Alright, I just finished watching the third Twilight Movie: Eclipse. And the trailers are right – it is much better than the other three movies.
And Despite my misgivings for the third book, I ended up enjoying the third Twilight Movie quite a bit. (And I wasn’t the only one if all the people laughing and clapping in the theatre was any indication…)
Jacob’s still awesome, they play up the tension between him and Edward well and Officer Swan is still hilarious. I laughed at the jokes, and well. I think I’m pretty much doomed and may actually be a Twilight fan.
But all was not glory – there was a few issues. The cinematography was much better in the second film by far and this movie tended to suffer from soap opera face ups. I think they may have over used this particular film technique.
Second, the first hour was rather choppy and for once I’m glad I read the book BEFORE the movie – if only to fill in all the gaps. Eclipse tried to fit too much in and give everyone their little moment of backstory. Sadly this leaves most of them cut a little short (and I’m still angry we didn’t get a full body shot of Rosalie in her wedding dress!!! She wore it, too. It’s insulting we only got to see her from the shoulders up.) I think this is the one time where it’s handy the book filled every thing in with more detail.
Overall though, not many complaints. It was two glorious hours of man-law. Edward vs Jacob. It was wonderful and even the guys in the theatre were laughing at the machismo dripping from the two of them as they fought over Bella.
Anyway, I enjoyed it and I’m looking forward to the two-part Break Dawn films. (Which I’m half-way through reading! Progress!)
I have finally finished Book 3 of the Twilight Saga: Eclipse.
I can’t remember the last time I read a book that had me going back and forth between hatred for the main character, boredom and disgust. Now, I’m sure there was a spot here or there that I liked or was tolerable, but it was so overrun by a total disgust with Bella Swan that overshadowed everything else.
In fact, I’m pretty sure any discontent I have with the Twilight series has to deal with Bella Swan. I don’t think I’ve ever found a main character in a book that was this unlikeable. There is nothing I like about her and by now I’m sure you’ve realized this is a rant more than a review.
It took me so long to force myself to finish this book (I kept putting it down and reading each chapter was quite literally a chore) that I barely remember what happened in it. So I’ll have to settle for ranting about what I do remember.
But! We’ll start off on a positive note with a few quotes that I actually quite liked:
“He’s like a drug for you, Bella…I see that you can’t live without him now. It’s too late. But I would have been healthier for you. Not a drug; I would have been the air, the sun.” – Jacob Black
“The clouds I can handle. But I can’t fight with an eclipse.” – Jacob Black
“I wasn’t about to send you off alone. With your luck, not even the black box would survive.” – Edward Cullen
“If we had happy endings, we’d all be under gravestones now.” – Rosalie Cullen
And from there – we’ll start with subject one:
Werewolves
I like Jacob Black. I think it’s the movie’s influence because they did a good job with him, but even in the books I’ve liked him. He was interesting, down to earth and he’s a werewolf. Can’t go wrong there really. In fact, despite the fact all of her werewolf references and the like are made up and new, its’ actually a concept that works (unlike the sparkling, glittering skin of the vampires). The hive mind thing they have going on is interesting and it helps bring all the characters together.
Eclipse goes out of its way to try and destroy Jacob. I think it became apparent in New Moon that Jacob was probably the better choice out of the two and so it had to demonize him. He’s now screwing with Bella (don’t get me wrong, she’s still a selfish, manipulating brat but even she doesn’t deserve some of what he does) and going so far as to forcefully kiss (molest) her and corner her into choosing either him or Edward by force and guilt. It wasn’t as horrible as it could have been, but it was definitely a character derailment – but I will admit it was funny having the other wolves complain about his thoughts about Bella leaking into all of their heads.
Not to mention when Bella broke her hand trying to punch him I laughed out loud. Physically. I really had needed that.
Vampire Fight
I feel gipped. They spend a great deal of this book setting up a giant Vampire Battle with Victoria & a crew of new borns she’d recruited…and we don’t get to see it. We hear about it via Seth’s mental link with the pack, but Edward & Bella are separated from the action. We do get a bit of a fight between Edward, Victoria, Seth & a guy named Riley but it was so-so and ended predictably with you guessed it – Edward winning.
Not to mention the Volturi. Talk about a missed opportunity. They show up at the end go “opps, did our job for us” kill some poor sap and leave. Just about the only thing I enjoyed was them mentioning that Aro really wants to see Carlisle again – and that lead to me getting depressed yet again because the storyline with Carlisle and the Volturi would have actually been interesting. Ah well, maybe one day I’ll brave the Twilight Fanfiction section and find something there.
Bella and Marriage
I could tolerate Bella being too dumb to live. I really could. I could even deal with her being a selfish, spoiled brat who couldn’t make up her mind with ‘some people are just like that’ and move on. What I could not tolerate – were Bella Swan’s views on marriage. They just baffled me.
Let’s lay this down – Bella in all of her selfishness wants to become a Vampire before she’s too much ‘older’ (older being relative because she keeps forgetting he’s pushing over 100 years old) than Edward. She’s claiming it’s to avoid the Volturi but let’s face it – she just wants to sex up Edward. Anyway, Carlisle has agreed to change her after graduation but she wants Edward to do it. Edward has one condition – he wants to marry Bella before he turns her into a vampire and gives her the ride of her life. So far, I’m not seeing any problems. She wants to be with Edward for eternity – he’s taking the logical first step.
Bella is instantly disgusted by the idea and she thinks Edward is an old fashioned and joking with her. Bella absolutely does not want to get married and I was flabbergasted. I didn’t understand at all. It made no sense whatsoever. And eventually, Edward drags an explanation out of her and we find out it has to do with her perception of marriage. She’s using her mother’s teenage marriage as a basis and I suppose I can understand that – but her attitude about the entire thing is what gets me. She’s willing to DIE and become a vampire – and somehow that’s better than a teen wedding brought on by unexpected pregnancy?
I want to quote for you Bella’s exact explanation for why she doesn’t want to get married. I’m hoping I’m not the only one who’s confused and disgusted by it.
I’m not that girl, Edward. The one who gets married right out of high school like some small-town hick who got knocked up by her boyfriend! Do you know what people would think? Do you realize what century this is? People don’t just get married at eighteen! Not smart people, not responsible, mature people! I wasn’t going to be that girl! That’s not who I am….”
This is a girl who’s been trying to jump Edward Cullen since she met him. This is a girl who wants to be turned into a vampire (let us recap: dead, immortal, drinks blood, permanent life change) absolutely right now without listening to the people telling her to wait until she’s older. A girl who claims she can not live without Edward Cullen in her life for the rest of her life forever and ever bound to him for eternity and she gets disgusted by the idea he asks her to marry her. She’s disgusted by how other people might look at her for being a teen bride. She was also disgusted by the idea that people would think it weird Edward dating someone so much older than him (I’m sorry, but there isn’t that big of a stretch between 17 and the 20′s with someone as mentally mature as Edward.). But this marriage thing topped the cake for me.
I have never wanted to leap into the pages of a book and slap someone so much in my life. If I give Twilight anything, it is the ability to induce emotion in the reader be it good or bad.
The General
So far of the three books – this has been the most painful. I really hope the movie is better (because we’ll at least get to see the fight scene – there’s no way they could get around skipping it in the film) and by the grounds that I actually enjoyed the other two films, books aside.
And now I start my journey into Breaking Dawn – which just may kill me. Apparently not even the fans can stand that one. Wish me luck. I’m going to need it.
Alright, let’s see how I do reviewing Book 2. For once I’m not writing this immediately after finishing the book so my thoughts are a tad less organized. But here we go -
The Book
Better than the first one.
Now granted, New Moon had it’s head banging moments and horrible scenes. But it had one or two good scenes and I actually enjoyed reading about Jacob & the Werewolf crew. So not a total loss. I think part of that is the fact Edward was missing for over half the book.
Edward alone I can handle.
Bella alone is almost tolerable.
Bella & Edward together gets near unbearable. I can’t even really put it into words but them together is some of the most unbelievable stuff I’ve ever read. It just pushes my suspense of belief out the window. Maybe it’ because I’ve never been in love or seen anyone in real life act like this. But the sheer level of obsession these two have with each other can not be healthy. It just can’t.
People date, they break up, they move on. Sometimes it’s harder than others – I realize that. I believe in love. But this sort of love that they describe almost has no basis. Why do they love each other? What really caused Bella to be near Catatonic for months? As far as I could tell the only thing Edward did (other than the save her life thing – which isn’t really a basis for a romance…) was be mean to her and mention she smelled really really good.
]Though, in New Moon towards the end, Bella refuses to believe Edward could love her so I ended up reading a page of Edward declaring why he loves Bella and I stared at the page – when did she show any of those behaviors? It was like he was describing a different person. I, it was just odd.
But I’ll move on. It’s almost baffling and I’m not sure I could keep up with it.
Let’s talk about things I liked instead. Because admitting there are things I liked in this book are good. I could go on forever about how Bella’s a selfish idiot (Her Vote to become a vampire? No. Just. No.) So let’s talk about good things:
Aro – I loved Aro. This is a vampire. He’s a total monster who still manages to be bright and cheery and keep his manners like a real gentleman. There’s a charisma there that I didn’t expect to find in this book.
Jacob – I’ve already stated he’s the only person in the book who not only seems believable but sympathetic. Plus, werewolves are cool. And her recreation of the classic myth for them isn’t nearly as intolerable as say, the sparkling.
And…that’s all that comes to mind at the moment. Overall, save for a few frustrating moments with Bella & Edward, I liked it.
Which brings me to -
The Movie
I’ve admitted it before and I’ll admit it again. I liked the New Moon Movie. There! I said it.
The directing was 100x improved and it was obvious with the new cinematography and pacing. It featured Jacob (one of the few who could act) and dare I say it – Jacob and Bella actually had chemistry on scene. I was actually drawn in a few times as they interacted.
Plus? I actually laughed when the joke was intentional. I can’t say that about the first movie (save for her dad pulling out the shot gun – that’s always gold.).
But yeah. Not many complaints about the movie, actually. Aside from the plot but that can’t be helped sometimes.
“I decided as long as I was going to hell, I might as well do it thoroughly.”
-Edward Cullen, Twilight
I think the above quote summarizes my jump into Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. I’m not actually sure what to quite think about this first book and will probably discuss it by just writing what comes to mind as I just finished reading the thing a few moments ago. I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would, but I wasn’t exactly thrilled or impressed by it either.
I think the best way I can think to describe Twilight is “Mediocre Fanfiction.” It’s like, what you read when your favorite author isn’t updating and your alternative is something literally unreadable. It’s not good, but it’s not bad either. It’s in the middle and writing wise it’s tolerable. As someone who reads a lot of fanfiction (good, bad and ugly) I can’t really say anything against the writing style without sounding too hypocritical because I’ve read worse for leisure more than I probably should have.
Plot wise, I think “Harlequin for Teenagers” seems appropriate. It’s about 70% Bella describing what Edward looks like (I think she used at least eight words to describe his eye color in the first three chapters alone…) and what he does to her on the inside. Her feelings, how much she loves and adores him, blah blah blah. It’s a ‘guilty pleasure’ at its best. To help things along? It’s written in first person so if you try just a little bit, the name “Bella” can be replaced with your own and it’s like reading your own little love story where the vampire’s in love with you.
While not a huge fan of first person writing in general (when I read fiction I want to read about someone else’s life…not pretend mine is different), it did put how this book got so popular into focus. The teenage girl audience it was aimed at can put themselves in Bella’s shoes and live her life.
Though why they would want to is beyond me. Bella is quite possibly one of the least likable women I’ve ever met. She’s cruel to her father (in the beginning, she improves eventually) for no discernible reason (a description of what exactly he did during his & her mother’s divorce might have been nice to fill that in. Because the man’s a little awkward, but there’s nothing wrong with him from what I could see…), she’s almost falsely modest (she described herself as being plain and blending into the background, yet on her first day of school she gets asked out by at least three guys) to the point where she’s constantly berating herself for being ‘uninteresting,’ and she’s well. She’s dumb as a brick for someone who gets straight A’s in all of her classes and reads Wuthering Heights for fun. She’s also a bit of a drama queen and constantly whining when she doesn’t get her way. Edward has every right to be mean to her half the time. She deserves it. (And she refers to her parents by their names in her head…what kid with a good relationship with her parents does that!?)
And I think this is where it gets into the ‘bad’ area that so many people complain about. 70% of Twilight is tolerable. About 10% is actually interesting and well, good. (Carlisle’s backstory, Alice’s backstory, basically all the Cullens sans Edward.)
The other 20% is just unforgivably awful.
It’s been a while since I stopped reading a book to just stare at it and go “Huh? What? No.” And then I reread the section to confirm that I had read what I read. There is a scene (mind you this is after Edward has displayed feats of super speed, super strength, and lots of cryptic hints about his soul being damned) where Jacob is describing the legends of his lands and he goes on to talk about “The Cold Ones” (Edward has been described as ‘cool’ and ‘cold’ and a million other things that describe his body temperature as being frigid) which should have been a big hint. But then he goes on to literally say “The Cullens are the Cold Ones who made a pact with my grandfather. They’re vampires.” – Now it’s not in those exact words, but he did name the Cullens and he did call them Vampires.
Bella does not put two and two together at this point.
Instead, she goes home and looks up Vampires on the internet. And comes to the conclusion that Edward doesn’t fit any of the characteristics of vampires, except…that he does. Instead, Bella compared him to Superman or Spiderman.
But I digress.
That’s just one of a few scenes that are well. Just bad. Not writing wise, just story and plot wise. It makes no sense and interrupts the story with its absurdness. But what’s worse than that? The good stuff!
Carlisle. Edward talks about his backstory (very, very briefly) and describes him as the son of a minister who instead of mimicking a salem witch hunt and killing innocents, goes to find the real monsters under the city. And you know what? Through careful work he does. And he manages to corner a vampire by himself – but unprepared for his super strength and powers, Carlisle finds himself being bitten. To his luck (or horror) his back up arrives and he’s dropped to the ground while his friends chase down the vampire. Forgotten, the venom flows through his veins and he realizes he’s turning. To save his own life he crawls behind a sack of potatoes and waits out his three day transformation. After that, he tries many, many ways to try and kill himself (and fail) before realizing that animal blood works as well as human to sustaining his life and body. From there, he starts making use of his eternity and meets up with others like himself and eventually gets tired of them trying to turn him over to human blood. Lonely, he gets it in his head that he wants to create a companion that can share his ‘vegetarian’ philosophy. Enter Edward, dying boy with flu.
You see that above paragraph? It’s interesting right? You’d like to know more about Carlisle and his transformation and what he did in more detail? Me too. But you know what? That above paragraph is basically all you get in the story. I’ve counted at least four to five pages of Bella describing Edward in near intolerable amounts of detail, and Carlisle’s entire backstory takes a page and a half. Alice suffers the same fate later on in the book.
It’s a very frustrating book, and I still have three more to go.
Well, any farther and I’ll be mostly repeating what you’ve all read before concerning this book. I’ll admit, it’s got its place in fiction and I can see where the appeal is. I did find myself smiling in parts (when Bella wasn’t describing Edward…) and kinda’ liked it at the end of the day. But before I go – I want to touch up on the movie.
The Movie
I saw the movie before I read the book (I heard that the movie was a fairly true adaption so I figured it was about the same) and afterwards found that the movie did mirror the book fairly well. There were a few minor changes that included Bella remembering who Jacob was (and Jacob not actually telling her the Cullens were vampires, they cut that out thankfully) but not much else I can remember at the moment. Mostly the cutting of her friends backstories. (And Bella getting asked out by like five guys…).
I liked the movie more than the book. Probably because while watching the awful movie, I was laughing. It was so bad it was hilarious – the book didn’t quite fit that description. When the book was bad, it was just bad. At least the movie I could find some joy in my sides hurting.
Plus? I loved the side cast. The Cullen family was amazing, I adored Charlie (Bellas’ dad was amazing) and Jacob Black was one of the best actors in the film. Anyway, in this case the movie > book.
Recently, thanks to Amazon & Kindle I have acquired all four Twilight books for about $22.
Now, let me set this up for you – I’ve been going back and forth with reading Twilight. On the one hand – it seems like one of those things that seems so horrible you have to read it for yourself to prove it, however I had a bit of an issue:
1) If it was really that bad I didn’t want to pay for it.
2) I felt too guilty just downloading it.
3) I always conveniently forget there’s a library down the street.
So instead, I went to see the first movie instead. (You’ll get a real review of that later…).
It was horrible. But I enjoyed it because it was so bad that I laughed the entire way through (Much the same way I do watching YuGiOh! The Movie). So, I saw the second one for the same reason – and liked it.
Yes. I liked New Moon. It was still bad and had no plot, but it was actually funny when it was trying to be.
Point? I decided – I should read it before I go off about it.
I’m three chapters into book one and…I’ll save it for the first book/movie/combined review. To come!
Wish me luck! Gonna’ need it.
(And yes I realize I’m way behind and Twilight’s been out forever. Blah blah blah I’m slow. XD)
Afraid by Jack Kilborn (Also known as J.A. Konrath) is a horror* novel about five psychopathic killers let loose in the little town of Safe Haven.
A classic story of survival and savage human nature, Afraid really pulls you in and sticks you up close and personal with everyone from the killers to the few folks still holding onto their lives. The novel provides just enough detail to set the mood while still leaving plenty of room for your imagination to fill in the gritty details.
I will admit, I picked this book up from the Amazon Kindle store due to the very lovely price of $1.99. However, it’s worth the full price if you don’t happen to have a Kindle.
For me in particular, this is just the sort of book I was looking for. I enjoy serial killer stories. Jack the Ripper, Mafia men gone bad, the Batman Villians, etc. However, what I’ve never particularly enjoyed are mystery or detective novels. Do you all know how hard it is to find a serial killer novel that doesn’t involve some detective tracking them down? It’s difficult. Even more so if you want to see things from the point of view from the killers. Afraid does that.
There’s a Sheriff (Of whom I adored. I love you Sheriff Streng!) and a fireman, but it works here because it’s not their job to hunt down the perp. It’s not some mystery they’re trying to figure out. The Sheriff is in the same boat as everyone else in the town and there’s no interrogating or looking at evidence and trying to figure out who the killer is. With Afraid I know who the killer is; who the killers are. They’re introduced in the first few chapters and we dive right into their heads. And it is a gripping place that not only paints them as monsters but gives that perfect edge of humanity that really makes you fall in love.
A scene in particular towards the end where we take a peak into Ajax’s head and see things through his eyes made the book worth reading by itself. Not that the novel doesn’t have enough to spur it on – the entire cast is worth reading and I found myself rooting and cheering for well – all of them. Killers included. It’s a rare event when you’re split between hoping both sides will win.
The rivalry between Sheriff Streng and Santiago is particularly enjoyable and I love that it was dragged out for almost the entire length of the novel.
So, in closing – it’s a good book. I loved it and I plan to pick up Konrath’s next Kilborn novel.
*But before I close (Ha! I kept going) I’d like to just address the genre of this novel. “Horror” doesn’t quite seem to describe it. At least for me, I didn’t find this novel scary. Gory and graphically violent from cover to cover? Yes. Suspensful? Sure. Did I know what was going to happen? Sort of – some things are a given, but it did have some twists I didn’t see coming that made it a thrill. But I wouldn’t really call it scary. Then again, I could just find it extremely difficult to think of books as frightening. Especially when it falls under the ‘fiction’ genre.
Actually, I spent a great deal of the novel smiling like a lunatic myself. I’ve always loved villain characters and Kilborn/Konrath gave me five gorgeous ones. If you’re curious, Santiago & Ajax were my favorites. I just want to pet them.
Afraid by Jack Kilborn (Also known as 