Almost in it's entirety it's a manic narrative of Bella frantically trying to piece her life together after she's fallen apart because the Cullens, namely Edward, left her. It's...pathetic. In the purest sense of the word.
Furthermore, Bella Swan you are a stupid girl! She actually believes that Edward just dropped her because he got bored or something--how can you claim to love someone so much and yet think so little of them? This goes beyond mere self-deprecation; she's just uncharitable. The entire situation is just absurd.
Adding to the absurdity: Jacob Black came back into the picture, which pleased me because he continued to be a source of slight happiness in my mind whilst I was surrounded by the dreary landscape that is Bella's brain; Jacob is really the only character that I actually like, and he continued to be really nice and sweet and happy and just an all-around cheerful, easygoing guy. So naturally, Smeyer had to go and taint my enjoyment by making Bella's brain work even less illogically than usual. Jacob, nice kid that he is, actually managed to pull Bella out of her Edwardless stupor and start living as normal a life as you can have when you're Bella Swan. Therefor she decides that though she is not in love with him in anyway, she and Jacob will be boyfriend and girlfriend in everything but name because it is a comfort to her. Jacob, as he expresses midway through their friendship, really likes Bella and is willing to wait for her as long as she needs. Which is a bit sad, but what can you do. Bella basically tells him, "Sorry, Jake not a snowball's chance in Hell--friends still?" in words; in actions, however, she clearly expresses that "friends with benefits" is a-okay in her book--holding hands, snuggling, spending all day together, the whole shebang. She throws a drawn out fit when he disappears off the face of the earth for a while (Jacob had to take a little time out whilst he turned into a werewolf, you see). Basically, she doesn't want him as a brother-figure, or a boyfriend, she just wants to claim him because he makes her forget about how much she misses Edward. She just treats him abominably.
And as if my brain wasn't frazzled enough trying to work out these gaping chasms in anything resembling reason, Bella continues to hear Edward's voice. Constantly, not even when she's in danger necessarily, just advising her on what she should be doing; "Don't provoke the werewolf, Bella. Lie to the vampire, Bella. Eat your broccoli, Bella." (Okay, that last one didn't happen. But you get the point) She becomes some strange, irrational thrill-junkie in an effort to continue to hear Edward's voice. It's just weird. I can't even begin to think how I would explain it rationally. Smeyer explains it irrationally by having Bella epiphanize in the end that subconsciously she knew all along that Edward really loved her and therefor his voice in her head was her subconscious mind telling her that he really loved her. And that's the best explanation you'll get, dear reader. My apologies.
New Moon is 563 pages long, and aside from what I've mentioned in this and the earlier post, only one other thing of actual interest happens in New Moon. Bella, in another thrill-junkie moment, decides it would be just smashing to go cliff-diving during an impending storm and nearly drowns. Jacob saves her, but Alice Cullen (who can see the future) unfortunately only has a vision of Bella jumping, not being saved, and concludes that she was going to commit suicide; she rushes back to Forks to save Bella (unnecessary), and through a series of miscommunications better suited for a comedy or a Disney Channel original movie, Edward gets wind of part of the incident and thinks Bella is dead. Alice has another vision (because they've been so useful so far) that tells her Edward, in despair, has gone to Italy to try to get the vampire Mafia (basically), the Volturi, to either kill him on request or piss them off enough to kill him. Bella and Alice rush to Italy to stop him, with nary an explanation to Charlie. Edward's plan to piss the Volturi off (because they're not nearly apathetic enough to actually be okay with just killing him for the heck of it) is to expose vampirism to the city they rule over by walking out into the square in the bright, noonday son--because when I see a man sparkling like a child's Valentine's Day art project in the middle of a sunny, crowded street I immediately think "Vampire!"
Of course, Bella stops him before he can do it, but not before the Volturi notice the kerfuffle (that's an honest, real word, I swear). Alice, Edward, and Bella are led by two Volturi henchmen to the Volturi headquarters where we meet even more vampires who are cooler than Edward, and learn very little other than Smeyer can be like everyone else with her vampires (there's a three-man council of ruling, ancient vampires, and a bunch of underlings holding court, and the entire thing smacks of Underworld and Interview with a Vampire) and that Bella is immune to the unique, special powers that vampires have. Which confused me to some degree, because in the climax of the first book Jasper was integral to keeping Bella calm with his emotion-manipulating powers. Plot hole? I think maybe.
That whole snafu takes two chapters. I think you understand now, dear reader, how little substance New Moon actually holds. Like I said, boring. Most of the rest of the book is Bella being miserable thinking about the Cullens, Bella and Jacob being not-dating, and primarily lots and lots of waiting--Bella waiting to come out of her stupor, waiting for Jacob to be her friend again, waiting for Jacob to come back from hunting the evil vampire that's poked her head up in the Cullen's absence, waiting to get to Italy, waiting to get back home, waiting, waiting, waiting. The book drags something awful.
In the end, our intrepid heroes are left here: the Cullens are back, all is right with Bella's world--except Edward still won't turn her into a vampire, and now the Volturi are threatening her with death if she's not a vampire soon because she knows too much. There is an undetermined, half-decision made that she'll either get turned by Carlisle (Edward's sire and foster-father) after she graduates and moves out so her parents don't wonder why their daughter is suddenly inhumanly gorgeous (because of course the one thing they won't wonder about is why their daughter disappeared off the face of the planet after she left for college--THIS IS A SOLUTION.), or Edward will turn her after they're married. They came to no real conclusion--perhaps they will wait to see which comes first? Jacob and Bella can't be friends now that she's chilling with the undead again, because apparently vampires and werewolves are doomed to be enemies for all time. As to why this is, I have no idea; Smeyer offers no explanation, not even your standard, unsatisfactory, "Vampires are the natural predators of werewolves/vice versa" or anything to that degree. Jacob is sucked into the pack mentality on that point, and hates all vampires, and Edward of course does not like Jacob because he is Bella's friend who is a boy-type person. So now her boyfriend and her best friend are at odds, as well as their respective family units. I almost feel sorry for Bella. Almost.
One thing that is making me legitimately angry as I read both Twilight and New Moon is the complete perversion of the child-parent relationships in the Swan family. Bella treats her parents as if they are either her own children--e.g., worrying about their safety, being overly concerned with "taking care of" both Charlie and Renee, her mother--or simply a nuisance (particularly Charlie, particularly when he actually tries to act like her father in governing her life). Bella flat out refuses to listen to her father if he tells her something she doesn't want to do, sometimes directly to his face, as was the case when he told her he didn't want her seeing Edward anymore after he hurt her so bad. Obedience and honoring her parents are not ideas anywhere present in her mind. The relationship between Bella and her parents is a complete role reversal--except, on a normal daily basis she's completely content to ignore Charlie entirely so she probably would make a horrible parent anyway. It's just wrong.
The Final Review:
New Moon gets about 2 stars out of 5. The plotline is just a mess, much resembling Bella's state of being for most of the book; which perhaps was Smeyer's intent, but in certainly didn't make for a fun read. There is no ascertainable purpose behind most of what happens. It's more than a stream-of-consciousness string of events than a well-constructed, cohesive storyline. Smeyer persists in describing Edward and his handsomeness more than any other character; even Jacob, who's shirtless 75% of the time, didn't get as much page-time as far as descriptive adjectives go as Master Cullen (despite the fact that he's only in about eight of the twenty-five long chapters). The writing has not improved in the least. The vocabulary continues to be as ADD as Twilight--Smeyer insists on sprinkling her narratives with her Word of the Day, making the paragraphs she places them in sound more like a ninth-grade vocabulary worksheet than a thought-out piece of narrative. Though there is much potential that I can see in many of the creative paths Smeyer chooses, she always fails to deliver that potential. Melodrama abounds, reason and realism are absent.
I cannot in good conscience recommend this book, either. My hope for Eclipse is that Smeyer makes more of an effort in her authorial duties, or her editor makes more of an effort in his/her editorial duties.
(I hope this post is coherent--as you might have noticed, I'm writing it late at night, when by rights I should be in bed. I really need to purge New Moon from my system before I settled down for the night. That being said, my deepest apologies for any moments of "Heavens to Betsy, is that even English?!" you might experience, dear reader.)
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