Cynic's Reviews: New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn

All right, the number-one suggestion I got on my last review was to make it shorter, but on top of that I realize that my reviews are pretty much redundant since there are quite a few other sites with equally deliciously-vicious reviews, so I’m saving myself (and you) some time by condensing my reviews.

New Moon:
This book opens right back up with teenage angst and girlish infatuation. Why did I possibly try to convince myself this book or any of the others could be otherwise? Somehow Bella’s back living with Charlie -- I’m sorry, did I miss how that happened?? She mentally crushed him in the first book, so did she just come back and say, “Hi, Dad, I was just running from a vampire who wanted to kill me because I attended my vampire boyfriend’s baseball game -- say hi, Eddie, dear -- so I had to emotionally crush you to save your life. But it’s okay now, the baddie got shredded and beheaded and I only got a body full of crunched bones and $15k in hospital bills. Can I stay with you?”

It’s Bella’s eighteenth birthday and she’s morose (what’s new…) because she can never be eternally seventeen with Eddie now. The Cullens throw the ungrateful twerp a b-day celebwation and she gets a paper cut. Yeah. One drop of blood and Eddie’s sort-of brother, Jasper, tries to nom Bella. Of course she gets thrown across the room into a crystal punchbowl that slices her arms. Somehow the rest of the family manages not to jump on her like piranhas on a water buffalo, even though we spent the whole freakin’ first book on how hard it was for Edward to even be near her and it took Dr. Cullen three-hundred years to develop an immunity to the scent of blood. The Doc patches Bella up but Eddie is gloomy (what’s new…) He severs all forms of intimacy and communication and leaves her in the forest to wallow in self-pity and decide that life in meaningless. Do us all a favor and kill yourself now, Bella, and spare us this book and the next two.

Months later she’s still a lifeless zombie. Her father cattle-prods her to seek social interaction and see a movie with a friend. Bella doesn’t want to watch the scene where the love-smitten couple walks on a beach and utters fake love lines and yet we’ve had to put up with it for a whole freaking book.
They pass a bar on the way to McDonald’s and Bella thinks she recognizes four men loitering outside - the four who tried to rape her in the first book. So what does she do? She walks toward them. She doesn’t care about her frantic friend or her family, she’s just following an impulse, “but it’s not like I was taking a blade to my wrist.” Or taking unnecessary cough medicine? (Which she did…) Idiot. She sees that the group of men are not the same four.
“… Safe. I lost interest.” Idiot. See, I can play that game, too. Meyer relentlessly calls Edward ‘perfect,’ so I can call Bella ‘idiot’ a lot.

Bella goes into a form of psychosis and decides she can be a reckless idiot by buying two motorbikes. She goes to her friend, Jacob Black, to repair them. How does she pay for the extra parts needed? She steals from her college fund. Idiot. She also learns that by endangering herself she hears Eddie’s voice in her head, so she goes on a suicidal spree just to have hallucinations of him. Four words: Get yourself a shrink. Her first bike ride ends with her bloodily injured, and she’s delighted because she heard Ed angrily talking to her the whole while. So the recipe for hallucinations must be: Danger + Adrenaline + Stupidity. While you’re at it, would you like to steal some more money so you can recklessly drive your bike to the pharmacy and buy some more unnecessary cold medicine? Idiot. Jake takes Bella to the ER and Bella explains it away to her father by saying she tripped on a rock. And he’s buying this?!

It’s like Bella actually worships Ed; she obsesses over him and even italicizes he and him. Jake tries to make a move on Bella but that ain’t happening, so they split and Bella gets all depressed again before calling Jake every half hour to no answer. Yeah, usually guys don’t go for the clingy-obsessive type. Well, long, crappy story short, the mate of last book’s villain, (‘Member him? Well this is Victoria) has put Bella on the hitlist/menu, Jacob’s a werewolf, and Alice saw Bella’s apparent suicide attempts and now Ed thinks Bella’s dead. He’s going to go to the Vampire Mafia, the Volturi, and make them angry so they’ll kill him. Ha, ha, ha! Whatcha gonna do, egg their coffins? Toilet paper their belfry? No, worse! He’ll expose himself in broad daylight! Okay, not what you’re thinking. He’s just going to go all sparkle-pants in a bright area so the Volturi will kill him for exposing their vampire way of life. Wait, that’s not what you’re thinking either…
Bella writes a “I must go save the boy who dumped me a year ago and left me alone in a forest” note to Charlie and stops Edward’s gay - er, shocking plan. However, they are detained by the Volturi and led through a manhole into an underground chamber. Classy. Pages and pages are wasted on nothing. Bella’s immune to the vampire superpowers and they get to go free. As they’re leaving she sees a group of tourists being lured in to get devoured by the Volturi. Their dying screams rattle her to tears, but she still begs to become a vampire herself. Idiot.

So, Bella’s got her baby back and Ed admits he’s even more pathetic than Bella.
“At least you got up in the mornings. I was more or less curled up in a ball and let the misery have me,” he says. Idiot. Oh, wait, sorry, you’re Edward. Beautiful idiot. Bella’s more determined than ever to become a vamp (so she won’t ever lose her pwecious Eddie-baby again) She takes the matter to his family: To bite or not to bite. Following the theme of these books, they bite. They vote her in and Ed’s furious, but they talk her into graduating before becoming one of the undead. On top of that Edward asks her to marry him before he bites her. What, “You are now vamp-boy and wife, you may bite the bride”?? And who would want that anyway? She’s a terrible character and so is he. And let’s not forget the age difference. She’s eighteen and he’s over one-hundred. Society generally tends to frown on age differences greater than a couple years.

To wrap it up, let’s do a character-check on Bella:
Depressive
Without personality
Psychotic
Rock-bottom on self-esteem
Clingy
Steals/endangers herself for adrenaline-induced hallucinations.
What a perfect character to ultimately be the heroine or a four-book series and movies! For girls across the world to view as a hero!

Oh, and the final count on the number of times Meyer describes Edward as ‘perfect’ or ‘beautiful’ is:
Beautiful: 16
Perfect: 11


Eclipse:
So begins yet another novel-bomination: with deception (Ed and Bella lie to Charlie to cover up for Bella’s disappearance once she’s a vamp-girl) and more sensual writing about their lusty kisses. Edward has a possessive hold over Bella’s life. He shows all the signs of what people look for when they think they’re in an abusive relationship. He forbids her to see her best friend, Jacob, and disables her car to prevent her from sneaking out to see him (which she does anyway.) And this is what she wants to marry into? Even Bella’s ditzy mother can see he’s an overpowering inhibitor and she’s a romance-possessed groupie too blinded by Ed’s perfect godliness to see the restrictive hold he has on her.
Heck, on page 412 even EDWARD thinks she’s obsessive, saying, “The way you regard me is ludicrous.”

Getting on with the story: Bella gets a mysterious call from Jacob asking her not to come to school tomorrow. While making dinner that night she has a “Golly, maybe that silly ol’ Victoria who’s trying to kill me is going to try to kill me tomorrow” thought. Here’s yet another brilliant exerpt:
“I froze in the middle of the kitchen. The package of icy hamburger in my hands slipped through my numb fingers. It took me a second to miss the thud it should have made on the floor. Edward had caught it and thrown it on the counter. His arms were all ready around me, his lips at my ear.” What, with unwashed burger-hands? Nobody wants an e. coli cuddle.

When Bella and Ed meet Jake at school the next morning Ed actually physically restrains Bella from hugging her best friend. I can just see their life thirty years from now:
Bella: “I’m just going bowling with my Red-Hat Society friends. Surely I’ll be okay there!”
Eddie: (tossing back another can of Bloodweiser) “Hells no, B! I’ve seen the way that bowler guy looks at you. You ain’t leaving this house.”
Bella: “Oh, Ed, how could I ever disagree with your color-changing eyes and crooked facial expressions?”
It gets to the point where Bella has to send Ed on a hunting trip so she can sneak to Jake’s house, where the lonely dude is overjoyed to see his manic-depressive friend and spends the day explaining werewolf-isms like “imprinting,” a werewolf form of love at first sight that goes as far as soul bonding. Belle is overjoyed to have spent time with her friend, but the moment she leaves werewolf territory Edward appears out of nowhere and tailgates her home. He’s that repressive. He later bribes Alice to have constant surveillance over Bella -- the term ‘kidnapping’ is frequently used. And thousands of brain-dead Twi-hard fan girls want to be the next Mrs. Cullen? They can have him.

In a sleepover at the Cullens, Rosalie tells her life-story to Bella. She was a rich snobby girl who married a rich snobby guy who didn’t love her, got drunk with four buddies and then raped her and left her for dead. I’m seeing a pattern in Meyer’s writing. Well, when Rosalie came back as a vamp-girl she promptly murdered all five men who wronged her. Moral of the story: Being a vampire allows you to exact your own justice.
Bella scorns the bed Alice bought for her, that is, until Edward comes back. Then she likes it just fine so long as she and Ed can get ’carried away’ in it. Chapters 9-12, blah blah blah, wolfie history (told ’round a campfire! Kum-ba-yah!), teenage vampire angst, Ed asks Bella why she doesn’t want to marry him.
“Because I’m not that girl… the one who gets married right out of high school like some small town hick who got knocked up by her boyfriend,” Bella says. But, aren’t you a small town hick just out of high school who’s trying to get knocked up by her boyfriend??
“People don’t get married at eighteen!” she continues. What, I bet Meyer did.
“Not smart people! Not responsible, mature people!” Well, it’s okay then, Bella, because you’re not any of those, Miss I’ll-Meet-A-Tracker-Vamp-Alone-Then-Dive-Off-A-Cliff-During-A-Storm-And-Throw-A-Tantrum-If-You-Leave-Me.

So this book appears to be Vampire Story Corner. Jasper tells his history. He was bitten to become a vamp soldier, led a bunch of bite-fests in Mexico, then met Alice and the rest is Bambi-bitin’ history. And why do we suddenly care about a character who up ‘til now has had very little to do with anything? They believe a vamp is mass-murdering in Seattle to create a vamp-army, and they’ve decided to go kill all the rogue vamps (thus they need his vamp-soldier training skills to prepare them for battle…) But first, a snack before they hit the road. Bella spends the day at Jake’s house where he confesses his love for Bella, forces a kiss on her, and she breaks her hand punching him. He takes her home and tells Charlie the truth (for once) and Charlie isn’t the least bit worried. He’s supportive of Jake, in fact. Looks like bat-nuts crazy runs in the family.

Bella connects her stolen blouse and the Seattle vamp-army to mean there’s a huge plot to kill her. That’s right Bella, because everything’s about you.
“As I processed the fact that someone had created an army of vampires for the express purpose of destroying me, I felt a spasm of relief.” What did I say, bat-nuts crazy.
She mopes through her graduation and greets the party Alice throws for her with all the graciousness and gratitude of a prawn. Jake shows up and Alice convinces the family to create a relationship between werewolves and vampires to better kill the Bella-murdering army.

So there we have it: a vamp-wolf vigilante group about to battle a mercenary mob of bloodlings. This is like reading a “Godzilla vs. the Moon Octopus Man” show. And what is weighing on Bella’s mind the most during this troubled time? Yep, doing her boyfriend. She doesn’t at all wanted to get married but she couldn’t possibly miss this human experience. I think Meyer was lonely when she wrote this. Ah, Bella, your idiotic reasoning never ceases to disgust me. You went from a pathetic no-life to an obsessive-depressed no-life to a spineless whiner, and now just a slut. Could her character get any worse? She tries to go all the way that night but Ed demands marriage first (oh, heaven forbid! That might almost smack of morals, and we don‘t want to sully these best-selling novels with those!) Conclusion: Ed’s trying to - ha! - preserve Bella’s virtue. She laughs in his face. What a delightful whore. And he STILL proposes to her right there. She swallows the bit of vomit that came up in her mouth and says yes. Oh, I can totally see their married life:
Ed: “Quit hogging the blankets!”
Bella: “Well I wouldn’t have to if you weren’t so freaking cold!”
Ed: “Oh, you’re one to talk, you keep putting your freezing feet on me!”
Bella: “Fine, maybe I’ll just go cuddle a werewolf again!” You heard me right. To keep Bella out of the way, Jake and Ed take her up onto a cold mountaintop where her survival depends on snuggling with Jake to keep from freezing. And Ed has to watch the whole while. It’s actually pretty darned funny. Jake’s all in Bella’s sleeping bag with her and Ed can hear his every thought.

Because we just wouldn’t enjoy a book in which Bella sits and does nothing while the action happens elsewhere (like, I dunno, the two freaking long chapters in the first book where she sat and did nothing in a hotel) Victoria brings the army of vamps to the mountaintop. Of course. Battle, fight, kill, maim, Ed bites off Victoria’s head, they’re all saved, hooray. Bella expresses her gratitude by going to Jacob and telling him she truly loves him, then she goes right to Edward and says, “Let’s get married.”
Idiot.

Final count on the number of times Meyer describes Edward as ‘perfect’ or ‘beautiful’:
Beautiful: 4
Perfect: 5
Looks like the honeymoon’s over before it’s even begun!


Breaking Dawn
(Otherwise known as the “Oh Lawd, Kill Me Now” book.)

The last book in this series of snot-awful books begins with Bella trying to drive her new Mercedes. Yeah, they got the death-wishing, accident-prone, walking-insurance-company’s-nightmare a hotrod. But wait! A car enthusiast just happens to be at the same gas station as Bella and informs us that this baby’s made of body armor and missile-proof glass. Oh, well then. She gripes and moans and complains about her wedding just days away, but she’s very much looking forward to getting laid and even ‘practices’ with Ed. Meyer briefs over the wedding but we get a ridiculously long description of Bella getting ready for her moonlight swim, and the next morning they fight about it. Great start for a relationship. Ed says he’ll never have sex with her again until she’s a vamp so he doesn’t beat up her frail human body, but she begs and pleads and whines until he gives in. Yep, 100 pages into this book and we’ve read nothing but sex angst, wedding angst, and sex after-math angst. Apparently Ed bites pillows and headboards during intercourse but Bella’s too occupied to notice. This is assuredly the dumbest daisy drivel I’ve ever read.

One-hundred and twenty pages (and a few more steamy nights) later Bella discovers she’s preggers. Golly, how-EVER did that happen? And since Meyer’s vampires are little more than Supermen who drink blood, the super-vamp-baby is showing after five days. Ed’s response?
“Hi, Dad… it’s me… hey, listen, get the coat hanger, we’ve got a little something we need removed.” But Bella is protective and enlists the rabidly-maternal help of Rosalie to protect her from any sneak-abortions. Ed tries to get Jake to talk some sense into Bella and offers to let Jake sleep with Bella if he’ll do it (pg. 180). Jake is tempted. This is so wrong in so many ways.

Jake doesn’t follow through but he does abandon his pack after they read his mind and decided to kill the baby themselves for the protection of the pack. After angsty pages of Bella getting worse and worse they realize that the fetus isn’t hungry -- it’s thirsty! So Bella drinks blood. If this book wasn’t disgusting before, it is now. She’s drinking human blood.
The moral of this little story: Drinking human blood is a good thing under certain circumstances. Why, Bella perks up like a little flower in a rainfall. Who says you need to be bitten to be a vampire? Just find yourself a blood bank, make a withdrawal, get yourself a bendy-straw and - voila! - Bram Stoker can kiss Meyer’s ass.

Bella drinks blood all the time now so the baby’s strong enough to break Bella’s bones from within, but Bella wuvs the widdle angel and continues feeding it. The birth is like a scene from “Alien.” Bella starts vomiting blood, the baby kicks her apart, and Ed, true to gag-me-with-a-spoon-awful heroic vampire fashion, delivers the baby by biting through Bella’s womb. Against Bella’s maternal intuition, it’s a girl.
“If it’s a boy, I’ll call him EJ -- Ed-Jacob, to insult you both. Wait I’ve got a better name: Jacward! -- if it’s a girl, well, my mother’s Renee, yours is Esme… I know, Renesmee!!” She’ll fit in great with Bradgelina’s spawn. Rosalie takes the baby away with a bottle of blood, which you’d think would upset Bella, but not in this case ‘cause she’s dead.

Ed injects Bella’s heart with vamp-venom… right, do they milk vamps like they do rattlesnakes? Bella endures worse-than-death pain and awakes a vampire. But first! Jake gets all mad because Bella’s ‘dead’ and decides he’ll kill the baby himself, but upon seeing the baby girl he imprints on her. Nothing like having your best friend turn out to be a pedophile.
So we know Meyer’s vamps carry over their strongest human trait into vampiredom -- Emmett got super strength, Alice got premonition, Ed got mind-reading, Rosalie got super-witchiness… so what could Bella possibly have? Superstupidity? Atomic horniness? Crypton-clinging? Super-emoting? Could she possibly get even LESS of a personality, because frankly that was her strongest trait. No, Bella’s super power is the ability to withhold herself from doing things other vamps could/couldn’t do. Yep, she got super-introversion. Oh, wait, it gets better. The baby’s growing way faster than a normal baby should and communicates through Vulcan mind-melds.

Annnnd we’re back to sex. Wild, crazy vampire sex. Bella lives a happy euphoric life until one of the Volturi sees Renesmee and decides to send every single Volturi soldier to kill her. A couple hundred pages of blah-blah-blah later and the Cullens have a bunch of vampires meet the Volturi’s bunch of vampires. See, Meyer? Was that so freaking hard?? Did we really need almost ten chapters of TIME-WASTING FLUFF to get there? The Volturi come, they all talk about their feelings, then, um, the Volturi leave. Yep, that’s it. That’s the big ending to four sod-awful books. And people actually… LIKE these? I’m appalled.