The Twilight Experiment--Twilight, Chapters 11-Epilogue and The Final Review

I knew it was coming. Of everything I knew about Twilight, this was the one thing that irked me the most. It had never really gone away, always lurking in the back of my mind. And yet, it was still anticlimactic.

Vampires sparkle in the sunlight. Sparkle. That's the word Smeyer uses; not even "gleam," or "emit an otherworldly glow." They sparkle. And it's supposed to be something beautiful and alluring and inhuman, and it's just....silly. It's the same as Bella being so completely clumsy--it's meant to be quirky I suppose, and original, but instead I can't help but think, "Okay now, this is just unrealistic that she fears walking up a trail because of her clumsiness--I think there might be something wrong neurologically with her." And you end up feeling concerned for the inner workings of her brain instead of relating to it. It's the kind of thing that would work much better in a romantic comedy, but she chooses to utilize it in the most awkward of times, where humor wouldn't exactly be appropriate.

So Edward is now completely on my "Leery List"--we find out in chapter 14 that since Edward doesn't sleep, being a vampire and technically dead I suppose (Smeyer never actually explains the reasoning behind why he doesn't sleep, he just doesn't), he entertains himself by coming to watch Bella sleep. Every. Single. Night.

Creepy.

And his whole authoritative, my-way-or-no-way thing is still going quite strong. If Bella doesn't want to do something he wants her to do, like go to prom, or ride his back up a mountainside, he either bodily forces her to do it anyway or seduces her until she gives in--because conversely, Bella is literally unable to say no to him because of his handsomeness. She never once, in the entirety of the book, actually in the end sticks to her decision of "No" after she tells him so. Now, I firmly believe that the man should be the leader of a relationship--but there's a huge difference between leader and dictator, and between communication and manipulation.

The whole relationship is just completely unhealthy. Edward tortures himself because he's afraid he's going to eat Bella, but he won't leave her alone because he's completely blurred the line between "want" and "need." And the entire relationship is based solely upon lust--they barely know each other, and primarily what they do that really gets them excited is cuddle. Extensively. It's just...uncomfortable. So, Edward is territorial, overprotective, and something of a despot, and Bella is besotted, reckless, and a bit loose. Bad kids.

Furthermore, Edward refuses to make her a vampire. He expresses that he doesn't want to end her life or put her through the pain of the transformation. He also doesn't trust himself to be with her for more than the periods of time they spend together (slightly less than a married couple). Which means that they can't get married, and they can't be together after Bella's about....twenty-five (because Edward still looks seventeen and that would be really creepy). So they know that if they continue the way that they are, they have no real future together. They acknowledge that...and then that's it. Bella's actually the reasonable one in this argument (relatively), because she wants him to make her a vampire so they can have a future together (nevermind that she's willing to throw her entire life away--turn her back on her family and her friends--to be with Master Edward). But still they're content to just live in the state of limbo in their relationship, knowing that as long as Edward doesn't give in they have no real future with each other, but loving (and lusting) each other too much to just do the healthy thing and move on.

Everything about it is just unhealthy, not to mention melodramatic. There's nothing realistic about their romance or their relationship--they have no basis for loving each other, they barely know each other before they claim to. Bella is seventeen, how does she even know what love is? It's just this floaty, abstract idea to them: they're hopelessly attracted to each other, and can't keep their hands off each other despite the dangers on both sides, so it must be love.

But enough about them.

The other Cullens are actually pretty cool--Smeyer gave each one of them separate histories that are intriguing. And even though every time Alice moves more than three inches Smeyer describes it as "dancing," calling to mind some hilarious visuals on my part, other than that Smeyer spends very little time describing how attractive the other Cullens are aside from their initial introduction (side note: Smeyer never ever stop reiterating how gorgeous every single aspect of Edward Cullen is).

The vampires for the most part are pretty cool--the problem I have is this: the Twilight Saga is supposed to be a breakthrough original piece of work in the vampire novel genre. As far as representing vampires go, Smeyer does a pretty poor job. The cool aspects of her vampires--their immortality and all the fascination that comes with endless lives (histories, etc.), their super-senses, and their inhuman beauty (which make no mistake can be cool when you don't beat it to death, reanimate it like the Electric Man, and then beat it some more, Smeyer)--are all things about them that aren't exclusive to vampires. Basically every humanoid fantasy creature out there shares those characteristics--take elves for example. All other aspects Smeyer tries to put her own twist on are either unoriginal--such as vampires having venom in their bite that will turn people if they don't die (hearkens to the more Scifi version of vampires where's it's more like a disease or a parasite)--or just silly--like them sparkling instead of combusting in the sunlight. She even managed to sort of screw up the most basic thing about vampires: their blood sucking. Her vampires don't have fangs. They just sort of eat people. They're glorified cannibals, hairless werewolves.

My problem is, they aren't really vampires. And that makes me sad.

The climax of the book is completely random, seeing as how it's unrelated to what the book is previously about--Edward and Bella ttly in wuv--in every way. A random group of other vampires shows up, and one of them decides that Bella "Tripping Toes" Swan would be the ultimate hunt because it would make Edward so darn upset. So the Cullens take her away and try to protect her but of course she gets lured into a trap, and Edward saves her after she almost dies. Woohoo!

The Final Review:


So, this is the part where I feel I can be completely free with my comments, and unleash the reserved judgement.

Plotwise, Twilight has some intriguing and original aspects; unfortunately, those aspects take the sideline to the main plot, which is nothing we haven't seen before. Buffy the Vampire Slayer covered that whole tortured vampire love pretty thoroughly, and other than the fact that Edward's a vampire it's a pretty standard steamy romance. It lacks any realism or nuance that would make on the caliber as romances like the classics. Some of the sideline parts are really interesting, like the different pasts of the Cullens and what the heck is going on with poor Jacob Black's family, but about 2% of the entire book is devoted to that. Overall, the plot lacks any true creativity or originality to set it apart from your run-of-the-mill grocery store steamy romance novel.

As for the writing: at her high points, Smeyer is an average writer. At her lower points, which are more frequent than her high points, she writes with all the subtlety of a canon ball to the face, screaming "This is what's going on!" as loudly and clearly as possible. Typically, she writes as if we, the reader, would be completely lost in the narrative if she didn't hold our hand the entire way and tell us exactly what was happening--down to Bella's inhaling and exhaling. She writes too much detail about the wrong thing, as mentioned before, and when she gets into detail about the right things the descriptions fall flat due to their lengthiness and their lack of elegance. Smeyer uses common teenage vernacular most of the time, and then suddenly you're slapped in the face with a word like "apropos" used only loosely correctly; in doing this she succeeds only in sounding like she's trying much to hard to appear eloquent and intelligent. Furthermore her tone throughout the entire book is so hopelessly melodramatic that you can't help but feel that Bella is nothing more than a complete self-insert of the author herself, and that she's ridiculously proud of the story she created. Creatively, she is average, technically, she's a tenth grader.

When I read a book, it needs only one of two things for me to in good conscience recommend it: a more than average plot, or more than average writing (and if it has both well then it's a party). Twilight is mediocre in both aspects, therefor I cannot recommend it.

On that cheery note, on to New Moon!