21/12/23-09/1/24
I have read a lot of vampire content, I have seen them through media in a thousand different forms and I have never came across something that opposes so radically what a vampire is supposed to be: conspicuous, philanthropists, misunderstood victims, vegans... Well. Is better if I show you:
When Isabella Swan comes to the Forks, a small town where it's overcast most of the year, she comes across with Edward Cullen and his kindred, all of which are almost comically obvious vampires. Waxy pale skin in spite of all the "hicking" they do on sunny days (that's why we don't see them around), big black bags under color-shifting eyes, complete and utter disregard for food and uncanny out-of-place beauty. Luckily we learned from the back cover about their true nature, otherwise we'd never have guessed.
In spite of never getting a real description of how Isabella looks, other than being pale, we ought to assume she's a real beauty (disregarding her own words) since every male in town suddenly wants to date her.
Then comes a long introduction of almost three hundred pages of Edward acting weird, Isabella being mean to everyone except Edward, lots of complains about the weather, until destiny provides Bella with the perfect opportunity to be a damsel (for the lack of a better word) in distress, Edward swoops in and with a Herculean demonstration of strength he shoulders a van, saving her from being "squished".
After that no amount of glaring or "tight" faces could prevent the obsessed teenager from finding out the elusive truth, although it wasn't really her merit since Jacob (the soon-to-be werewolf) told her everything under the poor pretense of a "scary story".
Then they start dating, Eddy plays hard to get but also confesses being a psycho that breaks into her house to watch her sleeping, and other romantic stuff like stalking her "to assure her safety". He also expresses in several occasions that it takes a great effort to not kill her and drink her blood, but none of this seems to trouble Isabella in the slightest.
Well, at some point we start to assume that Edward is genuinely in love with this girl he met last week who's conveniently immune to his magical powers, for some reason that's beyond our understanding. None of the other girls he met in the past hundred years were up to his standards, but small town edgy self-absorbed girl cuts it.
Towards the end of the book some evil vampire pops out of the blue and threatens to kill Isabella for the propostous reason of being "challenging", but to no one's surprise he fails miserably even with the advantage of Isabella walking into an obvious trap unarmed and alone. Bella gets an NDE that feels like being underwater but on fire at the same time, but Edward saves her again, everyone hugs and the incident is brushed under the rug.
Conveniently for the plot, even though Isabella's dad is the town sheriff, he never investigates anything nor does he feel preoccupied when his daughter comes with a dozen different injuries every time after seeing Edward.
In "New Moon" Edward makes dumping someone via text look lovely when he has a 180° turn in his attitude after seeing that his family of vampires behave like vampires, and after given her the cold shoulder for a few days while the rest of the family furtively leaves town, he takes Isabella to the middle of the forest, says something in the lines of "I never loved you, you stinking human. I'm sure you'll bounce back, bye!" and skips through the trees leaving the girl catatonic in the mud under the rain. Go team Edward!
This is the turn for Jacob and the rest of his racistly described native american family to save Bella. Then she spends the rest of book moping around, always reminding us that Edward is her true love, but giving Jacob the impression that he has a chance because he distracts her. Not that it matters, Jacob and Edward are basically the same character, stalky, obsessive, forceful, bossy.
She starts taking on suicidal tendencies since she "hears his voice" whenever her life is at danger, which hints us that all the "you're crazy, Bella" might not have been too far off the mark.
Then there's twenty references to Romeo and Juliet which pretty much spoils the little thrill the ending of the volume might had, when for some plot convenient reasons Edward thinks that his "midnight sun", the love of his life whom he can't live without (aka his summer gf) is dead so he ships himself to Italy in an overly dramatic effort to off himself. Since "walking into the sun" makes him glitter rather than exploding in flames, Stephany has to put some extras to kill him when he reveals his vampiric nature to the world. In that precise moment, not a second earlier.
In honest fairness the matter got so drag out that I'm pretty confident that Edward at no point actually intended to kill himself. Everyone hugs, I love you, I love you, more Romeo and Juliet plagiarism, some inexplicable Wuthering Heights references...
In my opinion so far this was a mediocre romance fantasy story nothing too bad, definitely below what one would expect from an English letters graduate, but from now on the plot takes a nosedive.
In Eclipse, Meyer promises the readers that Bella will finally be turned, but this does not happen. We get a dull, lackluster fight against same old adversaries and a complete destruction of Jake's character, who's now become a pitiful lap dog, threatening Bella to kill himself if she doesn't love him back, which since him and Edward are basically the same character makes me think that Edward dragging the whole "I'm going to kill myself for love, like Romeo" means that he never actually intended to die and that it was a bluff. Completely forgettable.
Finally, in Breaking Dawn, we still get some more dragging because there's the wedding (lame wedding BTW) Jake's embarrasses himself trying to oppose, and FINALLY it's time for Isabella to get turned! No wait. We have the honeymoon. The very horny honeymoon. And then Bella gets pregnant a few pages after Meyer decides to tell us the story of the "immortal kids" that were banned by the Volturi and wiped off the map, I wonder what's going to happen now.
Well, spoiler alert, Isabella has the baby almost dying in the attempt but Edward turns her, the Volturi finds about the baby and try to kill it but fail miserably, and happy ending. A vampire love story. With a happy ending. The ultimate sacrilege!
3/10
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