Stephenie Meyer - Breaking Dawn (Book Review)

"Breaking Dawn" (Amazon: UK, US)
by STEPHENIE MEYER
Format: Paperback, 768 pages
Publisher: Atom (August 4, 2008)

-
-

WARNING! HERE BE SPOILERS!

-
-
Though I’m probably late to jump on the bandwagon, I feel I must warn you, the unsuspecting masses, of the atrocity that is Breaking Dawn. While I was less than pleased with the hype around Stephanie MEYER’s Twilight saga (read Trin’s review of Twilight here and New Moon here), I do admit that the series is addictive. I found myself waiting impatiently for the release of the much awaited fourth installment of this young adult vampire series, but then it ended up sitting on my shelf for around four months before I decided to pick it up and get my moneys worth.

My God, what a waste of twenty dollars.

I was appalled at the ridiculousness of it all. What was supposed to be a thought-provoking, intelligent romance ended up being something a twelve year old fan girl with some writing skills could have conceived, I found myself re-reading almost every sentence just to see if I read it wrong, telling myself no author would allow a novel to get so outrageous. Apparently, STEPHENIE MEYER finds herself exempted from the lines of logic.

It starts off well enough, with Bella’s anticipation of her upcoming wedding to the over-perfect Edward Cullen and worrying about Jacob Black, who ran off at the news of hers and Edward’s engagement. When the wedding does arrive, and Jacob comes to visit, she lays out the big business of her and Eddie getting horizontal on their honeymoon. Needless to say, Jacob is less then pleased.

A bit of angst, conflict, and some feuding can be turned into some pretty good literature. My hopes were raised. Perhaps some character development will happen. Perhaps this will go beyond Bella’s utter uselessness. Perhaps this fourth installment will find its way into my best of ‘08 list. Sadly, these hopes were quickly crushed.

Where do I begin? Ah, how about at Isle Esme, where Bella suddenly switches into her fresh temptress skin. She does not just ask Edward for sex. She sits there and begs for more and more sex, even after the first time, which left her pretty bruised up. Edward initially refuses, but when Bella insists … well, he’s only a man, right? (The question of how pops into my mind, though – all bodily fluid supposedly dies out when vampires are created, blood included, so …?)
Needless to say, Edward has even less personality than in the previous books. His life - as usual - revolves around Bella, and Bella can think of little else on their honeymoon than getting it on. Edward and Bella’s relationship in a nutshell: Bella watches Edward sparkle, Edward sparkles, they get married, sparkle some more.

The main twist follows shortly: surprise, surprise, Bella gets pregnant (with the whole tidbit on immortal children in the first two chapters, having nothing to do with the then-plot direction, it was in fact pretty predictable). I won’t even go into the logic of this and I’ll ignore the aforementioned fact that Edward is devoid of bodily fluid (sperm included). Instead, I’ll provide three words that express my feelings: JUMPING THE SHARK! I’ve come to the conclusion that STEPHENIE MEYER was so completely out of ideas that she went on to some fan fiction website, chose the most ridiculous plot possible, and wove a tale around it. I am not pleased, Ms. MEYER, not pleased at all. Thankfully, that is the end of Book One of Breaking Dawn, and we move on to the saving grace of the series; Jacob Black.

For a lovely portion of the novel, we are brought into the heavily sarcastic cynicism that is Jacob’s mind. It is possible that, in these four hundred or so pages, MEYER has written the best she has ever written in any of her published works (The Host included). I love Jake’s dark humor, and the way he is so conflicted between his love for Bella and his devotion to the pack. I love how he also hates her and what she does to him, and how he hates everything she’s chosen to do with her life. It all would paint the picture of a real relationship. When Bella’s with Jacob, she sparks something resembling a personality. They have playful fights and kid around and don’t always bow to each other’s whims. It’s something real, not this desperate, obsessive, controlling fight for power that Edward and Bella have. All in all, I love Jacob. I also enjoyed the pack’s transgressions, and I LOVED Leah. She’s tough, but she has semi-normal worries, such as that, being the only female werewolf, she believes she is destined to die alone. Plus, as a pack member, she is forced to see and hear her ex-boyfriends loving thoughts about Emily, the woman he imprinted on while he and Leah were still dating. She has no choice in the matter. It’s brutal, yeah, but in the greatest way.

Jacob’s narrative still doesn’t make up for the incredulous plot: Bella is not the least bit frightened of an unnatural being that has taken up camp in her womb – even more, she calls Rosalie to help her protect the thing (as though it needs it). I guess that by now her being only eighteen doesn’t matter anymore, or perhaps the birth scene is supposed to scare off any potential fan of hers who’d wish to follow her footsteps – it’s best described in one word: ewwww! Think Rosemary’s Baby combined with Dracula, add a bit of Blood and Chocolate and then just take every single female scream from every single movie ever made, and play it all at once.
Here’s the kicker--Jacob imprints on the baby. And that’s the end of his narrative. How awkward can you get?

Then, alas, we are back to the melodramatic insight of Bella. She wakes up and finds her daughter, whom she has named Renessme, appropriately nicknamed Nessie. That’s the only thing marring her first steps into a life of an immortal, though – she’s utterly perfect once she becomes a vampire. She’s able to control her bloodlust and doesn’t have to give up anything; it’s like she’s missing out on the whole vampire experience. She gets a perfect little ending, even after she’s made the dumbest choices anyone could possibly make. What’s that saying to young girls who are reading this? It’s OK to give up everything in your life for a high school boyfriend, ‘cause eventually it’ll all cool over.

There’s nothing even remotely worth mentioning about Breaking Dawn other than the plot: character development is zero to none. If you’re really into the series, you might like to read it just for some kind of closure, though I guarantee it will be messy. I don’t know, maybe you’ll love it. Maybe you already love it. Maybe you’ve read it multiple times. Debate is welcome. I’m curious as to what others think (that is, others who aren’t blinded by the beauty that is Edward).

Now, if you’ll just excuse me, I’m going to go read my Batman comics and attempt to cleanse myself of this nonsense.

-
-
-
~Dannie~

Stephenie Meyer - New Moon (Book Review)

"New Moon" (Amazon: US, UK)
by Stephenie Meyer
Format: Paperback, 608 pages
Publisher: Little, Brown & Company

-
-

Yeah, I know what I said about reading 'New Moon' in my review of 'Twilight' – I marked it as 'for hardcore fans only', not knowing that my sister is one of them and that I'll just happen to be the one to pick 'New Moon' up for her. She was away for that week, I had no other things to read and well ... I was curious.
But then, we all know that curiosity killed the proverbial cat. And even though 'New Moon' didn't exactly kill me (after all, I'm no cat), it surely tried very hard to do so. At least, I ended up feeling like something has eaten my brain, as if 'New Moon' wasn't a regular novel but rather a Tome of Un-knowledge. Yes, it's that bad, and from now on, I won't touch the Twilight series again. Unless I'm dying to read something and there are no other books available (which is not very likely!).

The thing is – I knew what happens in the book. Most of my girlfriends were talking about it for weeks, so it was really hard to dismiss everything being said. It really is fairly simple: Edward leaves, Bella is devastated and turns depressive, Jacob Black falls in love with her, Edward thinks that Bella is (after a series of unfortunate events) dead, so he wants to commit suicide; Bella rushes to Italy to save him at the last moment and he promises to never leave her side again. Awww. That is all I heard, and it was enough – you don't really need to know all the details (not that there is so many), and you most certainly don't need to read the whole book. Don't take me wrong, I have nothing against emo culture, but Bella really does create an impression of a most pathetic, wannabe-tragic and caricaturised emo, only the razors missing from the picture. I wallow in self-loathing; my heart is broken, torn and numb! - that sort of things.

I concede one thing to Stephenie Meyer – she kind of manages to pull it off despite everything. You read, read and read New Moon, until it suddenly hits you how pathetic everybody and everything is. Of course, you decide to bang your head against the wall for some time ... but then, you go back and read some more. I don't really understand it, but I know that it's not just because I try to finish books I read ... it's something else.

Well, whatever it is, it's not character development, because that does not exist in 'New Moon'. Characters who are given the most 'screen time' are Jacob Black (who is, despite all the physical changes he's undergoing, essentially still the same), Edward (since he's a vampire, the lack of change in him is at least explainable) and Bella (who, after months of being excessively emo, even takes a step or two backwards instead of forwards). Here's some of her typical problems:

*she is not able to hurt her loved ones. Okay, that's very nice, but begging Jacob to be her friend, even when she knows that's most likely to cause major trouble, because his feelings might be a bit hurt otherwise, still makes no sense whatsoever. Wasn't it said a million times that Bella is a very rational person?

*she is extremely perceptive (she figures out immediately that it was Sam who scarred his girlfriend's face), yet she cannot figure out what Jacob is changing into. I can't see how a sensible reader is supposed to believe that, I really can't.

*she is fatally in love with the most gorgeous guy anybody's ever seen and their love is the deepest, purest, most perfect love ever. She's also (almost literally) dying to become a vampire, and yet she'd rather wait for all those things than marry the above mentioned Mr.Perfect, which would result in instantly getting everything she wants. That's more than illogical - it already borders on plain stupid.

If plot was almost inexistent in 'Twilight', nothing's changed much in 'New Moon'. There are some uncertain attempts at creating an actual plot, but they all quickly end as the author returns to the thing she does best – dealing with Bella's feelings. The saddest thing is that in 'Twilight,' there was enough style to make it up for the ragged plot, but in 'New Moon', that’s not the case. It’s more like a recycled ‘Twilight’ – the problem is that describing a girl’s feelings just doesn’t give enough material to make up for another book. There are some (successful) attempts at humour and the style of writing isn’t really that bad, just worse than before – but even taking that into account, 'New Moon' doesn’t come even close to 'Twilight'.

I guess I have to repeat myself – Reading 'New Moon' is recommended only for hardcore fans of Meyer and for the utterly bored voracious readers. It’s an easy book to read, despite all the drawbacks, that much is true. But it also seems to simultaneously destroy your brain cells, so read it on your own responsibility. And to the guys (excluding those who enjoy the series, I guess, I heard that they do exist) out there, I’d recommend steering well clear of it, if my fellow blogger Thrinidir is anything to judge by – I tried to entertain him with excerpts from the book, but had to stop as he threatened to drain the whole bottle of whiskey otherwise.

-
-
-
-
-
- Trin -

Stephenie Meyer - Twilight (Book Review)

-

-

Twilight by Stephenie Meyer is currently one of the most popular books around here. All of a sudden, every girl who used to rave about Harry Potter (and, in some instances even about the pervy HP fan fiction) and is now a bit older started hyping Twilight. They even call it their 'brand of heroin'. Before now, whenever I talked with my girlfriends, they peppered me with disbelief...

"You haven't read it yet? OMG!".

Not to mention the usual...

"That Edward guy, he's so hot! <3."

So what was I to do but go and buy the damned thing? If nothing else, I got it cheap and it has a really nice cover. (Maybe it's even nice enough for one of Thrinidir's "Eye Candy Covers" articles?)
-
The first thing I noticed when I started reading was that Twilight is not a fantasy book by any means - or at least, not in any conventional way. The plot is as simple, predictable and straightforward as with any of the stories that have a high-school girl which moves to a new town for a central protagonist. Isabella (Bella) has to deal deal with a major change - she moves from a big city (Phoenix, Arizona) to a small rural town (Forks) in the middle of nowhere to live with her father. She has no friends upon arrival and she feels miserable about it - we are all familiar with this narrative setting. However, the book had an exceptionally beautiful prose from the start on, so I kept reading despite the prosaic themes (and without a hint of any 'epic' elements, that I got used to expect when picking up a book labeled as fantasy). That said, Meyer's prose is probably the best feature of Twilight - no matter how implausible, predictable or just plain silly things are, the author still knows how to make them interesting to read about. It is a big and important bonus to the book.
-
If I haven't made it clear enough before - Twilight is a book intended for girls (I'd say teenage girls, but Twilight is well-liked by older and presumably more mature women as well), especially for those who prefer an engaging and a beautifully told story above the quality of its contents. I wouldn't recommend this book for guys and those individuals who don't appreciate romance for what it is and what it can offer. Why?
-
Twilight is almost completely without any discernible plot or action scenes, even the fangirls admit that. What little plot there is it revolves around a typical high-school romance, and the sole fantastical element I could find were the vampires (that's what determines this novel as urban fantasy, right?). Our protagonist is a seventeen-year-old Isabella Swan and she has to deal with the common problems of a teenager, the most prominent are (1)how to fit in and (2)being in love (awakened sexuality and every nuances that come with it). The real catch comes with the latter - Bella is in love with a vampire, the gorgeous Edward, and their problem is how to handle their relationship so not awaken Edward's desire for blood. Otherwise, everything evolves mostly around Bella's feelings and, of course, how incredibly sexy Edward is.
-
Believe it or not, Meyer manages to pull the lackluster story through with flying colors. The plot itself is virtually unexisting and it hurts to think about it, but the ever-popular love theme and a sublime writing style are obviously the things that do the trick here. Nevertheless, this doesn't change the fact that the whole thing is still nothing more than an entertaining goodnight story that bursts with romantic sentiments - but it somehow manages to avoid being completely cheesy and it keeps you turning the pages. Twilight does not do deep revelations or hidden meanings, but it offers a great example of what can be done with abundance of style and a good idea of what to offer to your audience (a dazzling beauty & the beast vampire relationship).
-
I have to admit that I enjoyed the book, but I don't think I'll read the sequels. They only reiterate what has been done here, or so I've heard, and while it was interesting this time, it would probably annoy the hell out of me the second time around. I've had my share of Edward and Isabella; I'll leave the sequels and re-reading to fans and those who have nothing better to read.
-
To sum it all up, I'd recommend this book to girls who enjoy a stylish, hip and easy read that teems with (c)overt sexual tension. It's a very involving book and it hits the exactly right spots of its core audience, but otherwise has no literary merit whatsoever.
-
-
-

-
-
-
-
~ Trin ~