Book Review: New Moon

This is the second book in the Twilight Saga. The first time I read it (I think I'm on the fifth now), it was the hardest book of the four, but this time I was actually anxious to get to it.

I read once in an article about what editors and agents hate that one should never open a book with a dream, but Stephenie does it here with great effect, showing us right away that Bella dreads aging because Edward never will. But soon that becomes the least of her worries. When an accident gets out of hand at Bella's eighteenth birthday party, Edward realizes anew how much his and his family's presence in her life endangers her...and a few days later, they are gone, as if they'd never been - except, of course, for the ripping agony of grief in which Bella drowns for the next months. When she finally begins to resurface, she renews her acquaintance with Jacob Black, and with him, werewolves come onto the scene. But just as things are starting to settle down again, Edward's psychicly gifted sister Alice shows up, having seen Bella jump from a cliff and interpreted it as attempted suicide when it was, in reality, a nearly fatal attempt at cliff diving. She finds Bella alive, but before she can tell the rest of her family, Edward's other sister Rosalie, who has never liked Bella, informs him of Alice's vision. Following up on his earlier declaration that he cannot live in a world where Bella does not exist, Alice sees him making his way to Italy to ask for death at the hands of the Volturi (a kind of vampire royal family, the ones who enforce the rule of secrecy and anything related to it). Alice and Bella go after him, but if they don't make it in time, they will likely die, too.

Things I Love
1. The characterization of Bella that gets accomplished while Edward is mostly out of the picture. She's not orbiting around him anymore, so we see more of what she's like.
2. Again, the atmosphere, though it's slightly different from that of the first book. In New Moon, the focus isn't on the world that still lives on in modern Forks but the town itself and the area around it, saturated with quiet magic that no one feels except those who are a part of it.
3. Charlie. He was in the background during Twilight, but now he becomes a more fleshed out and developed character. He's an ordinary guy, never guessing that his daughter is dealing with some very extraordinary things, just loving her and trying to protect her. There's something about his and Bella's relationship that is really poignant.
4. The werewolves. Again, a departure from the norm, but I can't say much on that lest I give too much away.
5. Alice, when she enters. I just love Alice; I always have.

Things That Could Have Been Better
Again, only one: the portrayal of Bella's grief. I've never loved and lost, and it occurred to me this last read-through that maybe the difference, the physical sense of pain, is partly because she loved a vampire - no normal teenage relationship, to say the least. The description of a hole in the chest works a few times, but after a while it loses its effectiveness. Still...

Five stars!

Book Review: Twilight

I'm sure everyone knows what Twilight is by this time, but for those that don't, or to clear up misconceptions that some might have, I'll introduce it anyway.

This was the very talented Stephenie Meyer's first novel - a colorful and unique burst onto the literary scene. Seventeen-year-old Bella Swan feels that she is holding her newly remarried mother back from much happiness with her new husband, so in an act of supreme self-sacrifice, she leaves her beloved, sunny home in Phoenix, Arazona and goes to live with her father in Forks, Washington, the rainiest, dreariest place she can imagine. On her first day at her new high school, her attention is caught by a boy named Edward Cullen. He is gorgious - too gorgious...and he seems to hate her, though they've never exchanged so much as a hello. The mystery deepens when he saves her from being crushed between her truck and a speeding van one morning before school, leaping in its path and lifting the car out of the way all in a flash, with inhuman strength and speed. This is her first clue that whatever he is, he is not your average guy, and already she feels a strange attraction to him. When it comes to Bella's attention that Edward and his family are not allowed on the local Indian reservation, she asks one of the residents, Jacob Black, about it, and he tells her old legends of werewolves and vampires that are more meaningful to her than he ever guesses. Slowly the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, but it's too late to be scared: Bella is hopelessly in love with a vampire.

I feel obligated to say here that when I first heard this from a friend, I thought it would be the last thing I would ever read. I mean, a girl falls in love with a vampire? How corny can you possibly get?

I'm so glad I was wrong.

Things I Love
1. Bella. Compared to many other YA novel heroines, she is fantastic. She's not ridiculously good or disgustingly bad; she's just your average girl. A little shy, perhaps, and she does have a higher vocabulary than the majority of teenagers today (huge plus for me, because that's just another one of the little things I feel I share with her), different enough to be special, but not so different that she stands out more than she should.
2. Edward. How can I not love Edward? He's everything any girl could want. Well, okay, I'm not really eager to be faced with the dilemma of whether or not I want to be changed into a vampire to be with the love of my life forever, but otherwise, he's amazing.
3. The way Stephenie has made her vampires in general. They are anything but typical. I can't stand the vampire stereotype that was started centuries ago - garlic, stakes through the heart, death by sunlight, fangs...Stephenie makes this look incredably uncreative with her beautiful, perfect predators. Everything about them is designed to attract, from their flawless appearance to the sweet scent that hangs about them. They're also amazingly tough, strong, and fast, and not precisely dead. Some are even gifted. I won't spoil any more of those little surprises, but the creativity put into the vampires alone is worth reading the book.
5. The atmosphere. I don't even know how to describe it. Reading the book, I find myself smiling and laughing a lot, but the humor is very subtle. The sweetness and intensity are there, all painted across a mysterious background. With each vampire comes a taste of an older world, a former time, and it's really felt, though it isn't stated very often.
6. The spiritual/moral aspect of the story. A lot of Christians hear about these books and go, "Nooo! Vampire romance!" This is just a repeat of the Harry Potter series, which was a deplorable lack of open-mindedness and a great deal of quick, uninformed judgment. Twilight is indeed a love story about human and vampire, but the underlying focus is far deeper than that and goes deeper as the saga progresses. This first book is about temptation and overcoming it. The quote from Genesis in the front truly fits well. No blood has ever smelled so appealing to Edward as that in Bella's veins, but to yield to its lure would mean the loss of everything for him - his and his family's situation in life, his home, and ultimately his happiness...and that's a big deal when you know you're going to live forever. I'm doing a poor job describing this aspect of the story. This particular theme is never stated in so many words, but it's there, the heartbeat of the book, as it were.
Things That Could Have Been Better
Hmm, I'm coming up empty. I suppose Edward is rather too perfect to be real, but he's supposed to be, and he's still amazing in this book. I'm going to have to change my review format to accomodate the rest of these, I think.

Five stars!