Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Series

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I did not know that there is a novel  called Twilight until the movie came out.  I’ve read some of Anne Rice’s works so  I’m not really new to this genre of book.  Interview With A Vampire is still my  favorite Anne Rice novel. I like Buffy:  The Vampire Slayer and its spin-off,  Angel, and Blade trilogy. Being somewhat  a fan of vampire books, series and  movies, naturally I was curious about  this “Twilight” series. Some of the  comments on YT and blogs were fairly  positive with “Oohhhh, I so love this  book!” and “OMG, I can’t wait for the  movie to come out. Twilight is my  favorite.” That sort of thing. So what  did I do? I read the d@#$ book. I know!  Sucker! LOL!

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The first book in the series is called  Twilight, of course. The first three  paragraphs gave me an idea what to expect  from the book. And Oh boy! I thought the  book would be a disappointment. Maybe I  was so used to reading seasoned authors- -meaning those included in the bestseller  lists like John Grisham, David Baldacci,  Stephen King, Anne Rice, etc.–that I  thought the book did not deserve to be  publish like that. English literature is  not my major and my grammar is not really  excellent. I get typos and wrong grammar  every now and then. However, this book  got my eyebrow hiked up. The grammar  mistakes were very noticeable. The ellipses were overused. Every other paragraph and  sometimes succeeding paragraphs have  them. It was really irritating. Some  words were overused, too. I don’t know  how many “gloriously,” “perfect,”  “beautiful,” and “utterly” were there but  it was enough to be considered too much.  Why couldn’t the author use dictionary or  thesaurus? There are so many adjectives  to describe a thing or a person. Isn’t  there supposed to be an editor for books  before they get published? Oh well…

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The main protagonists are Bella, a teen- age human, and Edward, a century-old  vampire. Bella is a klutz as she  repeatedly mentioned in the book. She  just got transferred to a school in a  small town called Forks where her dad  lives. Her mother got remarried and she,  Bella, decided to be a self-sacrificing  daughter and moved in with her father.  She met Edward, a “gloriously” beautiful  junior in her new high school. She had no  suspicion that this Edward and his  “perfect” siblings were vampires. How  could she when the rest of the town who  knew the Cullens (that’s Edward’s family)  before she did have none. The girl had no  super power. In fact, she’s a klutz. That  was probably her super power because that  endeared her to the Cullens. LOL! Bella’s  character was not fully developed. Other  than the fact that, again thanks to her  mentioning a thousand times, she is just  a clumsy human and her head is full of  Edward, Edward, Edward and more Edward,  she has no redeemable qualities that  would make a heroine for our story. Does  the fact that Edward had the hots for her  count? I wouldn’t think so. Edward on the  other hand was established early on as  perfect, beautiful and shimmering. The  vampires were described as what was  mentioned above, but that was it. Those  adjectives were empty. How are they  perfect? How are they beautiful? The idea  of vampires shimmering or glowing under  the sunlight intrigues me though.

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Reading the book was tedious for me. I  skipped a lot of pages but managed to  finish the book. Half of the book was  spent on Bella and Edward’s tiring  arguments albeit the topic had no  variations. It’s all about how Edward is  so worried about Bella’s safety and vice  versa, how Bella is not so special  according to her, how Bella is so  stubborn (how Bella is so stupid more  likely LOL!). Edward’s character was  confusing, too. One minute he was angry,  another minute he was flirting with  Bella. I didn’t know vampires could have  split personality or be bipolar. LOL! I  know, I know. He was struggling with his  emotions and his craving for Bella’s  blood, but it was not clearly indicated  as such. That’s the problem with first  person narration of the story. To make  matters worse, Bella was narrating. I  guess that’s about right. Bella was a  self-centered teenager. She wouldn’t know  and wouldn’t want to know what other  people think. It still doesn’t change the  fact that the other characters were  poorly established. I like Alice. Rosalie  was given little space in the book  though. It would have been better if the  author developed Rosalie’s character and  did not just mention her name whenever  Bella feels insecure.

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Honestly, I thought the book was written  by a 12-year-old girl so I wiki-ed the  author. LOL! I’ve read better fan fiction  than this book. There are a lot of teens  who could write better. So sad. The book  had a lot of potential that the author  failed to achieve. For those who are not  book readers or 12-year-old girls, this  might be enjoyable to read. This was  categorized as YA book but they should  have put more effort on this. It was a  page turner for me (at first) because of  anticipation for a climax or a conflict  to make the book more interesting.  Unfortunately, I found it lacking. I was  so glad I just borrowed the books. It  would have been a waste of my money. Oh  yeah, I forgot to mention that I have the  four books. I’m through with the first  and second but I got frustrated with the  third so I left it unfinished. The second  book was much better in terms of grammar.  Sadly, the story was still dragging. It  was not my plan to watch the movie but  from the movie trailer I’ve watched on  TV, it must be better than the book.  Based on those previews, I think they  changed the story. I hope it’s still  showing in theaters.
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*update:

I am continuing to read the third book  called Eclipse. The story is still  dragging (especially in the first half of  the book) but much better than the first  book; a big improvement if I may say so.  Whether I will like the book generally  remains to be seen. Jasper’s story is  interesting. I hope I don’t get  disappointed again.
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