Tag Archives: Jasper

Review: Breaking Dawn – Stephenie Meyer

29
by

breaking dawn cover

Twilight #4

Bella Swan is finally marrying her vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen. Her father Charlie seems to be accepting this all the more, though he is still not thrilled. After the wedding, Bella and Edward take off to honeymoon on Isle Esme. Bella’s part of the deal was to marry Edward to have him turn her himself, and his deal was that they would sleep together only after they got married. They honeymoon is perfect, and Bella is more in love with Edward than ever, and her sexual conquest with him has actually made her want to stay human longer (!!!!). Edward cannot believe that it is all the convincing she needed. However, things change rapidly when Bella realises there is something wrong with her body. It is impossible, but she is sure she is pregnant. Carlisle insists that Bella and Edward return so that they can get rid of the baby to save her, but Bella gets hold of Rosalie, Edward’s sister, and asks for her protection.

The Cullens are furious when the newlywed couple returns and Rosalie automatically takes control of the situation, keeping everyone away from Bella. She will not let anyone harm the baby. Jacob Black, Bella’s werewolf best friend, is still smarting from the pain that he has been caused, and is furious that Bella and Edward are now married, and that Bella will soon be turned. Upon hearing that she is back in the country and having heard that she is deadly ill, he races off to the Cullens to kill Edward, and instead finds a pregnant Bella. He is sickened. His La Push pack refused that morning to strike against the Cullens for discarding the treaty between the vampires and werewolves by turning Bella, but when they hear that she is bearing some abomination, they decide that they want to kill the Cullens. Now Jacob is not a part of this plan, and refuses to follow Sam’s order, ultimately accepting his Alpha birthright of the pack and fleeing to warn the Cullens that the La Push pack might attack. Edward and Jacob cannot stand one another, but are working on the same side – protect Bella, they both love her.

It soon seems that the pregnancy is changing – after hearing the thoughts of the unborn baby, Edward finally supports Bella’s decision to have this baby, and they have a contingency plan to turn her right after she gives birth. Jacob is shattered and flees to the city, desperately seeking out the girl that he will imprint on, and finding nothing. Returning to the house, Bella goes into labour, and will need all the help she can get. Her baby girl, Renesmee, is born, and Edward struggles to turn Bella, while Jacob leaves the scene, intent on murdering the baby that killed Bella, and instead he imprints on her. Bella is finally turned, but it seems that the Cullens are never destined for peace.

How will Bella deal with the transformation? Will she still love Edward, or will she be ruled by the insatiable thirst for the first few years of her life before falling back into some form of love with him? Will Edward be able to deal with Bella’s change? What will happen due to Jacob imprinting on a hybrid creature, Edward and Bella’s daughter? How will the Cullens accept the new addition to their family? Will the powerful ruling vampires, the Volturi, finally leave the Cullens be now that Bella has been turned?

GRADE 4.5It’s over. Finally finished. So I can finally say that I have held up my end of the deal and read these four novels, but I have decided to disband the book club with my friend because I just can’t do something like this again. Breaking Dawn has quite a bad rap from the readers, and it is justifiable. The first half of it wasn’t too bad, but then it just peeved me endlessly. I think that the change from school and all that helped in some ways (I was so over reading about the classics and stupid school crap, all the while there was major lust for Edward going on), and the obsession, as bad as it still was, did not take front and centre stage anymore. I liked how Breaking Dawn was divided up into three parts, starting from Bella’s perspective, switching to Jacob’s perspective, and then flipping back to Bella. I was wondering whether this would be the case after Eclipse closed from Jacob’s point of view. At any rate, this book was so long, I must say. It is almost like it didn’t know where it was going for a long time, and there were moments where I felt the plot got convoluted and just went around and around in circles. Also, after this whole fancy wedding and all, I thought there would be some more passion between Edward and Bella, but I can honestly say I only felt more of that towards the end, after she finally got turned, and even then it was lacking (but still spicier than when they were in school). I was so glad that the story was told from Jacob’s perspective for the duration of her freakish pregnancy, I just don’t think I would have dealt with that if I had to read all of that as told by Bella. I mean can you imagine how disturbing and disgusting and annoying that might have become?! Ugh. Edward was certainly grating on me less and less now, it seems being a husband suited him more (again, he is such a dodgy love interest, and again this book harps on how you need kids and a husband to be fulfilled as a woman – meh). Let’s not even forget to mention how much Edward and Bella started banging after she was turned. I am stating this because they seemed utterly unconcerned about Renesmee or their parenting responsibilities. What the hell is up with their priorities?! I was also a little grossed out about Jacob imprinting on Renesmee. It was a little disconcerting for me – he was wildly in love with Bella and then it was all about Renesmee, and they just went back to being friends? Strange and just incredibly incestuous. Eeeeeeew. Not really the neatest way to tie things up there. Naturally there was more drama than you could shake a stick at in here, and everyone was on the brink of dying again and all that and wars were being prepared for, but oh well, I guess that is simply how this worked. ALSO, and I know this is a bit bizarre, but it always freaks me out when reading these things, I would love to know how a century-old dead thing gets a hard on, never mind the fact that the dead thing can somehow miraculously reproduce. It just freaks me out. It’s disgusting, is what. I can at least say that I have read all these books now, though I certainly don’t get the hype surrounding them whatsoever.

Review: New Moon – Stephenie Meyer

19
by

stephenie meyer new moon cover

Twilight #2

Bella Swan is being all moody and sour with her sparkling vampire boyfriend Edward Cullen on her birthday and is still miffed that he won’t turn her. His brother Jasper tries to eat her, and the Cullens move away. Nasty breakup ensues between Bella and Edward, she spirals into a deep depression like her family has been massacred, not like she has lost her boyfriend whom she has only been with for a few months. Months of obsession and depression after all that, eventually she starts hanging out with Jacob Black, an old friend. They get very close. He is in love with her, she cannot think further than Edward, but has no qualms crushing Jacob’s heart. Eventually Jacob goes on the fritz and she gets sour that he, too, would leave her. Turns out he is actually a werewolf (seriously). Huge misunderstanding at the end causes Edward to try out a suicide mission, and Bella runs with his sister Alice to stop it. Seems they just go back to normal, doesn’t matter about Jacob anymore, who is bitter because the Cullens are his tribe’s sworn enemy and he is in love with Bella, who loves his natural enemy, and he is a werewolf and has to protect his people from them.

GRADE 1Blah, blah, blah. Bitch, bitch, bitch. Moan, moan, moan. Me, me, me. Turn me, turn me, turn me. CRY CRY CRY. Breakup ensues. Depression. Mope, mope, mope. Edward, Edward, Edward. Longing. Suffering. Torture. Pain. CRY CRY CRY. Selfish up the wazoo. Bad writing. Descend on Jacob Black. Use him. Use him some more. Tug at his heart strings. Vampires, werewolves, panic. Edward, Edward, Edward. Mess Jacob around some more. CRY CRY CRY. Betrayal when Jacob has personal issues to deal with that don’t involve her. Sulk, sulk, sulk. More bad writing. Do some stupid stuff. More me, me, me. More moan, bitch, sulk, cry. Obsession, obsession, obsession. Depressed. Suicidal thoughts (because all these books seems to highlight is that losing a love is worth popping yourself over – especially after a few months). Bad writing. Romeo and Juliet references for Africa. CRY CRY CRY. Panic, panic, panic. Discard Jacob. Run to Edward. Edward, Edward, Edward. Obsession. Unhealthy. Unhealthy. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Fuck it. I will never get any part of my life back over this.

Review: Twilight – Stephenie Meyer

36
by

twilight-meyer

Twilight #1

Isabella Marie Swan moves from her mother in Phoenix to stay with her father, Charlie, in Forks, Washington. She is incredibly upset about this, seeing as Forks is dreary and rainy and horrible, but she wants her mother Renée and her new husband Phil to be happy together. Charlie has bought Bella a truck from an old family friend, Billy Black, and she loves it more than she imagined. Sulkily, she starts school the next day, which seems relatively normal until she meets Edward Cullen, who is more beautiful than just about any guy she has seen in her life, and he seems to hate her on sight. Bella does not understand this, and before she knows what is going on, Edward has stopped coming to school, and his family seems so removed from the other students that no one seems to know what is going on.

Bella is battling with all the boys in school asking her out, and she is not interested in any of them but Edward. Before long, Edward returns to school looking very different, and he actually starts talking to her civilly. Bella’s obsession deepens, though Edward does not seem interested in her, a plain Jane next to him. Her obsession does not change when Edward saves her from being killed one day by a speeding truck, which he seems to bodily stop, appearing beside her before it could possibly happen. Going to the beach at the Quileute Reservation with some friends at school, she reacquaints herself with childhood friend Jacob Black, who tells her a tribal tale of werewolves and vampires, naming the Cullens as the vampires the werewolves are to protect the tribe from. Bella starts making assumptions, and decides that Edward must be a vampire. He is too pale, his eyes change, he never comes to school on sunny days, not to mention the incident in which he saved her with superhuman strength and speed.

Again Edward saves her in the city one night, and they get to talking. Eventually he has to admit to her that he is not human, as she has ascertained this and does not seem afraid. The Cullens are not like normal vampires, and do not feed off of people. They hunt animals for sustenance. He desperately wants her to stay away from him to be safe, though it seems he is immensely interested in her. The two start seeing each other, much to the shock of the school. Bella meets the Cullen family, whom Charlie has a lot of respect for. On a family outing, after she knows that Edward is deadly and glitters in the sun, she joins the family for a baseball game which they can only play when there is a storm due to the racket they make when playing. A small coven consisting of James, Victoria and Laurent appear at the baseball game, and James becomes obsessed with Bella. He is a tracker, and he is going to make a meal of her. The Cullens rally to protect Bella, running her off to Phoenix, while Alice fields visions on what James is planning. James has an elaborate plan to draw Bella away from Jasper and Alice, and it might just work.

Will Bella take the bait and go to James? Will the Cullens be able to save her from him? Will Edward and Bella ever just have a simple and normal, happy relationship? Will Charlie be safe with the Cullens divided up between looking after her and him? Can they stop James and his plans?

GRADE 3.5Alright, so just to set the record straight, it was not my desire or choice to read these. I got bullied into it (I don’t think this is a fair trade – I recommend a few decent books to a friend, she insists that this is what I must read after she read three good ones). Anyway, getting down to what I thought of the novel, the biggest glaring issue for me is that Stephenie Meyer cannot write. She has no understanding of pacing. I mean there are plenty scenes that are squeezed in here and come across as unnatural and forced. It is like she knows what she wants to say, but has no idea what vehicle to use to convey it to the reader. Before reading these books, I thought Katniss Everdeen was the most annoying and selfish heroine I had ever read about. Boy, oh boy, was I mistaken. Then I met Bella Swan and I damn near chewed through my own wrists. She is more selfish than I ever realised. It freaks me out that it is teenage girls reading this and looking up to such a useless lump. Also, something that bothered me immensely, you would think that Edward would be more mature, considering he is like a century old. His character is incredibly inconsistent, and that annoyed me endlessly. When I read and think vampires, I think Count Dracula and Anne Rice type things. This is just awfully embarrassing to end up in the same lot. The relationship between Edward and Bella is bizarre, and lacks emotion and passion. They are obsessed, but not even in a passionate way, and they are all about suicide if they cannot be together. Stephenie Meyer keeps quoting Romeo and Juliet like she is giving us a modernised version, which is extremely annoying because this will never be on the same level. Bella and Edward are like petulant children together. The story offers nothing more than a girl completely obsessed over a boy and willing to throw her whole life away for it. Then… what is this bullshit that “normal” people can’t smell blood? It smells like freaking iron last I checked! Also, Bella has no character development aside from getting more and more obsessed with Edward, and then next thing you know she is adept at using people (Jacob Black). I rapidly got over reading about Edward, always in connection with the words perfect, beautiful and flawless. Seriously, is there nothing more to say about him than that? Bella’s blind acceptance about Edward is ridiculous, and really makes it even more difficult to identify with anyone, as if it wasn’t hard enough as is. Edward is really like a sulky, angry, churlish child. Meh. I couldn’t understand his insistence of someone knowing where she was or her insistence of lying about it to everyone. All she had to say was “hey, going out with Edward”, not “hey, going out with Edward the sparkly vampire and if I am not home and safe by six, get the stakes ready and come and get me”. Seriously Meyer, wtf?! Edward glittering in the sun in the book is the same as in the movie – throw in the towel and be done with this crap. Wow. Anyway, the “action” that comes by the end of the book again feels out of place and forced. I cannot say that it was a joy to read this book at all, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand how this became such a huge phenomenon. Alright, I will stop now, otherwise this will never end.