I have never liked the "Twilight" craze. I have never wanted to read the books. I have never wanted to be involved in the saga in any way. I managed to avoid the whole ordeal for a few years, then one of my employers handed me all four books and said, "Here, read these and tell me what you think of them." I couldn't be rude and just relocate the books to a nearby trash bin, so I decided to make the best of my situation: Read the books and write a scathing review. Through this review, it is my hope that those who wish to know what the big fuss about the books is may read this to get a general idea of how they are without having to suffer through actually reading them. Without further ado, I give you the Cynic's Review of "Twilight".
The first few pages are extraordinarily dull. I probably wouldn’t have begrudged it that, except the rest of the book degraded into an angsty teenage vampire heavy-romance. Bella tells us all about how much she hates Forks, WA (where her divorced father, Charlie, lives), but in the very same sentence says she’s chosen to go there. Self-inflicted punishment for some horrible unknown deed? Naw, that would have to actually involve a good plot. Her mother’s boyfriend/fiancee/new hubby/whatever-he-is annoys Bella too much. Once in the horrible town of Forks, Bella stresses how frickin’ green everything is, goes to school, and has an awkward boy named Mike latch onto her. His character is mentioned many times and does absolutely nothing for the plot.
We are finally introduced to Edward Cullen on page 18, where he is described as “lanky, less bulky than his brother, and with untidy hair.” Well, that only describes about half the boys in America. The excitement really ramps up as we read about Edward breaking a bagel apart. Be still my racing heart. Stephanie Meyers stresses that Edward is “beautiful” and “gorgeous.” In a world where the line between male and female appearances is increasingly blurred, I would not want to be called “beautiful” if I were a guy. Bella gets the nagging suspicion Edward hates her. He glares at her, “his eyes full of revulsion,” and goes into rigor mortis when she sits beside him in one class. But no, ‘that’s silly’ she tells herself. She must just smell bad. Yeah, that’s it.
Page 31: Bella obsesses over Edward. Charlie seems very opinionated about the Cullen family. He seems to like them. Bella comments on how attractive they all are.
“You should see the doctor [the Cullen’s father],” Charlie says, “It’s a good thing he’s happily married!” . . . or what, Charlie? What are you trying to say, Charlie?
**Speed reader’s tip: There is a TON of filler throughout this book. It’s the kind of stuff people do every day and don’t want to read about. Here’s a tasty little excerpt that just brings joy to my eyes: “I cleaned the house, got a head start on homework, and wrote my mom more bogusly cheerful emails. I drove to the library and wondered what kind of mileage the truck got.” For the love of all things, skip this sawdust and get on with things! ** After pages and pages of awkward, “I’m not looking at him… oh, dang, he’s looking at me, look away!… is he still looking? Just a little peek… dang! Still looking!” between Edward and Bella in the cafeteria, Edward finally decides to be civil and introduces himself to Bella. Meyers describes his voice and “quiet and musical,” and earlier as “low and attractive.” Sooo, are we to picture Gilbert & Sullivan or Barry White? Get this! He has a “soft and enchanting laugh.” Right now I’m doing some enchanted heaving.
All on page 44, Bella sums up the overall theme of the book so far by “persisting stupidly,” “feeling like a moron,” and “staring like an idiot.” Edward is quite polite all of a sudden, and they fritter away biology class by conveniently telling their histories to each other and smirking. Ed smirks a LOT. Again Meyers describes Edward as “beautiful,” but at least this time she precedes it with “bizarre.” Page 54: Bella obsesses over Edward. Then comes the epic I-was-nearly-crushed-by-an-out-of-control-driver-but-was-miraculously-saved-by-a-creepy-bi-polar-biology-partner-who-I-have-strong-reason-to-believe-was-previously-named-Edwina part, blah, blah, we’ve all seen the movie trailers. Ed trails Bella to the hospital where she’s given a clean bill of health and they have a spat because Ed won’t ‘fess up to what he did, but right after Bella tells us all about his glorious face. I’m getting sick of hearing about his glorious this, perfect that, and it’s only page 65. Funny enough, Edward goes right back to ignoring, shunning, and glaring at Bella. Must be that time of month for him. His eyes change colors more than a obsessive author’s Mary Sue hero. Oh, wait, he is. Black eyes, gold eyes, black, gold, give it a rest and put on some sunglasses. Even though Bella’s only really known Edward for a few days, his sudden cold shoulder throws her into a wild depression. Get a grip. I give credit to page 74 where she admits she’s pathetic, same page where she looks at his “too-perfect face” and tells him off for something he didn’t do. He flip-flops between giving her the cold shoulder and crooning with a musical voice. She flip-flops between obsessively preoccupying her every living moment with thoughts of him and lashing out at him. Must be both their times of the month. If this is the basis for a relationship that’s going to last four whole books, this is going to be a seriously dysfunctional relationship. Seriously, if I’d wanted this kind of bi-polar juxtaposition I would have eaten three boxes of marshmallow peeps and followed it with a jigger of Clorox.
Page 79: Bella obsesses over Edward.
Page 81: Edward stalks Bella and rescues her from a puddle. This time his voice is velvet and muted. There is a strong possibility this is because I’m trying to smother him with a pillow. She scowls at his perfect face. That’s the fifth time she’s called him “perfect” in four chapters. Oh yes, I’m counting, and the tally is going up. Just build him a shrine and pray in his general direction three times a day all ready.
Bella goes on a group camping trip with some kids from school and thus meets Jacob Black. She uses her
Page 139: Bella obsesses over Edward. That’s pretty much the highlight of chapter 7; it’s just twelve pages of blather about how sunny it is or isn’t, marinating fish, and emailing. Well, there went five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.
You might be able to catch up on some of those aforementioned wasted minutes by skipping three and a half pages of chapter 8 as they are purely boring drivel about prom dress shopping. Getting to the good stuff: Bella gets “herded” by a gang of thugs when she walks off alone in an unfamiliar city, and things almost get ugly, but Ed swoops in and saves the day. He delivers her right to where she should have been.
“How did you know where…?” Bella asks. Simple. You google him, he physically stalks you. He takes her out to dinner and we don’t get much from the whole scene information-wise other than that Edward can read minds to some extent, but not Bella’s for whatever reason. He’s forced to scent her out of a crowd - that’ll make ya self-conscious. On the car drive home we learn that Ed is a speed maniac, finding 80 mph too slow and 100 mph much more to his liking. Bella spills all about her google-fed suspicions and Ed fesses up to being a vampire, but not that kind that sleeps in coffins, burns in the sun, turns into a bat, has no reflection, and drinks human blood, you know, everything that makes a vampire a vampire. No, he’s a “good” vampire, he drinks animal blood, though it’s not as satisfying. Like vampires could ever be “good” in the first place. The trip ends with Ed’s ominous warning: “Don’t go into the woods alone.” Right, I’ll tuck that gem along with “Don’t play with knives,” and “Don’t stick that there!”
The chapter ends with this darling paragraph: “About three things I was absolutely positive. First, Edward was a vampire. Second, there was a part of him - and I didn’t know how potent that part might be - that thirsted for my blood. Third, I was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him.”
We break now for an excerpt from the hit novel, Howl I Live Without You?: “Of three things I was sure: he was a werewolf, he wanted to nibble my nape, and I was in love with him.” How about this delightful cover-quip from Abducted Love: “He was an alien, he wanted to dissect me and sell my pancreas on the pan-galactic black market, and I was in love with him.” Or who could forget that heart-rending tear jerker, Los Cryptid Nights: “He was a chupacabra, he wanted to nom my goats, and I was in love.” Is anyone else detecting something incredibly stupid with this whole plot idea?
Bella takes on a new hobby of sniffing Ed’s jacket, we get a painful recount of the past two chapters as told by two hormonal teenage girls, and we are forced to read more about Ed’s “glorious, gorgeous, more-like-a-Greek-god” face. Bella and he talk at the cafeteria: he explains his family’s frequent camping trips are actually hunts for them to feed. His brother’s favorite meal is bear, while Ed’s is mountain lion. I’m sorry, I’m still back on the fact that they’re draining an animal’s blood at all!!! “Hi, Mom, this is my boyfriend the bloodsucker.” “Oh, he’s adorable! Bring him to the Sunday potluck!” Seriously, we just accept this? Make a hero of this? Page 219, back to perfect this, perfect that. Miss Meyers, the Society for Prevention of Adjective Abuse called -- they’re taking custody of all your “perfects” and “beautifuls” to prevent further mistreatment.
Ed’s now taken to petting Bella, and it’s painful to read page after page of Bella’s every single thought. We hear about her every frickin’ body function whenever Ed is in close proximity to her, and it’s getting predictable. Is he within four feet? That’ll cause irregular breathing. Within two feet? Cue heart palpitations. Even though Bella really likes her father and feels remorse for deceiving him, she lies to him about where she’ll be this weekend. Bella obsesses so much about her upcoming trip alone with Ed she takes unnecessary cold pills to go to sleep. Nice. Real nice.
They drive to some wooded place and Edward flashes happy-angry-happy-angry during their conversation. Despite major emotional control issues (as I once had it so eloquently described to me by a teenage Twi-hard: “Well, like, it’s, like, really hard for him cuz, like, he’s trying not to eat her.”) we get a sordid, minutely-detailed description of his body when Bella sees his shirt unbuttoned. Though “perfect” and “beautiful” are still relentlessly beaten into every description of Eddie, they’ve progressed from “glorious” to “angel” to “god.” This over-glorification must end. Now Bella flashes happy-angry-happy-angry during a fairly fruitless conversation-- how do they live with each other? Ed leads her into a sunny meadow and shows her what he looks like in the sun. His skin “literally sparkles like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded.” What with his white skin and dark-ringed eyes, I picture a bejeweled cadaver. Ed leans in close and Bella smells his breath: “sweet, delicious, it made my mouth water.” What the…? You do realize what that dude’s been eating, right? If someone’s breath is making my mouth water, they’re probably in need of a tic tac. The chapter goes on and on about how Ed can resist any other human, but Bella is his “brand of heroine.” Nothing flatters a girl like being compared to a life-destroying drug. Long and short of it, Ed really, really wants to kill Bella. “So I was filled with compassion as he confessed his craving to take my life,” Bella writes. I’m sorry, what? Who in their right mind says something like that?
Axe murderer: “Hey there, ready to meet your maker?”
Soon-to-be-victim: “Oh, you poor dear! Have a cookie!”
But we all know he can’t kill her. How would they ever extend their merchandising through three more books, countless t-shirts, websites, and bumper stickers without her?
Here’s a great excerpt: “And so the lion fell in love with the lamb,” he murmured.
“What a stupid lamb,” I sighed.
“What a sick, masochistic lion.” Amen.
They spend more time petting each other, then Ed takes Bella for a run in the forest. Weird. The follow it with their first kiss, which is painful to read in its infinitesimal detail. This kind of crap is something I’d expect from “Don Juan,” not two seventeen-year-olds. This whole segment is entirely too long. It’s thirty pages of fanatical adoration from Bella, way too much touching and stroking, and page after page of “my heart stopped,” “a chill ran through my body,” blah, blah, blah. She tells us everywhere Ed touches her, no matter how insignificant (it comes this close to being like, “He put his hand up to his brow to shade his eyes. His elbow was so near me, I could feel tingles running to my follicles.” I exaggerate not with the extreme hyper-sensitivity Bella has to Ed’s every action). Enough all ready! I don’t want to know!!!
Bella takes Ed home, where he hides from her father. Turns out he’s been watching her every night. He’s totally at ease letting himself into her room; how ultimately creepy. Breaking and entering for the sake of infatuated stalking. Bella pretends to sleep when her father checks in on her, and when he leaves Ed gets into bed with Bella. Whoa! Whoa! Not cool! Out! But no, Bella’s delighted with this arrangement, and Ed spends the night with her. Information desk to Bella: Your scruples are in the garbage bin. If you would care to reclaim your scruples, please come to the information desk. Well, since they’re getting serious now, it’s time for Bella to meet the family. They’re all nice to her, excusing one sibling, Rosalie, who supposedly is jealous of Bella. They take her to watch them play a game of baseball, which can only be played during a thunderstorm so the thunder can cover the sound of their bodies crashing together and the crack of the ball and bat. Is that bat aluminum? In a storm? No problem, they’re all dead anyway!
All’s fun and games until three out-of-town vampires rain on the parade, and oh, guess what, one of them wants to eat Bella. (I can see it now -- Edward: “He-e-e-ey, I called dibs first!”) Now there’s a wrench no monkey would expect. In a desperate attempt to escape the tracker, James, Bella breaks off her relationship with her father by breaking his heart and flees to Arizona, the one place everyone expects her to go but wouldn’t ever believe her to be, because they can’t believe she’d be dumb enough to go right to the one place everyone expects her to go. The entire Cullen family joins the effort to save Bella. Why? Alice explains that Ed’s been alone for one hundred years (loser.) and “they couldn’t bear to look into his eyes for the next one hundred if he loses her.” Right, read that as Alice’s way of saying, “You think he’s moody NOW…”
After a pathetic attempt to fill up pages of nail-biting suspense, Bella ends up in an Arizona hotel with her mother held hostage by James. Bella has a very pessimistic, defeatist view on life, and stupidly decides that her best option is to meet James and die. She leaves the protection of Alice and Jasper and meets James alone. Of course he’s tricked her; he doesn’t have her mother at all, just some of Bella’s home videos with her mother’s voice on them. Funny enough, the following pages in which James videotapes himself torturing Bella are less torturous than all the chapters of a smitten adolescent girl’s “dear-diary”-like entries we’ve been forced to read up till now.
I think I can actually say the rescue scene is my favorite part of the book for this one excerpt alone: “… I knew I was dead. I heard the sound of an angel calling my name… And the angel was sobbing tearless, broken sobs. The angel shouldn’t weep.” And you shouldn’t blink.
Though James is done for, he’s bitten Bella on the hand and the vampire venom will overtake Bella soon if something isn’t done. What to do? Ed has to suck out the poisoned blood. Of course. He hesitates in fear that once he starts he won’t be able to stop. To suck or not to suck. Going in theme with the rest of the book, he sucks. Like I’ve mentioned before, the “Twilight” franchise wouldn’t get far without Bella, so of course Ed finds it within himself to quit leeching. Hooray. Bella’s saved. Other than massive bodily damage and a great loss of blood, she’s perfectly fine. Eddie has fun with her heart monitor at the hospital, making it spike and stop with various lovey-dovey stuff. Real mature, buddy. For the epilogue, Eddie takes Bella to the prom, the last thing she ever wanted to do. Yeah, thanks, Ed. Bella has made up her mind to become a vampire, but Ed refuses because he doesn’t want her soul to be damned. It’s the end of the book, but you’d better believe it ain’t the end of that discussion.
Basically, the first three-quarters of the book is nothing but saccharine sappiness with sensual writing that could make Romeo and Juliet blush, followed by a few pages of exceeding violence at the end. Credit where credit is due: Meyer is inventive with her back histories for some of the characters, like Dr. Cullen, but the excessive amounts of hormonal preoccupation, detailed descriptions of nuzzling and stroking that make the reader feel awkward, and ridiculously exaggerated emphasis on how perfect/beautiful/glorious Ed is can’t be forgiven. Forget hormonal therapy for women going through menopause -- just have them read this. Now that I’ve read this, I’m a little disturbed to know that kids as young as ten are in love with these books. I don’t want to sound like an old fogey, but if I’d read this when I was ten I would have vomited fruit loops.
Total number of times Ed is called “Perfect”: 16
Total number of times Edward is called “Beautiful”: 17
Moral of the story: Never say “Bite me” to a vampire.
