Midnight Book Blog

Archive for the ‘Twilight Series - Stephanie Meyer’ Category

After listening toTwilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1) from Audible. com.,I decided to read books 2, 3 and 4 rather than listen to them.  I noticed they were all narrated by the same narrator, who sounded to me like a young 11-year-old, so I opted for reading instead.  This narrator may have worked for some, but not for me. (See my previous post on Book 1 here.)

At any rate, I’m not sure why I decided to go ahead and finish the saga except that I was curious to see what finally happens to Bella and Edward.  I do have to say one thing here, there were many times while reading these books I found myself skimming along to get to the point.  I found myself wishing the author had a better command of the English language so that she could have said what needed to be said using fewer words.  No, I personally don’t have that talent but I can recognize it.  With that being said, I’ll just move on to the individual books…..

New Moon (The Twilight Saga, Book 2)…..

Okay, I have to admit this book had me screaming “Get to the point already!”  From the beginning, the reader knows Edward is going to come back sometime in the course of the novel; however, first we have to wallow through pages and pages of Bella’s angst.  I was very thankful I was reading this book instead of listening to it and was thus able to skim though a lot of the repetitiveness.  Again, I didn’t feel like I was reading about a high school senior but possibly a 12 or 13-year-old and I found this rather irritating.

Regarding Jacob, I found I was disliking him more and more as the book and whole saga went on.   Finally, when we get to the “werewolf” story (or “shape shifter” story as we find the Quileute tribe are not real “werewolves” but are really shape shifters later in the saga), Jacob’s story began to get interesting for me.  I wish I could have found him more likable, as he becomes a major character in the saga, but I didn’t.

All in all, the basic story interested me when I could finally weed it out.  I felt like I had to wade through a sea of unnecessary words to finally get to the point of the whole book.

The good news is I think this will make a marvelous movie!  The special effects should be stunning! The angst Bella experiences about Edward leaving her will come across better on screen (I think).   One picture is worth a thousand words they always say….and this will probably  hold true for the new movie coming out in November 2009.

Eclipse (The Twilight Saga, Book 3)…..

I did like this book much better than New Moon.  However, this Bella-Edward and Bella-Jacob thing started to get very old for me.  I found the exchanges between Jacob and Edward rather juvenile and they got on my nerves while reading the book.  Again, I found myself skimming a lot to get to the point of the story, but not nearly as much as in New Moon.

This book is much darker than the previous two books in the saga.  Victoria and her newborn vampires move closer to Forks and ultimately to Bella.  Victoria wants to kill Bella  and she is in danger.  However, I couldn’t believe how long it took the Forks vampires to figure out Bella’s clothes were stolen from her room to get her scent.  First, we already knew Victoria wanted to kill Bella as Laurent told her that before he tried to kill her in the previous book.  (Fortunately for Bella, the werewolves took care of Laurent in the meadow.)  Second, it was suspected the killings in Seattle were due to newborn vampires and someone had to be creating them.  (Hint…like maybe Victoria.)   Why it took so long during the course of the novel for the Forks vampires and Bella to put two and two together is beyond me.  I found this part of the story really frustrating.

Okay, now there is one thing in this book that really creeped me out…imprinting.  Sam imprinting with Emily was fine as they were adults and they really loved each other.   Quil imprinting with a 2-year-old was just dam creepy.  I know it’s explained that the “werewolves” don’t age and he will wait till she grows up, etc., etc.,…….but still, when it comes to imprinting with children, it’s just plain creepy.  What was Stephanie Meyer thinking??!!

There is also a terrific fight scene at the end…the vampires and werewolves versus Victoria and her band of newborn vampires.  Yes, the vamps and werewolves join forces and work together.  I became very fond of Seth here and if you’ve read the book, you’ll know why.

At any rate, all ends well and those Bella loves are safe at the end.  I did like the ending with Jacob finally taking to heart that it is Edward that Bella wants to spend forever with and takes off to live as a wolf.  I’m still not fond of Jacob and I really liked that hopefully he was getting out of Bella’s life.

This is another book that I think will make a great movie.  There are so many scenes that will use special effects and these can be spectacular.  Generally speaking, I liked this book much better than New Moon.

Breaking Dawn (The Twilight Saga, Book 4)….

I don’t know where to start with this one.  So much was left out that I wanted to read about, especially Bella and Edward’s wedding, which was just glossed over.  As we got on to the honeymoon, I began to wonder what in heaven’s name was the author thinking when she wrote this book?

The consummation of Bella and Edward’s marriage began as a sweet read and then quickly moved on to the ridiculous.  I almost stopped reading when Bella was thinking about staying human longer  just to have more sex.  Bella’s begging for sex nauseated me.  Then, just when the book started to take a turn for the better, Bella finds she is pregnant…..from a vampire yet!  The details of this pregnancy border on the insane.

Bella does finally become a vampire, but it isn’t pretty.  She just about dies, vomiting blood, as this baby needs to be delivered it eats it’s way out of her, and Edward saves her by injecting his venom into her heart.  Jacob, who has returned in the meantime, had to do CPR on Bella.  Quite a scene.  Now, I’m a child of the 60s…I was at Woodstock the summer of 1969…and I thought this would have been a great read while sitting in the fields of Max Yasgur’s farm, August, 1969, while Jimmy Hendrix played “Purple Haze,” and I was stoned.

And……Jacob imprinted with Bella’s baby girl, Renesmee and this really disturbed me.  I found this adult-infant imprinting  a really creepy concept.

As the book moved on, Bella just became too dam perfect.  Her baby girl is perfect and everyone loves her.  Bella never went through the trials of being a newborn vampire, she had special gifts, and in the end she got everything she wanted.  There was no sacrifice, no loss….everything just perfect with Jacob ending up a son-in-law someday when Renesmee grows up (which we find should be in 7 years with her accelerated growth rate).  So, in the end, Bella even ends up with Jacob too in a round about way.

There’s a lot more in the book that I won’t get into here.  This last book in the saga  just didn’t work at all for me.  As far a movie goes….I’m not sure and frankly it’s not something I would want to see on the big screen.  Too bad…this book could have been a great ending to a good story.  I wish it had worked for me.

Twilight..

Okay, I just had to see what all the hype was about. Since the movie is coming out in November, and this is such a popular series, I thought I would download the novel from Audible.com. It’s not a bad listen, but certainly not worth the 2 credits Audible asks for it.

I had been watching Trueblood on HBO and I guess I was expecting something of the same, but it’s not at all. The Twilight series is geared for a much younger audience and full of young teen love and teen angst. The narrator of Twilight, Ilyana Kadushin, sounded much younger than the high school age Bella and thus gave the impression that an 11 or 12-year-old was narrating the book.

Twilight was a cute fantasy to listen to, but not really exciting from my point of view. However, I’ll probably listen to the rest of the series just out of curiosity. I know I’ll see the movie as I’d like to see Robert Pattinson’s performance. He caught my eye in Goblet of Fire (Cedric Diggory) and I’d kind of like to see the direction his career takes.

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