Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)
by Stephenie Meyer
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.99 You Save: $9.00 (82%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)
Book Review: Just when it couldn't sink lower... It does!
Summary: 1 Stars
I really tried, I mean really tried to like Twilight, but I CAN'T. I simply refuse and will not like it. I started with the movie, and I thought the movie was horrible, acting and plot wise. Many people told me that the book was way better than the movie. I blindly, trying to understand the love for this book by the masses, I ordered it. Two weeks of suffering and $9 later, it finally arrived.
I started reading the book. I was rather taken aback as in the first pages Bella Swan is speaking of dying. Now that's a page turner. Into the first paragraphs of the book someone already plans on dying. I kept going with the book for my sake of spending money on this. I will add this book kept me interested for a few hundred pages because I was just burning to find out if the plot actually leads anywhere, and no it doesn't. I have to say that considering this book went through an editor, I cannot see it. I was upset at finding plenty of spelling mistakes and wrong word usage. I know that I am not grammatically perfect, but if you are publishing a book and making millions, yes by all means check the darn spelling. I remember finding one mistake that I cannot forget. It was in the chapter where Bella is at the beach talking with Jacob and the word "relived" was written instead of "relieved". I have seen MANY of these mistakes, which is just unacceptable for a book this hyped up by fans. It is teaching teenagers bad spelling and more so run- on sentences. Many pages I just wanted to re- type, because the writer just would not take a breath and insert a semi- colon or for crying out loud, just end the sentence. I guess this is what happens when the person who writes the book is not a writer. I have also never heard teenagers use the word "chagrin" before. As much as I hate to admit it, I have never even heard of such a word before this book. Edward and Bella have such extensive vocabulary that it is hitting the beyond belief limit. Meanwhile, their classmates use a few words like "cool", "great", and "whatever". I am just lost wondering how is it that those two characters speak in such a manner, yet the rest of the school remains normal.
Bella goes to school. There was nothing wrong with that part except for the fact they made Bella out to be a klutzy moronic girlie girl. I have yet to find a girl that plays volleyball so bad she actually hits people with the ball and they cower away from her (hitting someone with the ball actually takes talent). She mentioned how she is afraid of hiking because she will trip over rocks and twigs? That's where the male chauvinism comes into play. Bella NEEDS Edward to come to her rescue, because she is so frail and helpless, she cannot do anything for herself. She does her homework religiously and cooks dinner for her dad. Do I see the housewifey American dream coming into play? As a woman, it is insulting to read something like this, when once again women are represented as idiotic, and only good to cook dinner for men. I have never seen anyone this stupid that trips over twigs and rocks for crying out loud. The most shocking of all, it was written by a married woman with two kids as stated in the back of this novel. Now that shocks me. It almost seems like she is crying out for help in a metaphorical sense, because women are meant to be stepped upon.
Where is the love? How is this a love story? What's forbidden exactly? Edward and Bella are not forbidden lovers. Bella's parents don't care who she hangs with, her friends don't care, and actually I don't really care either. That part is clear. Then Edward... He says he can't hang with her because he's a vampire? Ok, apart from the fact he wants to suck her caratoid artery dry, I am not seeing the forbidden. It isn't forbidden, it is simply safer if she doesn't hang out with a vampire. How are they in love? The spend 5 chapters touching which almost made me gag it was so corny, and another 6 chapters telling each other "we shouldn't be together, but I can't control myself." Edward is actually a rude jerk to her, laughing at her usually, watching her frown in frustration that she doesn't understand his ways. Can we blame her? I mean he leads her on, then dumps her for the millionth time wondering what he wants from her. Edward NEVER tells us what he really wants, just goes on with gibberish under his breath. The word love wasn't exactly exchanged, just sort of hinted. Edward doesn't seem to be in love, but more like he needs blood and she's a great candidate. Although I am wondering why Edward is made out to be this strange weirdo not knowing human emotions, when technically he was human once.
Lastly this book wants to be about beings known as vampires, but I have never read any books or seen sources where vampires sparkle in the sunlight, or go "vegetarian". I am guessing Stephenie Meyer was hoping to bring something else to the vampire culture, but all she really did was turn it cutesy. That maybe wasn't the best word for it, but the only one I could think of on such short notice. While some people may think this book is amazing, all the more power to them, but I will lay off of this series and assume that the next three books are more painful to read for me than this one. One more thing I will add, many of the things mentioned in this book aren't true. Such as the idea that it rains almost every single day in Forks, Washington. I do not live in Washington, but have read up on this fact, and noted in my mind while reading that indeed it does rain a lot in Washington, but not every day and 1/3 of the year is spent in rainfall. That is not 365 days a year however, as pretty much mentioned by Stephenie Meyer. I will save my money and buy a new CD perhaps.
Book Review: Twilight - Don't Starve Yourself
Summary: 5 Stars
Re-post from the Cowboy Logic Forum - Recommended Reading topic - Nov. 12, 2008
I finally succumbed to peer pressure and read Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)...here are my comments.
Before picking up this book, make sure you have a loved one available to take care of your personal needs...
They will need to make sure you get enough fluids.
They will have to arrange for you to recieve three square meals a day.
It will be necessary for them to take the book away from you at bedtime, so that you will get enough sleep to function.
A person can starve to death reading "Twilight" it is impossible to put down. The children will howl about how hungry they are and you will walk to the `fridge, open it, point, and walk away. All while still reading.
My adult daughters warned me, and I didn't listen. I took two Satirica bookmarks and wrote a "B" on one of them and a "J" (for Julie, my wife) on the other. I managed to squeeze in about 30 pages, on and off, while her and I took turns for three days. We dared not set it down because the other would snatch it up and not give it back. Once she finally finished reading it, I got nothing else done for two days.
I vowed to catch up on all the things that I am responsible for before I start in on New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2).
I've already read the first two chapters.
I'm hopeless.
Nov. 13, 2008
On rethinking this, perhaps I should offer a more detailed review. Don't worry, there are no spoilers here.
Twilight is another one of those novels that, while it may be appropriate for older teens and written for young adults, it is entertaining for adults as well. It is categorized as a young adult novel. It is also a quick and easy read.
The POV in the story is Bella, 17, who has a dangerous love affair with a badboy. In this case the badboy in question is a mostly-reformed vampire. It is not the typical vampire story in that this book is a romance novel with vampires, not a vampire novel with romance. The book is riveting, as I commented earlier, with the low-level tension and suspense rarely giving the reader room to breath, and it sometimes pulls moisture from the reader's eyes. The higher-level action flushes the reader and makes the heart race.
Even though it takes a while for Bella to realize the true nature of her boyfriend, it seems obvious from the book's synopsis that the author wants the reader to be aware of the fact upfront. However, that knowledge doesn't seem to spoil any suspense for the reader, since there are plenty of other uncertainties to keep people guessing.
The story is told from first-person POV and the character telling the story is alert, interesting, and witty. This is part of the lure that keeps the reader present--it is a lot of fun listening to Bella talk. She is cynical, but she doesn't share her innermost thoughts, feelings, and fears with those she encounters in the story (until she gets closer to Edward), but she does share them with the reader, often through sarcasim.
One thing more you might want to know upfront. The author, Stephanie Meyer, is a Mormon, like Orson Scott Card and myself. She does not preach her religion in the book, but she does follow certain standards with regard to content that some readers of Card's or my work may have noticed. I seem to recall that Card teaches in his classes, and mentions in his book How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy that profanity is a powerful tool, to be used only carefully and with purpose. I believe in this, and so, apparently, does Stephanie Meyers. You will find the same level of profanity in Twilight, less in fact, that you can expect to find in mine or Card's stories.
Sexual content is another matter. Twilight is a romance novel, and so the Twilight world does not completely ignore sex as a topic. It does, however, refrain from covering it in any level of detail and flat refuses to condone teens engaging in it. It also deals with passion at another level that I would have to place under spoiler alert to discuss properly.
All in all, I enjoyed the book tremendously and recommend it to young and old alike. If you are an aspiring spec-fic author like myself, or if you plan to write romance novels, this is a very useful and educational book for refining your craft. Vampire stories in general, and vampire-human romance stories in particular, are seen by some as over-covered. But Twilight applies a new and fresh approach to the idea and does it very skillfully.
I have placed the entire series firmly on my list of books that are worth taking a break from my novel to read, however I will take my time doing so, with long gaps in between each of them. I am on too tight of a schedule to frequently shut-down my life to read a book, and I anticipate that the rest of the novels in the The Twilight Saga Collection will engage me too deeply to get anything else done, just as Twilight did.
Book Review: This is a book for young adults?
Summary: 1 Stars
I picked up this book, being wary of the claims that it featured sparkling vampires and a poor writing style, because I saw at the back of the book that the author had a degree in English Literature, and I gave her the benefit of the doubt.
The story starts with Bella Swan, a girl from the big city of Phoenix who has to go spend quality time with her father in a tiny Washington town called Forks so that her mom can spend quality time with her new husband. Everyone in school can't get enough of the new prodigy from the city, except for a group of anti-social kids in the corner of the lunch room who look like they came out of Abercrombie catalogues. One in particular, Edward Cullen, seems particularly hostile towards her until she almost gets hit by a car. This starts a chain reaction of conversations between the two, a bunch of other mishaps Bella gets into that Edward has to save her from, and ultimately a passionate (and rather abusive) relationship between Bella and the radioactive monster -- mermaid -- super-sexy vampire.
The characters are largely one-dimensional; they are neither deep nor try to develop any depth as the book drags on. Bella remains a straight-A Mary Sue whose only purpose in life seems to be getting herself into trouble and putting herself in dangerous/depressing situations because she couldn't bear to bring harm to the people she loves. Edward remains the emo bi-polar vampire model who's either grinning/smiling one moment or glaring or muttering with frustration the next. Then you have your generic gossip-friend, your generic guys-who-can't-get-enough-of-Bella, your generic I'm-an-evil-vampire, etc. Edward and Bella's relationship tries to break into the second dimension with the whole I-can't-date-you-cuz-I'm-a-vampire-but-I-love-you-but-I-can't-cuz-I'm-a-vampire-but thing, but considering the two are about ready to say "I do" at first sight there is no real romantic development between the two, no melding of the two based on a deep emotional or mental connection. But I guess we can't blame Bella, because Edward IS really hot.
Throughout the book there are also a number of themes one picks up on, some of which are incredibly depressing given this is a book made popular by adolescent girls. The book does have some religious undertones, which can be picked up whether or not the reader knows about Meyer's religious affiliation (I found out after reading the book that she is a Mormon, and it's not terribly surprising). While they feel out of place in a vampire book, many are tolerable.
But a few things really drove me crazy while reading this book; one, how in almost every interaction with Bella and her father, Bella is the one cooking dinner and cleaning the house (while Charlie sits on the couch watching sports). I'm not opposed to a girl in a book doing a few chores around the house, but when she's cooking and cleaning every day while her dad sits on the couch, it sound too much like Meyer's telling little girls to be good housewives. This is only exacerbated by how mentally weak Bella is, and how she's willing to give up so much just to go out with this super-hot vampire dude. This theme only gets more out of hand as the books go on, so I'm told (I won't give away spoilers, mainly because every time I think about it a part of me dies inside). I didn't need Bella to become the next Hilary Clinton, but I don't think a young adult's book ought to promote giving up one's entire life (and eventually aspirations) for love. There ought to be a balance between love and ambition, and a heroine with the strength to search for that balance.
My second qualm is with the Bella/Edward relationship of horror, which mostly revolves around Edward either snapping at Bella, Edward teasing Bella, or Edward watching Bella sleep from outside her bedroom window. All the while Bella more or less happily accepts whatever Edward does, because she is so enthralled with him that she can accept his psychotic mood swings and his stalking. It helps that he's hot. Like, really hot. But when girls just getting into that age of dating (or puberty) are reading about this kind of relationship, one wonders what sort of ideals about dating they're getting from this novel. That it's alright if a guy likes to watch you sleep at night, so long as when he's following you home one day he can stop an out-of-control car from slamming into you? That it's alright if a guy's emotionally abusive so long as he has (beautiful, sparkling, topaz) eyes? That it doesn't matter how controlling a guy is, so long as he's really hot? (Did I mention Edward's REALLY hot?)
In the end this book reads like a bad fanfiction riddled with messages that are downright depressing to think about. The writing style is awful (like Hemingway as emulated by a ten-year old), filled with grammar mistakes and inane details about routines that don't really need to be explained in detail. The characters are bland, unchanging, and not even very interesting, and only serve to create an equally bland fantasy realm where a girl can love and be loved by a ridiculously-good-looking demi-god. The use of vampires, typically occult creatures, seems to serve as a sort of weak veil over attempts by the author to put some religious messages in her text, in addition to the poor messages being given about relationships and a girl's place in life.
On the bright side, this book ought to give aspiring writers some hope. If a book like this can be published and become a NYT best-seller, than anything's possible.
Book Review: Best book of the decade? Really?
Summary: 2 Stars
I seem to be the only teen/preteen girl who isn't obsessed with Twilight. Unlike the doting fangirls who seem to make up about 80% of the reviewers, I found it to be a bit like pudding~ simple and easy to swallow, but with absolutely no nutritional value.
{{WARNING! THIS PARAGRAPH CONTAINS SPOILERS!}}
We all know the story: Isabella Swan (what a dumb name!) moves to the rainy town of Forks, Washington to live with her divorced father, who can't cook anything despite having lived on his own for years. Bella enrolls in the local high school and meets the impossibly beautiful Edward Cullen, who she falls madly in love with within the first few months of knowing him. That was the first half of the book--after that, there's a lengthy period where not much happens, we just get lots of purple descriptions of Edward's magnificence, and how Bella couldn't possibly be good enough for this "Adonis-like creature", blah, blah, blah. Then near the end, this random evil vampire shows up to kill Bella, and--* Gasp *!?--Edward comes to her rescue.
All of the characters are extremely flat and undeveloped (some, notably Eric, shouldn't even exist), except for the two leads, who are at least two-dimensional rather than one-dimensional. But am I seriously supposed to care about these people? The only character I did like was Jacob, because he had the essence of an actual person.
Twilight has got to be the most blatant reader insertion/wish-fulfillment scenario I've ever read. It might as well be told in the second person. I mean, what teenage girl doesn't want a gorgeous vampire boyfriend (Meyer's thinking)? This is made even more blatant by the fact that Bella is very much a blank canvas onto which the reader can project herself; she doesn't have much of a personality besides being clumsy and fainting easily basically so Edward can come save her, and we never even get a good idea of what she looks like. She has no goals or ambitions--she simply wants to be with Edward 24/7. [" `I would rather die than stay away from you.'"]
And that brings us to Edward. In case you haven't gathered this already, he's inhumanly beautiful, as we're reminded at least once on every page. We constantly hear about his "angel's face", his "perfectly muscled chest", his "flawless lips", his "gold-colored eyes", etc., etc. His only defining personality trait is being very, very moody.
The two leads love each other for incredibly shallow reasons. Bella loves Edward because he's beautiful and mysterious and has saved her butt on numerous occasions because of her own penchant for getting into damsel-in-distress situations. Perhaps it's understandable she's infatuated with him, but "unconditionally and irrevocably in love"? Not right. After the halfway point in the book, she becomes annoyingly obsessed with him, not wanting to be away from him for more than two minutes.
Edward loves Bella because she smells good and he wants to take a big bite out of her jugular vein. Really, Stephenie Meyer, you could've done better than that.
It's clear even to me that their relationship is not a healthy one--it often borders in the obsessive, including the fact that Edward is protective of Bella to the point of stalking her--but Meyer romanticizes and idealizes it so supposedly no one will notice or care.
The writing style is just mediocre, with a distinctly amateurish, almost fanfiction-like atmosphere to it, as if the author were purposely dumbing it down for the target demographic. The main problem is that the characters rarely just "say" anything. Almost always, they have to "muse" it or "agree" it or "retort" it or "promise" it or "mutter" it, a feature that gets annoying after a while. [" `Very different', I agreed."] Meyer also has a tendency to overuse adverbs and adjectives, clearly with the intent of stretching out sentences ["I followed two unisex raincoats through the door." "His low voice was cold."]. She doesn't seem to be able to mention Edwards's eyes--as she often does--without also noting their color. And didn't it bother anyone else how much cringing, grimacing, glaring, and scowling there is going on?
To conclude this rant about the writing style, I feel obliged to mention this wonderful line from early on in the book: "Now my horrific day tomorrow would be just that much less dreadful."
There is no message to speak of... well, not a good one, anyway. There seem to be three here that are particularly wrong to be sending to the intended teenage female audience. The first is about the importance of external beauty. The second is about how life is not worth living without a man. The third is about how infatuation equals love, and that when you "love" someone, you should give up everything for them, even if it's dangerous to your well-being.
Twilight may be unoriginal, poorly written, and flimsy, but "boring" is one thing it's not. Despite at its heart being a true Meyer lemon (if you'll pardon the expression), it has a strange addictiveness to it that makes you want to keep reading through the mediocrity and trashiness. Perhaps it should simply be taken as mindless fun; you can enjoy it as long as you don't use your brain too much (i.e., at all). So when you're reading the book, just do as the song says...
"Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream..."
~~LJB, age 12
(Just don't spend too much time reading it, or your IQ might drop a few points.)
Book Review: Alluring and Captivating
Summary: 4 Stars
When author Anne Rice announced at the end of 2005 that she would never write another book for her wildly popular "Vampire Chronicles" series, fans were shocked and disappointed, admonishing her for her decision "to write only for the Lord" due to her spiritual reawakening. "I would never go back, not even if they say, 'You will be financially ruined; you've got to write another vampire book.' I would say no. I have no choice. I would be a fool for all eternity to turn my back on God like that." That said, those disgruntled fans have been redeemed in their own way by a new talent in fiction named Stephenie Meyer, one who has taken the subject of vampires by the reigns and brought it to the legions of vampire novel enthusiasts (or just people who are enthusiastic about great fiction) with renewed vigor. Unlike her predecessor, Meyer avoids drowning in the abstruse style that Rice is so known for and instead tells her tale with ease, intrigue and a heavy splash of romance - she is the new addiction in fiction.
The central character of Meyer's extremely popular "Twilight" series is seventeen-year old Isabella Swan, better known as Bella. When her mother Renee is remarried to a young athlete, Bella decides to move from the dry desert heat of Phoenix to Forks, Washington to live with her dad Charlie. Moving from a hot, sprawling city to a little-recognized municipality saturated by consistent cloud cover and rainfall from the relentless Maritime Polar Air Mass is quite a drastic change for her, one she makes most reluctantly. Forks holds very few attractions for Bella save for one: a boy with bronze-hued hair and flesh a whiter shade of pale named Edward Cullen, a boy who dares to briefly meet her eye during lunch.
When she makes her way to Biology class later, she is nervously pleased to see Edward at a lab table, the seat next to him empty. As she breezes past him, she is met by an irascible and piercing glare, his eyes as black as sable, a look that communicates utmost animosity. What Bella does not realize at first is that Edward is a preternatural being of the oldest lore, a vampire whose bloodlust has been rendered successfully dormant for several years. Vampires of his ilk have been subsisting off of the blood of wild animals (bears, lions, deer) due to their compassion for human life and at the first sight and smell of Bella, his lust for the kill has been abruptly awakened at long last.
After this mystifying incident, Bella does not see Edward at school for a whole week. When he shows his face again, he is not the hostile individual she took him for, instead rather sociable and utterly charming. Those cold black eyes she remembered from last week are now a brilliant topazine brown, his sallow skin now flush with color and the shadows under his eyes noticeably absent. Her curiosity remains peaked but it isn't until Edward inexplicably saves her from certain death during a horrible auto accident outside of the school that Bella's mind begins racing with a whole new set of questions. The more they speak after this incident, the more she is met by Edward's resistance to tell her the whole truth about what happened. It's only when she runs into an old friend named Jacob Black on an Indian reservation that she begins to piece things together after a rousing story Jacob tells her about "blood drinkers".
From this point on, Bella alludes to Edward that she knows what he is and after another mysterious rescue, he makes his feelings known. Their love for each other grows quickly and despite Edward's undeniable attraction to Bella's blood essence, he demonstrates surprising resilience against temptation and becomes fiercely protective of her. Their relationship is fraught with risk but neither can tear themselves away from the other and this means that they must make great sacrifices in more than one fashion, something that becomes painfully evident to Bella towards the end of the novel.
Naturally, "Twilight" is equipped with a bit of a cliffhanger ending designed to encourage the reader to proceed to the next book in the series and there are few out there who read it that will fail to be persuaded. Though her work has been classified as teen/young adult fiction, Meyer defies her genre with her variable and transcendental style of writing. Her massive book sales are proof of this, young girls AND their mothers reading the entire series with an unforeseen zeal. The book is densely populated with eloquent and electric dialogue, Meyer expertly brewing the sexual tension between her two protagonists; a screenplay could be ripped directly from it's pages, much to the thrill of the thousands who have read the novel. The story plows straight ahead into suspenseful territory and with all its simplicity and light-handed eroticism, it will translate very easily to film (we'll see how well its adaptation is received in November of this year). That said, I'm eager to see the film myself and I can hardly wait to read the rest of the series, as well as her most recent novel entitled "The Host".
Bottom line: If you're a lover of vampire novels, "Twilight" is your ticket to paradise. For those who are intimidated by books thicker than an inch, you will come to find your apprehension about reading its nearly 500 pages to be a walk in the park, your reward for your bravery a wealth of captivating storytelling .