Velcome, dear reader, to de House of Mellik!!! Mwahahahaahahahaha! Hahaha....ha...
Yeah, so if you can't tell, I'm a bit of a vampire fan. So, when all these preteen girls squealing about this new series, Twilight, and about all the vampire-y goodness there within, I was a bit skeptical. So like everything I do when I’m skeptical, I meet it head on. I picked up Twilight from the bookstore and did some reading. How is it on the Vampy Scale of the Awesome? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.
A Vague representation of Edward Cullen
Yeah, so if you can't tell, I'm a bit of a vampire fan. So, when all these preteen girls squealing about this new series, Twilight, and about all the vampire-y goodness there within, I was a bit skeptical. So like everything I do when I’m skeptical, I meet it head on. I picked up Twilight from the bookstore and did some reading. How is it on the Vampy Scale of the Awesome? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out.
A Vague representation of Edward Cullen
*NOTE* Just for clarification, this review is only on the FIRST book, not the other three or the new movie. Also, and I think this goes without saying but, this is a REVIEW, so expect spoilers.
Twilight can really be broken almost down the middle into two completely different stories, which I will dub “Bella’s Story,” and “Edward’s Story,/span.”
“Bella’s Story,” tells about the main character, Bella Swan, as she moves into Forks, a backwater rainy little #### of a town somewhere in Seattle of Michigan or something that, on the surface, seems extremely boring. The entire first half of the novel is the story of Bella as she settles into her new life in this town after moving from Phoenix. She moves in with her dad, gets everything set up, makes friends with some people, and that’s about it.
“Edward’s Story” on the other hand, begins when she meets, and subsequently falls in love with, Edward Cullen, a young man who…wait for it… wait for it… is a VAMPIRE! But no, he’s not an EEEEEVIL vampire (there aren’t any X’s in his name, so you know he can’t be EEEEVIL) but a GOOOOOD vampire, who doesn’t drink people blood, but animal blood. Anyway, he falls in love with Bella because of some sort of smell thing where her blood smells better than all the others or something, and they have their vampirey adventures which include not being hit by vans, running through the woods at high speed and…baseball. Yeah, I said baseball. What are you gonna do. So anyway, while Edward and his vampirey clan are playing “baseball” with Bella watching, a clan of EEEEVIL vampires shows up and one of them, the natural hunter James, catches a whiff of Bella, and decides to track her.
This causes a big uproar from all the Cullens who don’t want to see Bella chowed down on faster than a cupcake at a fat man convention, so they try to secret her away. She won’t have any of this though (being the plucky, headstrong, empowered woman that she is. Also because James has her mother) and sneaks away from the vampires to go find James. Well, she promptly gets her ass kicked and is nearly killed, until HERE COMES EDWARD TO SAVE THE DAY!!! So she spends a bunch of time in the hospital, complains to Edward about wanting to be a vampire, and that’s about it.
So what’s so good about this story? Well, it’s a romance story first and a vampire story second. You can feel every bit of emotion that runs between the two of them. It’s definitely something you don’t get in a lot of books anymore.
The vampire’s themselves, while romanticized, aren’t really like any other vampires. There are no fangs, sunlight doesn’t hurt them (It glitters off them, making them look like Boy George or something, which is why they don’t go out much in the daytime. Because honestly, how many times have you seen Boy George in the sunlight)
Really the only things that they have in common with the preconceived notions about vampires are that they drink blood and they’re immortal.
Also the process of feeding and of becoming a vampire, unlike most works of romanticized fiction, is not sensual in anyway. Quite the contrary, there is venom in the vampire’s teeth that cause excruciating pain for days before turning the person into a vampire. All of these things breathe new life into a stagnant idea about vampires, leaving us with a new and refreshing take on the franchise.
There is also this nice little nod to werewolves in a scene with Bella and a young native American boy named Jacob. This might turn into something much more later. Only time will tell.
Twilight can really be broken almost down the middle into two completely different stories, which I will dub “Bella’s Story,” and “Edward’s Story,/span.”
“Bella’s Story,” tells about the main character, Bella Swan, as she moves into Forks, a backwater rainy little #### of a town somewhere in Seattle of Michigan or something that, on the surface, seems extremely boring. The entire first half of the novel is the story of Bella as she settles into her new life in this town after moving from Phoenix. She moves in with her dad, gets everything set up, makes friends with some people, and that’s about it.
“Edward’s Story” on the other hand, begins when she meets, and subsequently falls in love with, Edward Cullen, a young man who…wait for it… wait for it… is a VAMPIRE! But no, he’s not an EEEEEVIL vampire (there aren’t any X’s in his name, so you know he can’t be EEEEVIL) but a GOOOOOD vampire, who doesn’t drink people blood, but animal blood. Anyway, he falls in love with Bella because of some sort of smell thing where her blood smells better than all the others or something, and they have their vampirey adventures which include not being hit by vans, running through the woods at high speed and…baseball. Yeah, I said baseball. What are you gonna do. So anyway, while Edward and his vampirey clan are playing “baseball” with Bella watching, a clan of EEEEVIL vampires shows up and one of them, the natural hunter James, catches a whiff of Bella, and decides to track her.
This causes a big uproar from all the Cullens who don’t want to see Bella chowed down on faster than a cupcake at a fat man convention, so they try to secret her away. She won’t have any of this though (being the plucky, headstrong, empowered woman that she is. Also because James has her mother) and sneaks away from the vampires to go find James. Well, she promptly gets her ass kicked and is nearly killed, until HERE COMES EDWARD TO SAVE THE DAY!!! So she spends a bunch of time in the hospital, complains to Edward about wanting to be a vampire, and that’s about it.
So what’s so good about this story? Well, it’s a romance story first and a vampire story second. You can feel every bit of emotion that runs between the two of them. It’s definitely something you don’t get in a lot of books anymore.
The vampire’s themselves, while romanticized, aren’t really like any other vampires. There are no fangs, sunlight doesn’t hurt them (It glitters off them, making them look like Boy George or something, which is why they don’t go out much in the daytime. Because honestly, how many times have you seen Boy George in the sunlight)
Really the only things that they have in common with the preconceived notions about vampires are that they drink blood and they’re immortal.
Also the process of feeding and of becoming a vampire, unlike most works of romanticized fiction, is not sensual in anyway. Quite the contrary, there is venom in the vampire’s teeth that cause excruciating pain for days before turning the person into a vampire. All of these things breathe new life into a stagnant idea about vampires, leaving us with a new and refreshing take on the franchise.
There is also this nice little nod to werewolves in a scene with Bella and a young native American boy named Jacob. This might turn into something much more later. Only time will tell.
Also many vampires have special powers, such as Edward being able to read people's minds, and one of the other Cullen kids (Alice) being able to see the future. Stephanie Meyer really does a good job of writing a seer-type character and making her not to terribly power, but still a good part of the plot.
So with all this good, what could possibly be bad about the story? Well, other than Edward and Bella, the characters are very 1 dimensional and completely forgettable, that might be how Bella sees things, but it doesn’t really make for good storytelling. The Cullens and Bella’s Father don’t suffer nearly as bad as Bella’s school friends. I sit here typing this and I honestly have no desire to even look up there names to write them down.
Also, because the novel is done in first person perspective, the story really feels like you’re in a haunted house on rails, with little things popping up. Though you get a good sense of Bella’s feelings, it would maybe have been better to switch the POV around, but honestly that’s my gripe with the fpp in general, and not with the story.
Another major point of the book is that anyone who goes into this looking for a good vampire story are going to be sorely hurting. The vampire aspects don’t appear until much later in the story and the first part is only good to read if you are a preteen girl.
So, with all this said what is my verdict. Well, I liked “Edward’s story” mainly because I like the character of Edward. The story is well written and balanced, and the tension can definitely be felt. The love between Bella and Edward feels real, and even mirrors some of my own real life experiences.
So, yes I like the story. If this makes me a preteen girl, well then let me go get my miniskirt and start texting OMG to all my BFFs. As an avid reader, the story does exactly what it should do: it draws me in and leaves me wanting more. Say what you want about Meyers living through her characters and whatnot, but the story itself it just what you would expect.
On the Vampy Scale of the Awesome, I’m going to put it somewhere between Lestat and Blackula.
So, be watching for my next review, probably the next in the series, Bad Moon. Until we reach that clearing at the end of the path dear reader, Henshin!
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