Breaking Dawn(condensed version)

In case you didn't want to read my whole review of "Breaking Dawn" here is the condensed version:

     As much as I hated “Eclipse” I hated “Breaking Dawn” even more.  Stephenie Meyer follows the same damn formula for this book as she did in the last book.  In “Eclipse” an army assembles to destroy Bella and the Cullens and the conflict is revealed and quickly (and anticlimactically) resolved in the last act of the book.  In “Breaking Dawn” the Volturi assemble an army to destroy Bella and her family and the conflict is quickly (and anticlimactically) resolved in the last act.

     GOD THESE BOOKS SUCK!  After reading 3 out of the 4 I can't imagine why they have such a devoted following.  "Breaking Dawn" is bloated, slow, and just plain boring.  It's clustered with padding and nonevents that have no bearing on the plot, story, or character development. I am grateful that this is the last "Twilight" book I'm going to read.  I have no plans on reading or reviewing the first "Twilight" book.  If I get bored I might review the movie but I really don't think the first movie is that bad.  20/100 Might as well pick up "The Hunger Games" or "Ender's Game" instead of these books or better yet you could just save yourself some time and watch the movies.  The Twilight movies are just as bad but it's more fun to watch a train wreck rather than read about it. 

Breaking Dawn by Stepheine Meyer is the worst thing to happen to vampires since garlic.

Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer

 

“I felt like – like I don’t know what.  Like this wasn’t real.  Like was in some Goth version of a bad sitcom.”

Jacob page 185

More like really bad soap opera but that is my favorite line out of the book.  I think that proves that Stephenie Meyer knew what she was writing was trite.

     There are certainties in life.  For instance if you lay one hand flat on a table and in the other hand you pick up a hammer, raise it over your head, and bring it down as hard as you can on your hand chances are it’s gonna hurt a lot and your hand is going to be broken.  So you don’t need me telling you Stephenie Meyer sucks.  It’s as obvious as your shattered hand.  I’m also not the first person to say this.  She’s been negatively criticized since she started writing.

     As much as I hated “Eclipse” I hated “Breaking Dawn” even more.  Stephenie Meyer follows the same damn formula for this book as she did in the last book.  In “Eclipse” an army assembles to destroy Bella and the Cullens and the conflict is revealed and quickly (and anticlimactically) resolved in the last act of the book.  In “Breaking Dawn” the Volturi assemble an army to destroy Bella and her family and the conflict is quickly (and anticlimactically) resolved in the last act.

     This book also features Meyer’s trademark wasting entire chapters on nonevents that have absolutely nothing to do with the plot.  In one chapter out of the blue Jacob has a fit and runs off to forcibly imprint (imprinting is the werewolf act of finding your spiritual soul mate in this series) himself on some unlucky person.  And she wastes another two chapters on Bella’s transformation and first hunt.  I read the hardcover which is 754 pages.  The book was long enough without Meyer adding 56 pages of bullshit.  At least the wedding was a lot more toned down than in “Breaking Dawn Part 1”.

     “Breaking Dawn” begins with our protagonist Bella, monologuing to herself about how embarrassed she is about driving an expensive luxury car that’s so new it hasn’t been released for sale in the US yet.  Can you imagine how terrible a world it would be if we all had these problems?   Moving forward to Bella and Edward’s wedding, Bella meets some new vampire relatives and Jacob shows up.  Jacob freaks out and almost turns into The Incredible Wolf when Bella implies she’s going to have sex on her honeymoon as a human.  There are just so many things wrong with this.  Jacob’s concerned that Edward’s superhuman strength might harm or kill Bella when they consummate their marriage, but what does he care?!  He realizes that now that she’s married Edward he’s going to turn her into a vampire anyway and when he does she’s going to be dead to him.  Not to mention was he really naïve enough to believe that a newlywed couple wasn’t going to have sex on their honeymoon?  Also regardless of what it does to her it’s still her decision!  To get the mechanics of sex out of the way if she was on top than nobody gets hurt!  Not that this has anything to do with it but Edward’s skin is rock hard and cold as ice, now I’m not a woman but I can’t imagine sticking a popsicle up my vagina would be very comfortable or arousing.

     Off to the honeymoon where they have sex.  I’d elaborate but after all the buildup leading up to this moment the sex scenes are rather tame.  I knew it was too much to expect but I was hoping for something more explicit.  I mean these are young adult novels right?  I remember when I was reading Christopher Pike.  Those books were filled with nudity and sex.  Anyway as it turns out vampire sex is a little rough.  Edward notices the various bruises across Bella’s body the next day and apologizes and despite her objections refuses to make love to her again.  I know he’s a vampire but I’m not entirely convinced Edward is a man.  She has no problem with it and it’s not like you purposely threw her down the stairs so what’s the problem?  Let her heal up and then go in for round two.  Not long after their tryst Bella discovers she pregnant.  Apparently vampire semen is very motile.  After this discovery they fly back home to find out what to do next.

     “Breaking Dawn” is divided into 3 parts, the first part features Bella’s narration, the second Jacob’s, and the third Bella again.  This is where Jacob’s story begins and I was really looking forward to it because I’ve always hated Bella’s stupid insecure melodramatic  point of view but Jacob’s isn’t much better.  Instead Jacob’s is macho, melodramatic, cynical, and overly sarcastic.  Turns out Stephenie Meyer has no idea how to write men either but just from the titles of some of these chapters I think you can understand what I mean,

“Why Didn’t I Just Walk Away? Oh Right, Because I’m an Idiot”,

“You Know Things Are Bad When You Feel Guilty For Being Rude to Vampires”,

“What Do I Look Like?  The Wizard of Oz? You Need A Brain? You Need A Heart? Go Ahead. Take Mine. Take Everything I Have”. 

     Even though the Jacob part was just as bad it did have some of my favorite parts of the book.  Soon after they get back home Jacob is summoned by the leader of his pack.  During the meeting they find out Bella and Edward have returned and that Bella’s sick.  Jacob fears the worst and having nothing left to lose decides to leave town and live out the rest of his days in wolf form, but before he leaves he decides to confront Edward.

     This next part I just found hilarious.  I know I shouldn’t but if this scenario had appeared in any other book I’d find it less funny and more tragic.  When he gets to the Cullens Jacob is greeted by Edward.  Bella overhears the two chatting on the front porch and invites him in where he finds out that she is indeed sick but also pregnant.  Edward and Jacob go outside to discuss what to do next.  The two discuss the how rapidly the pregnancy is progressing and how it’s killing her.  Edward explains that Bella isn’t interested in aborting the fetus and the following conversation unfolds:

Jacob: “Just back up a second.  She won’t let you.  Did you ever notice that she’s exactly as strong as a normal 110 pound human girl?  Hold her down and knock her out with drugs.”

Edward: I wanted to, Carlisle would have but her bodyguard complicated things.

You heard it right.  This cheesy teenage romance between a human girl and a vampire just had not one or two but three characters conspiring to drug and remove a girl’s unborn baby against her own wishes and the only thing preventing them from doing this is not their own conscious but the fact that another vampire won’t let them.  Not getting into my own personal politics (because that’s not what this blog is about) I understand Bella’s reasoning.  While this is a silly love story I think this part is valid and requires some intense thought and debate.  It’s not about pro-life or pro-choice but a woman’s right to choose either way.

     Putting that aside, in another bizarre moment Edward asks Jacob to convince Bella to get rid of the baby and suggests that if what she really wants is a baby that Jacob can have one with her.  So in other words he pimps out his wife to her ex-boyfriend in order to terminate his baby that’s killing her.  This should be an episode of the Jerry Springer show.  Obviously this stupid and frankly insulting plan doesn’t work on Bella who insists on keeping her baby.

     After Bella and Jacob bond a little he rushes off and turns into a wolf.  The wolves can hear each other’s thoughts so the second he changes everybody knows what’s going on.  I don’t understand why but the wolves who see themselves as protectors of humans overact to the news of a vampire human hybrid and plan immediately to attack and kill Bella and the Cullens.  While I can kind of see why they’d perceive the baby/monster as a threat it hasn’t been born yet and hasn’t harmed anyone aside from Bella.  Their reaction makes no damn sense.  They don’t know what it is.  They don’t know what it will do.  They don’t know what it’s capable of, if anything.  And it’s being born into a family of self-righteous vampires that are strong enough physically and morally to control it.  This doesn’t matter much to the pack leader who uses his magical powers to force everyone to submit and do his bidding, but Jacob breaks the spell and runs off and is joined by Seth and his sister Leah.

     I’d say this is the most boring part of the book but let’s see what we’ve read so far.  Bella and Edward get married, they go on their honeymoon, Bella gets pregnant, they go back home, they debate over what to do about it, and Jacob breaks away from his pack.  We’re now a little over 200 pages in the book and almost nothing interesting has happened.  Even I must admit that the idea of a vampire/human hybrid pregnant is somewhat interesting.  I’ve read a lot of books and I’ve never read anything like that before.  Besides we got way more boring irrelevant shit to go.

     This is the middle of Jacob’s part of the book.  Mostly it deals with werewolf and Bella drama.  The most interesting thing going on here is explaining the wolves view on nudity which hasn’t been addressed until now.  Then we get to another kind of stupid thing.  For some reason it’s never occurred to anyone that the vampire child Bella is carrying in her belly might require blood.  As simple as it sounds this confused me.  Well it’s a vampire baby so of course it would need blood but I didn’t understand whether the accelerated growth of the baby was what was taking its toll on Bella’s body or that it was draining her blood to replenish itself.  If that was true vampire doctor would have noticed the blood loss and given her a transfusion and that would have solved the problem.  Either way she ends up drinking it rather than taking a transfusion.    

     As I mentioned earlier there’s a chapter where Jacob freaks out and runs around looking for a mate to imprint upon.  We’ve finally reached it but I can’t imagine why it was included here.  It serves absolutely no purpose.  There’s no conflict and no revelations made during this chapter and reading it just pissed me off.  Soon after Jacob's return Bella goes into labor.  After the baby is born Bella drifts off and dies.  In a rage Jacob seeks out the baby to kill it but ends up imprinting on her instead and this is were Jacob's part ends.

     Beginning Bella's second part is two wasted chapters.  The first one describes the pain she feels as she's turning into a vampire.  The second is all about her first hunt and how she overcomes the temptation to drink human blood.

     After those chapters are done wasting space Bella finally gets to meet her inappropriately named daughter, Renesme, but not before Jacob has something to say about it.  I don't know why Jacob felt it was his place to keep Bella from her daughter.  Everybody seems afraid she's going to smell her human blood and lose control but didn't she just feed on a mountain lion?  The group backs off when they realize that Bella is probably not going to attack her newborn.  She has a tender moment with her baby and we find out Renesme(god I hate typing that stupid name) has an extra sense to share her memories, thoughts, and emotions through touch.

     Bella ponders why Jacob has stuck around after she's turned into a vampire and then it finally dawns on her that Jacob has imprinted on her daughter.  She goes nuts and starts screeching at him and pushing him around flinging claims and accusations around.  Jacob begs, pleads, apologizes, and rationalizes but all his posturing falls on deaf ears.  This argument hits a climax when Jacob accidentally calls her daughter Nessie.  Bella assumes the nickname has something to do with the Loch Ness Monster and flips out and tries to attack but instead injures Seth. 

     If there's a plot to be found in Breaking Dawn this is where it hits a brick wall.  No significant events happen for the next few chapters so here's a short summary; As a wedding gift from her in-laws Bella is given a cabin close to their house, we find out that vampires really really like to have sex, the Cullens don't know how to explain Bella's disappearance or her new physical appearance so they debate about leaving town, Jacob feels he's about to lose Renesme so he turns into wolf in front of Bella's dad and invites him over without the Cullens knowledge, for whatever reason Bella's dad accepts all this, and everybody is concerned about Renesme's rapid growing.

     The "plot" decides to kick back in when Renesme is a small child(her development apparently is also sped up because rather than having the intellect of an infant she can read, speak, and walk).  I forgot to mention this earlier but during Bella and Edward's wedding a conflict begins with her extended vampire family and the wolves.  Irina, a member of the Alaskan vampire coven, notices the wolves at the wedding and blames them for killing her lover Laurent, a vampire that was trying to kill Bella in "New Moon".  As it turns out it's forbidden by the Volturi to create vampire children.  I don't know exactly what Irina has been doing all this time but at this point she is now watching the Cullens from afar when she spots Bella, Jacob, and Renesme.  When she's spotted she runs off before anyone can catch her.

     Back at the house Edward's sister Alice uses her future predicting power to see Irina telling the Volturi about Renesme and the Volturi gathering an army to destroy them all.  Soon after her vision Alice disappears with no explanation leaving the others wondering what they will do about the vampire army coming for them.  She leaves Bella a personal message in a Shakespeare book that only has a name in it and no further explanation.  Alice's vanishing is so cryptic and convoluted.  It makes sense at the end of the book but why she's so secretive about it still makes no freakin sense. The name on title page of "The Merchant of Venice" is for a worst case plan b scenario but Alice assumes that Bella can find this person in time to help.

     The name on that piece of paper is a crooked lawyer who provides the Cullens false passports and papers.  She uses him to get passports for both Jacob and Renesme so they can run away when the Volturi kills everyone.  While this happens the Cullens start gathering allies to combat the Volturi if the need arises.  As it turns out a lot of them have special powers like being able shock someone with a touch or manipulate perception or the elements.  During all this we find Bella has a hidden power to project vampire power proof shields over herself and anybody near her.

     There's really not much else to say.  This is the most anticlimatic book in the series and might just be one of the most anticlimatic books I've ever read.  The Cullens gather witnesses to plead a case to the Volturi and if they don't listen fight them.  I expected an epic battle to occur but nothing at all happened.  There is a lot of talking and debating between both gathered parties.  Irina confesses that she may have been hasty and incorrect when she accused the Cullens and is ripped apart and burned by the Volturi for it.  Towards the end of this little conflict Alice returns with proof that Renesme is no threat to the vampires.  Rather than fighting the Volturi just accept this and leave.  The book ends with Bella using her super powers so Edward can finally hear her thoughts.

     GOD THESE BOOKS SUCK!  After reading 3 out of the 4 I can't imagine why they have such a devoted following.  "Breaking Dawn" is bloated, slow, and just plain boring.  It's clustered with padding and nonevents that have no bearing on the plot, story, or character development. I am grateful that this is the last "Twilight" book I'm going to read.  I have no plans on reading or reviewing the first "Twilight" book.  If I get bored I might review the movie but I really don't think the first movie is that bad.  20/100 Might as well pick up "The Hunger Games" or "Ender's Game" instead of these books or better yet you could just save yourself some time and watch the movies.  The Twilight movies are just as bad but it's more fun to watch a train wreck rather than read about it.

"glower"
Bella & Jacob 15, 41, 187, 333, 470, 506, 
This is Stephenie Meyer's favorite word.  It's obvious she doesn't have a thesaurus or doesn't care to use one.  Six times in one book might not seem like much but it is such an unusual word that I took notice every time it was used.  Its used numerous times throughout the last two novels as well but I didn't have a mind to count them all.  She uses the word glower even more often than Stephen King uses the word apt.

GLOWER

1.

to look or stare with sullen dislike, discontent, or anger

noun

2.

a look of sullen dislike, discontent, or anger

and here are some synonyms she could have used instead: look, glare, stare, watch, scowl, and my personal favorite look daggers.

"Lingerie.  Very lingerie-ish lingerie, with French tags."
Bella page 81
Further proof Stephenie Meyer doesn't have a thesaurus.  Just looking at that sentence is painful.

"I wasn't this happy when you decided you loved me more than you wanted to kill me."
Bella to Edward page 94
Loving someone means never having to say I want to kill you.  If you say this to your partner on your honeymoon you married the wrong person.

"We weren't monsters--in that sense, anyway"
Jacob page 245
This is the second time Stephenie Meyer tried to refer to monsters as not being monsters.

"How about, 'Jacob, I get a kick out of your pain.'"
Jacob to Bella page 298
This is a good question passed off as sarcastic joke.  Aside from maybe grieving over a dead loved one I can't think of an emotion more painful than unrequited love, rejection, and having to see that person with someone else.  Jacob feels all these things but then we get...

"I'm not going to pretend to understand why Bella is unable to let go you, but I do know she does not behave this way to hurt you."
 Edward to Jacob page 338
I'll never understand why some women string ex-boyfriends along and go to such great lengths to keep them in their lives.  Stephenie Meyer on the other hand only seemed to keep the ex along to create tension and occasionally have someone to help save the day.  Maybe its just because I'm a guy but I feel sorry for Jacob.

"You nicknamed my daughter after the Loch Ness Monster?!"
Bella to Jacob page 451
I just thought this line was funny.  I'm sure it wasn't meant to be but there are a few things I found wrong with it.  Jacob calls Renesme Nessie by accident and Bella assumes the nickname has something to do with the famous Scottish hoax.  Nessie to me sounds close enough to Renesme not to be a nickname.  Besides if it were my name I'd take Nessie over Renesme monster jokes be damned.

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.)

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

“It was bad enough that my best friend was a werewolf, did he have to be a monster too?”

That may very well be the strangest and dumbest sentence I’ve ever read.  With that said this may be hard to believe but this isn’t the worst book I’ve ever read(that designation goes to “Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan” see Mission Earth: The Invaders Plan).  It’s certainly not the best either.  I have mixed feelings about it actually.  The prose is absolutely terrible and the main character and narrator, Bella, is one of the most poorly conceived characters I’ve ever read.  Her internal monologue is ceaseless as she describes her opinions and emotions on everything.  EVERYTHING!  She goes on about how she feels about certain characters, their actions, things she likes or doesn’t like, and of course she never spares the reader how she’s feeling at any given moment.  On top of that it also makes forced allusions to William Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” that are about as obvious as a kick to the face and are completely irrelevant to this story.  The story goes nowhere slowly and for a bulk of the book isn’t very interesting.  If you’ve heard about these books and you love vampires this book will greatly disappoint you.  Never mind that the creatures described as vampires in this book don’t at all resemble the prototypical vampire because most of this book is devoid of any vampires of any kind.  In the beginning Bella’s boyfriend, the vampire Edward, breaks up with her and leaves town.  From here on out the story involves Bella complaining constantly about a broken heart and hanging out with her new best friend… who just so happens to be a guy… who she’s attracted to… but for whatever reason has no romantic interest in.  I hope that doesn’t sound oversimplified but “New Moon” is bloated and cluttered with nonevents.  I can’t remember the last time where I read so much about so little.  Since Bella’s vampire boyfriend leaves town her friend Jacob fills the void but only in a supportive nonromantic way.  Every now and then whenever she makes a poor or dangerous decision she hears hallucinatory warnings from her forlorn love.  The hallucinations become a drug as she continues purposely putting herself in harm’s way.  It’s kind of a weird message.  She has two boyfriends, one real and one imagined, and she can’t seem to choose between the two so she doesn’t.  Her old boyfriend’s left and isn’t coming back but rather than embrace what’s real and right in front of her she embraces the voices in her head.

I can say this about it, it’s better than the movie.  Bella’s character has better dialogue, better motivation, and more depth than her movie counterpart.  But regardless of which medium you choose she’s still incredibly shallow, dull, and self-absorbed.  The book like the movie lacks simple storytelling structure like plot, conflict, and climax.  The worst part was an entire chapter towards the end where Edward returns and spends the rest of the chapter trying to convince Bella she isn’t dreaming.  The book despite its 563 page length is a fast and easy read that you don’t have to invest much thought or imagination in.  It’s a pleasant change from my usual horror and sci fi and for that reason alone I did enjoy reading it but I can’t suggest it to anyone over the age of 15.  55/100 Overall not a terrible book but still pretty bad.  It doesn’t hurt that I went into this with lowered expectations either.