Books – Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight”
by chris ~ June 17th, 2009. Filed under: Books.
My review
rating: 2 of 5 stars
I’m going to go ahead and guess that my review of Twilight is going to sway neither the book’s legion of fans, nor its serious detractors. In all honesty, I’m kind of torn about reviewing the book at all. Its first-person protagonist is a seventeen year-old girl, and the book is very clearly angled at girls in their early-to-mid teens. I am a thirty-two year-old man, and thus am not exactly what one would call the target demographic.
I read the book because my wife advised me to, because I am author who is trying to get his vampire novel published, and she rightly figured that it couldn’t hurt to check out the book, and see what it does well. There ARE things that it does well, despite what some negative reviews might say. There are also many things that didn’t work for me, but may be right for the target audience. Then there are a few things that I think it does legitimately poorly … we’ll get to those.
So. What I liked:
I think — and again, I was never a girl, so I can’t be sure — that it does a good job of expressing the all-consuming strength of a young woman’s first love. Bella’s absolute obsession with Edward is driven home over and over (to the point of tedium for me). Less well-explained is why Edward feels so strongly for her, other than that she smells good, but you still at least get a strong sense of his desire both to love her and to chomp down on her neck, which creates some fun dramatic tension.
I also liked that each vampire had a special little power of their own, something they brought with them from their human lives. I thought the book got stronger as it went along, with the last sixty pages or so of the book, not counting the epilogue, being legitimately exciting and fun to read.
What I didn’t like:
The first 350 pages of the book are nearly a straight teen romance novel, and the first 100 pages or so are brutal even accepting that fact. There’s absolutely nothing happening, action-wise. Bella comes off as bitchy and unlikable. The writing is stilted and hasn’t yet found any sort of voice other than said bitchiness (few sentences have anything resembling stylistic flair). Again, this improves as the book goes on, almost as if Meyer is becoming more comfortable with her characters and the world she’s creating.
I also felt that Edward was too perfect. I realize the novel is more a romance than it is anything else, and this is a common approach to romance novels, but it makes him a less-likable character because basically his only flaw is that he can’t accept that he’s in love and just deal with it. I don’t mind him being gorgeous, or powerful, or intelligent, or charming, or witty, or sensual, or telepathic, or even some combination of these things, but all of them together create a character so flawless he’s hard to relate to.
The epilogue is hard to believe. I find it midly improbable that Bella’s dad would be easily forgiving of either She or Edward after what he had to go through. Also, Bella returns right back to being oblivious and kind of bitchy, as if she’s learned essentially nothing from her experience. I was hoping for a bit of character growth for both of the leads, but there’s little to be seen.
Overall, I think the book does a decent if unspectacular job of conveying a fairly typical first love story with a rather important twist. The last sixty pages or so, where the real meat of the action is, are better than the rest of the book. I have no plans to read the other three in the series, so I went ahead and read their synopses on the internet, and doing so basically reconfirmed that I’m not interested enough to read more. It seems, though, like Meyer understands her audience and has put together a series which they clearly enjoy.
If you’re old enough to drink — and not an aspiring author of vampire novels who likes to keep abreast of what’s happening in that genre — Twilight’s not terrible … but it’s probably not the right book for you.
