So, here I am, reading this book: Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. As much as my initial abhorrence towards it goes (this hate is further amplified the further I read the book), I have to say that I was able to finish the preface and Part 1: First Sight roughly within a day after getting it. Now, let us get on with the review of my first encounter with what would most aptly be called “Popular Fanfiction”.
The whole story started innocuously enough with this girl, Bella, who was moving to Fork (someplace in America) from Phoenix (also another place in America) to live with her dad. All throughout the preface there was this continuous atmosphere of animosity towards her moving. Nothing but hateful words to describe the big shift. Why? I have no idea. The early parts of the book doesn’t even hint as to why Bella was moving to Fork. She did mention that she liked it in Phoenix and living with her mom. Yet, I remain hopeful that somewhere in the later parts of the book that this mystery will be unveiled.
We move on to Part 1 of the book. We have Bella settling in her new home in Fork where the world is gray and the skies are mostly cloudy. Being the bitchy angsty teenage book that this is, of course the main female protagonist needs to go to a high school. After all, aren’t all teenage romance books set in schools? And this is where she meets the main protagonist/love interest that sets the pace for the entire book, Edward. So far that’s how much I’ve read.
Now on to my comments after reading the first few bits of this book:
- First, I’ve said it already, was the lack of motivation and description as to why Bella would actually move. The entire preface could’ve been removed and it wouldn’t affect the story.
- Second, the author seemed to have this affinity for describing crap ranging from unnecessary surroundings to useless scenes. But, there was no shortage of this lack with the description of Bella. All throughout there were only two direct descriptions for her: Pale and long haired. But do take note during the end of Part 1 there was this line “I went meekly to the desk, my face white for once, instead of red.” That’s fucking right. Everything I knew about her was a lie! At least 50% of what I knew about her was. Apart from this, she would cry for no apparent reason, bitch for no apparent reason, be angsty for o apparent reason. Then again, if someone wanted to read a book with reason, he/she wouldn’t be reading Twilight.
- Lastly, I couldn’t stand how many superlatives were used to “describe” Edward. If “describe” was an apt word for this. During a short scene where the author introduces edward, a total of 16 superlatives and vague words were used to describe the features of this Edward person: beautiful coal black eyes, attractive voice, absurdly handsome, gorgeous, nice-looking, perfect lips, beautiful boy, inhumanely beautiful, features were straight, perfect, angular and so on and so forth. None of these things tell me how he actually looks like except for some short line saying Edward has brown hair and coal black eyes. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
Whew. Now that’s over. I have to get this bad taste. I’m praying ever so much that it’ll get better. I hope… I really really do.
Methods in Madness 