor of a best-selling book series?  Can anything be nearly even?  That’s like saying the number 4 is nearly a prime number.)

Jacob laughed. “She hit me.”

“Why did she hit you?”

“Because I kissed her,” Jacob said, unashamed.

“Good for you kid,” Charlie congratulated him.

Charlie and Jacob Page 316

(Charlie’s bizarre reaction after finding out his best friend’s son sexually assaulted his daughter.  And if you think that’s bad Stephenie Meyer makes it even worse 46 pages later…)

“No matter what side I’m on, if someone kisses you without your permission, you should be able to make your feelings clear without hurting yourself.  You didn’t keep your thumb inside your fist did you?”

“Jacob’s head is really hard”

Charlie laughed.  “Hit him in the gut next time.”

“Next time?”

“Aw, don’t be too hard on the kid.  He’s young.”

“He’s obnoxious”

“He’s still your friend.”

Bella and Charlie Page 362-363

(I’m confused here.  In the same breath Charlie both condemns and excuses Jacob’s actions.  I can’t imagine what he’d say if he raped her rather than kissed her.)

“Charlie”

Bella Pages Numerous

(I just never understood Bella’s need to call her parents by their first names.  I still call my relatives mom, aunt, uncle, and grandma.  Out of respect I would never call these people anything else.  But it’s not just her it’s every character.  Both Edward and Jacob call their dads by their first names like they’re old buds.  I can’t be the only one who thinks this is bizarre.)