In Which Vampires Drive Volvos
After the imagined hate-fest of day 1, Bella is relieved to see that Edward has skipped school. She thinks herself a coward for hesistating to tell him what-for and marvels (as I did) at her newfound suitors in the now competing Mike and Eric. Poor Bella! She dubs Mike her "golden retriever", as if we needed a Romance Novel kiss of death on that particular relationship. I will note that most Romance Novels have the fake suitor who sticks around for the first bit of the book to provide yet another hurdle (and late night whinging/sex, depending on the type of book). I don't think SM is going that way, and it confuses me. Are M&E just here for color? Is there going to be some drama later? Some critics have labeled Bella as SM's alter-ego, living out a HS fantasy and providing something for her target audience to coo over. In the end, it just seems out of place for Bella to have so much romantic attention on her -second day of school-.
Outside the classroom, Bella goes all domestic: shopping and cooking, then emails her mother to avoid a meltdown (add overprotective & dumb to her mother's bio). She has a nice all-American dinner with dad (still Charlie in her mind). Dad takes the exposition hat and fills us in on the Cullens: headed by the very liked Dr and Mrs McHotVampire and their brood of pseudo-incestuous foster children. I'm still having a tough time figuring out why blood-sucking parasites are wantonly flaunting their glaring, crowd-inciting differences in a community in which their camping habits (obvious plot hook) and lifestyle are so easily tracked as to be dinner conversation. Yeah, the weather is very vamp-friendly, but that only works if you keep your fang-stuffed head down among the locals. It's cloudy in other parts of the country, guys.
So we breeze through the first week of FHS and learn Bella's new clique is planning a beach trip, spearheaded by Mike. We also get a tour of the town's pissant library (+1 bookworm points for Bella) and everyone is friendly and it snows and weeeee Eddy is back!
Wow he's back and he's well fed (I assume) because he's got all that grump out of the way and when Bella and Ed sit down at Bio II he SPEAKS. And it's: musical. Gods, really? The adjectotron couldn't come up with something better than "musical"? Whatever, stay in groove, as long as his touch isn't electric.
It is. By the seven hells, his touch is electric. The cliche-o-matic coughs out a two-fer, although from the description you aaaalmost get the feeling that it's literally electric. Also Ed's eyes are now ochre (gold) instead of black and he's very nice. So nice that he takes the exposition hat from daddy and pulls a bit of info out of Bella as to her new home in Forks. I will say that this conversation works quite well. Bella is flustered and telling a bit more than she might otherwise (believable), Edward is quite conversational and friendly, tugging at the right strings at the right time. If only SM hadn't started with electric and musical.
We learn Bella bailed on mommy because mommy's new beau is a minor league ballplayer and Bella wants mommy to have a nice life, free of annoying bookworm/self-reliant children and such. Bella is selfless and self-sacrificing for her mother, and it works ok. However, I'd have loved to see a touch of selfish "I wanted to get away from that fruitcake" to give poor Bella some actual character flaws (more on this in a moment) but this section gets a good bit of backstory out in the open cleanly, realistically and with a nice moment of friendly conversation between the people on the cover of the book. So gold stars all around.
We also discover that Eddy has perfect, ultrawhite teeth. No fangs mentioned.
SumUp: A-
Nicely done. We're still deep in boggy exposition land that all books must eventually cross, and SM seems to be sailing through with few problems. Bella is over-smart and over-sensitive and while it's starting to inch dangerously close to boring perfect-protagonist land, it hasn't reached that point and we're still early in the first act. Edward, on the other hand, has gone from otherworldly to otheruniversely perfect. He's a porcelain statue who has exactly one "flaw": he's mysterious. Annoyingly so, especially from the perspective of a semi-informed reader. This better add up to something other than "conflicted love of a vampire is mysterious" or the ratings are going to sliiiiip.
Twilight Vampires get slightly more definition with their coal to ochre eyes after feeding (one assumes) but the music and electricity is laughable. I'd love to give SM some benefit of the doubt in thinking that these adjectives come from Bella's infatuated POV rather than being objective definitions of Edward's voice and skin-contact properties, but I don't have any foundation to stick that to. SM might need to buy a higher end version of the adjectotron.
Ultimately though, it's still reasonably entertaining and the story is flowing quite smoothly now that we have a locale and basic set of characters. On that, I'm holding off judgment in regard to the secondary characters. At this point they're all cardboard cutouts and modest descriptions, but we're only at the end of Chapter 2, so there's plenty of time. That nugget of enthusiasm might just have grown two sizes today.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
T.01.01: First Sight
In Which we meet lotsa people.
First, obviously, is Bella, who gets described as looking very much like her mother, who is not described at all. Bella is moving to Forks, Washington, where it rains a lot. This is emphasized quite a bit in the ensuing chapters, clearly to lend support to SM's redesigned vampires. I imagine they'll have little problem standing outside in Forks, which appears to be a real place.
There's a fashion fetish in the opening travelogue that I'm desperately hoping doesn't continue, but mostly we get Bella's misery. Oh, the humanity of moving from Phoenix (no vampires!) to the corner of Forks and Symbolism, Washington. Bella gets a little backstory as we meet Renee (mom, not named just yet) who is scatterbrained and involved with Phil. The final paternal unit is Chalie, who Bella has summered with and with whom she has a yet-to-be-defined relationship.
In Forks, Bella meets up with POLICE CHIEF Charles, which is precisely where I checked the channel to make sure this wasn't a Lifetime Original Movie. I'm going to put a dollar on this coming into play at some point. Although it could just be a useful tool for having dad show up once in a while. Daddy PI has bought her a truck, which she insists she could have bought herself (is Bella wealthy?) but then falls in love with the mid-century behemoth, sparing us some conflict and interest. Bella's inner monologue calls Dad "Charlie" constantly, which I'll take as characterization of their relationship.
After the truck distribution, Bella gets a description (page 10, not terrible). She's gothy, gothy and slightly more gothy. Pale skin (ivory, translucent, clear) and slender. She's pretty in every way a boring protagonist could be, with the requisite flaw of "tangled hair". She's also very introverted and isolated and cries herself to sleep. We also find out that her name is Isabella Swan. Which I cringed a little at.
Bella goes to school. I'm not going to judge too harshly, but the rainiest town in the country has a high school (one high school, I think) that's made up of seperate buildings. This means lots of wandering around outside to get to class. Fine. There's also an incredibly nice and helpful student body at Forks High (FHS from now on), which wasn't my experience in school, but I'm nitpicking.
Class Schedule:
The tableau is well done... and not so well done. The descriptions are good, we want inhuman ... well, inhumans. Bella noticing the not-eating and not-paying-attention clues is well written and descriptive. They're typically gorgeous, but herein lies part of the problem de Vampire. The quintet is paired up (minus Edward, natch) to avoid entanglement with humans. They're outcasts by design, even to the point of being orphans. But they all live together with a local surgeon (scandalous!) and are somehow weirdly adopted siblings. They're all gorgeous in exactly different ways, they ignore everyone, they're wealthy, they look way too old to be in school. How is Bella the only one to notice? There's talk later about the mind tricks the Vampires can play, but this seems like a lot of effort wasted when they could just tone down the LOOK AT ME vibe. Shouldn't vampires be more subtle? More cunning? Less blatantly in everyone's face? Especially in a small town who might rise up with ye olde pitchforks?
Bella sits through a hate-filled Biology with (joy) Edward as her lab partner, which is honestly a bit of lazy writing, and comes off with the impression that Edward despises her. Then she hits the Gym where Mike flirts with her. She runs into Edward in the main office trying to argue his way out of Biology (oh how much he hates her) and she goes home in tears. All in all a very productive day.
SumUp = B+
For an introverted ghost-skinned new girl, Bella sure hits it off with the lads in super-friendly FHS. It certainly wasn't a terrible read, even with the pile of exposition that SM managed to get on the page. Always a risk in chapter uno. Descriptions were there, non-blood sucking people seemed real enough and I breezed on through. I'm still not that happy with the Vampires. Why are they hanging out at FHS, aside from the romantic connection angle? Why doesn't anyone seem to notice them even with their clear disregard for any sort of low profile?
Edward comes off as a Romance Novel tool, he's perfect looking, clearly designed for the main character and clearly there's a ton of author invented hurdles that stand between them only to be resolved at some point (probably near the climax of this book). I'm not thrilled with the fake hate that will clearly resolve into luv after Edward gets over his blood-lust slash sudden love for Bella (or whatever that is), but I suppose it could have been much worse.
In any case I'm encouraged, maybe they anti-hype is wrong.
First, obviously, is Bella, who gets described as looking very much like her mother, who is not described at all. Bella is moving to Forks, Washington, where it rains a lot. This is emphasized quite a bit in the ensuing chapters, clearly to lend support to SM's redesigned vampires. I imagine they'll have little problem standing outside in Forks, which appears to be a real place.
There's a fashion fetish in the opening travelogue that I'm desperately hoping doesn't continue, but mostly we get Bella's misery. Oh, the humanity of moving from Phoenix (no vampires!) to the corner of Forks and Symbolism, Washington. Bella gets a little backstory as we meet Renee (mom, not named just yet) who is scatterbrained and involved with Phil. The final paternal unit is Chalie, who Bella has summered with and with whom she has a yet-to-be-defined relationship.
In Forks, Bella meets up with POLICE CHIEF Charles, which is precisely where I checked the channel to make sure this wasn't a Lifetime Original Movie. I'm going to put a dollar on this coming into play at some point. Although it could just be a useful tool for having dad show up once in a while. Daddy PI has bought her a truck, which she insists she could have bought herself (is Bella wealthy?) but then falls in love with the mid-century behemoth, sparing us some conflict and interest. Bella's inner monologue calls Dad "Charlie" constantly, which I'll take as characterization of their relationship.
After the truck distribution, Bella gets a description (page 10, not terrible). She's gothy, gothy and slightly more gothy. Pale skin (ivory, translucent, clear) and slender. She's pretty in every way a boring protagonist could be, with the requisite flaw of "tangled hair". She's also very introverted and isolated and cries herself to sleep. We also find out that her name is Isabella Swan. Which I cringed a little at.
Bella goes to school. I'm not going to judge too harshly, but the rainiest town in the country has a high school (one high school, I think) that's made up of seperate buildings. This means lots of wandering around outside to get to class. Fine. There's also an incredibly nice and helpful student body at Forks High (FHS from now on), which wasn't my experience in school, but I'm nitpicking.
Class Schedule:
- English. Mr. Mason. Bella is already up on the required reading (Shakespeare, Caucer, Faulkner). I'd gripe, but we learn she read it all for her last HS. We'll see more bookworm Bella as we go. Here we meet Eric who's a black-haired kid who helps Bella find her next class.
- Government. M? Jefferson. Of which we learn nothing.
- Trig with Mr. Varner.
- Spanish
- Lunch
- Biology II with Mr Banner. She hasn't gotten here yet.
- Gym with coach Clapp. Wherein Bella's lack of coordination is consistently harped on.
The tableau is well done... and not so well done. The descriptions are good, we want inhuman ... well, inhumans. Bella noticing the not-eating and not-paying-attention clues is well written and descriptive. They're typically gorgeous, but herein lies part of the problem de Vampire. The quintet is paired up (minus Edward, natch) to avoid entanglement with humans. They're outcasts by design, even to the point of being orphans. But they all live together with a local surgeon (scandalous!) and are somehow weirdly adopted siblings. They're all gorgeous in exactly different ways, they ignore everyone, they're wealthy, they look way too old to be in school. How is Bella the only one to notice? There's talk later about the mind tricks the Vampires can play, but this seems like a lot of effort wasted when they could just tone down the LOOK AT ME vibe. Shouldn't vampires be more subtle? More cunning? Less blatantly in everyone's face? Especially in a small town who might rise up with ye olde pitchforks?
Bella sits through a hate-filled Biology with (joy) Edward as her lab partner, which is honestly a bit of lazy writing, and comes off with the impression that Edward despises her. Then she hits the Gym where Mike flirts with her. She runs into Edward in the main office trying to argue his way out of Biology (oh how much he hates her) and she goes home in tears. All in all a very productive day.
SumUp = B+
For an introverted ghost-skinned new girl, Bella sure hits it off with the lads in super-friendly FHS. It certainly wasn't a terrible read, even with the pile of exposition that SM managed to get on the page. Always a risk in chapter uno. Descriptions were there, non-blood sucking people seemed real enough and I breezed on through. I'm still not that happy with the Vampires. Why are they hanging out at FHS, aside from the romantic connection angle? Why doesn't anyone seem to notice them even with their clear disregard for any sort of low profile?
Edward comes off as a Romance Novel tool, he's perfect looking, clearly designed for the main character and clearly there's a ton of author invented hurdles that stand between them only to be resolved at some point (probably near the climax of this book). I'm not thrilled with the fake hate that will clearly resolve into luv after Edward gets over his blood-lust slash sudden love for Bella (or whatever that is), but I suppose it could have been much worse.
In any case I'm encouraged, maybe they anti-hype is wrong.
T.01.00 Preface
We start with a foreshadowing of death, which at this point is hardly the mystery the author intended. Clearly Bella is the voice. It is a nice hook, knowing someone is going to die, but since the POV of the book is (as far as I've read) always Bella's, there's no surprise left. And with only a bit of knowledge about the "Saga", the killer is obviously Edward, despite the misdirection of the "killer" and "someone loved" suggesting two different people present.
And so, it begins
Let's be clear. Twilight, and the ongoing saga it spawned, is aimed squarely at people who are not me. I understand that. But that doesn't excuse it from the standards by which all works of literature should be judged, especially if those works constantly intrude on my life in the media blitz that this book has unleashed. I've managed to avoid all but the most superficial knowledge of what Twilight contains and will attempt to objectively read the series and report my findings here.
Maybe it's better than I expect it will be. Maybe it'll be awful enough to amuse you. At this point we can only hope.
Some shorthand to keep track of:
SM = Stephanie Meyer, the author
T.01 = Twilight Series, Book 1 (Twilight). That's right, I'm doing the whole series... potentially.
I'll bold the first time a character appears in discussing a chapter and tag it.
No, I didn't buy the books. I have a library card and a will to live.
Maybe it's better than I expect it will be. Maybe it'll be awful enough to amuse you. At this point we can only hope.
Some shorthand to keep track of:
SM = Stephanie Meyer, the author
T.01 = Twilight Series, Book 1 (Twilight). That's right, I'm doing the whole series... potentially.
I'll bold the first time a character appears in discussing a chapter and tag it.
No, I didn't buy the books. I have a library card and a will to live.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)