In Which The Romeo And Juliet Analogy Is Abused
No, we're not going to Paris.
Bella is saved by Jacob and Sam, who take her back to Billy's house where Jacob tells her that Harry Clearwater, who we briefly met at a dinner party twelve chapters ago, just had a heart attack. There, saved you six pages.
Bella takes a nap then monologues about Romeo and Juliet, establishing a loooong analogy between Juliet as her and Paris as Jacob. If it's been a bit since High School English, Paris was Juliet's intended and is killed by Romeo in the final act of R&J. He's not a very developed character either, but his only purpose is to serve as a threat to Juliet's happiness and is never an alternate romance. Bella imagines that she might be able to have a life outside the tragic ending of Juliet. This scene would play out just fine if we weren't already in the middle of a larger Romeo and Juliet analogy / rewrite. Bella/Juliet is already past her suicide and Romeo is on the way to his and throwing Jacob in this late as a doomed Paris is just forcing me to compare this book to a renowned, seminal work of English Literature. You're not going to fare well, regardless, so stop trying to rewrite Romeo and Juliet with Vampires and come up with your own stuff!
Billy returns and announces that Harry has died so Jacob drives Bella home. On the way she imagines trying to start a new life with Jacob, even without being able to every love him. When they arrive at the house, Jacob tenses up and tells Bella there's a vampire present. Bella, however, sees the car in the driveway and realizes that it belongs to Carlisle.
SumUp C+
The whole point of this chapter seems to be to get us back to the house and I didn't feel like much attention was paid to the rescue or short recovery. Most of the chapter is Bella showing how much she remembers about a classic play that Meyer is using as a plot stencil.
While the R&J is getting arduous, Bella does seem honestly resigned to her fate and trying to work Jacob into that as a backup "safe harbor" isn't entirely unrealistic. If only she'd stop jumping off of cliffs.
The reverse is that Bella has spent a whole 5 months away from Edward and so the backup plan is hamstrung . First, her relationship with Edward never felt real and so this moaning about how she'll never love again is pathetic. Second, she's seventeen and dated Edward for a less than a year. That's not a lifetime of love, that's two semesters. Complaining that the love of her life is gone (again, as a 17 year old) makes Bella sound like a drama queen and her giant martyr act in staying with Jacob is pathetic. Maybe seventeen year old girls think and act like this, but that doesn't make them any less wrong. Again, it's the author's LOVE wand that keeps Bella tied to Edward and nothing else.
Last note, Harry seems to have been tossed into the story back in chapter 6 and killed here purely as a plot device. Why introduce the character, never use him and then kill him? Guess we'll find out shortly.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
T.02.15 Pressure
In Which Bella Attempts Suicide. Again.
"Girls are cruel", Mike says. What he means is "Bella is a cruel, heartless ....." but he doesn't. Bye Mike! See you in another dozen chapters!
Bella is stringing Jacob along for protection and mental stability and her protests in the text that things are "complicated" don't really hold water. She's using him, and it's bare emotional cruelty. She spends spring break in La Push hiding from Victoria, who has yet to make any kind of appearance in the text since the wahpireball game in the last book. Ugh. She is an unseen boogeyman and it's hardly inspiring a sense of fear. Bella's protective pack of werewolves disposed of Laurent with barely any effort, why is Victoria some kind of grand threat? She's another lone Vampire in the woods, that situation didn't amount to much last time.
Charlie is visiting La Push as well and they have dinner with Billy and Emily to mend friendships over that whole gang / cult misunderstanding. Bella's explanation is ... pathetic. I know she's having a time trying to keep Charlie out of the loop for his own safety, but she's got hours of free time to come up with better stories.
Jacob and Bella hide out in the garage and hold hands some more. We get a few details about werewolves that we pretty much already knew: they heal fast, they run hot (in contrast to wahmpires) and they don't like to wear shirts. Quil is also on the verge of converting, and everyone is sad / worried. Bella also fills Jake in on the plot of the last book and rats out the rest of the Cullens' superpowers. Good job, Bellz.
Bella moves her long, boring wait time (I hear you, sister) over to Emily's house where she's again overwhelmed by the aura of love that Sam and Emily radiate. I swear, Meyer wants to be Cupid instead of an author. I'd bet money she has an archery range in her back yard.
Jacob starts to feel bad that Bella is bored, so he decides to take her cliff diving. ....
Oh. Crap. Are you serious? Cliff diving? That's going to be the catalyst for Edward's danger? How did I not pick up on the Cliff Diving...
But the next day Billy tells Bella that Jake and company think they have Victoria trapped, so she heads out to the cliff to go solo. As you do, I guess, when you're a moron. There are three pages of "why" where Bella monologues about the pain of potentially losing Jacob and how jumping would serve as a way to flood out her fear with adrenaline. Plus she gets to hear fake-Edward argue with her while she climbs and before she jumps, which probably motivates her even more to leap. In the end, she tosses herself form the highest cliff (naturally) at dusk (of course) and finds out far too late that the water current isn't particularly friendly. She has a final, perfect hallucination of Edward as she drowns and we get to put the book and series away forever, content in this final, almost poetic end to Bella.
No, of course she doesn't die. I can have my mental hallucinations, too.
SumUp F
The moments of conversation between Bella & Jake in the garage are often wonderful. Emily is brought up and Jake very subtly touches on feeling Sam's pain when in wolf form. The telepathic cheating and already flawed Emily statue aside, this is a great moment and the deft hand shown here is far too rare in these books.This scene is touching and real in ways that the rest of the book needs desperately and will never have. Jacques' liver, I've no idea where Meyer keeps this Bella and Jake stuff. Maybe this comes from her real life. Maybe she really feels this way about someone or once did. I don't know. I wouldn't speculate about her personal life except I so badly want to know why she can write about affection and comfort and nuanced conversation when she has two characters who aren't the romantic focus of her novel. Imagine if every child in Maycomb was well described while Scout was a flat, boring sounding board for the rest of the cast of To Kill A Mockingbird. Yes, this isn't love, but these things should be some part of it! Instead, Bella and Edward are moonstruck morons who incessantly marvel at the qualities of the other that have nothing to do with character or personality.
I wanted to start with a nice note, because that's all the nice things I have to say about this chapter. It didn't really work. Sorry.
I'm only going to complain a tiny bit about Bella's ongoing need to see fake-Edward. I also want to add a tiny bit of grief about her putting her one-sided relationship with Jacob into the basket of crazy that she self-medicates with fear. I have a whole truckload of grief, but it's not really important at this point.
I'm also going to grumble just a little about Jacob being "in danger" as a motivator. The pack killed Laurent without so much as a scratch. Even then, the scratches the GET heal in under an hour. The werewolves even complained about it being too easy and not much fun. Vampires in this book seem to die all the time off camera with barely a mention. HOW IS JACOB IN ANY DANGER? This is the spark? Jacob now being in "danger"? Build UP the tension! Why wouldn't Meyer make more out of Laurent vs the Werewolves? That would add tension and some tiny facade of rationality to Bella's fear for Jacob's safety. Instead, we have the weakest reason ever to risk your life: because your not-boyfriend isn't really in much danger doing what he's been doing for the last week and you're tired of loitering on the beach or sitting awkwardly in people's homes. This isn't a reason to go cliff-diving. I don't buy it. Suspension of disbelief has shattered: I'm no longer participating in a story, I'm reading words in a book. And hating it.
All done. Now on to the big thing.
Ka-Thunk.
Hear that sound? That's the last piece.
The puzzle is now complete.
Edward is planning to kill himself sooner or later. We know this. He's already left Bella (for her own good, I'm sure he'll explain) and whether she dies in a retirement home at 99 or is hit by a meteor on graduation day, she's going to die. Edward has already stated that he's going to punch his own ticket right behind her, so it's down to timing.
So. Bella is now jumping off a cliff. In the best possible scenario, Victoria sees this and somehow communicates this knowledge to Edward as part of her revenge plot. Which so far is a really pathetic plot. Now this requires that Edward is somewhere near Forks to hear her or that Victoria has the magic power is to project her thoughts. The other option, which I'm bracing for, is that Alice has peeked into Bella's future at some point very recently and sees her leaping off a cliff in an apparent suicide attempt and will tell Edward. Why she wouldn't have seen this way back at the motorcycle training session will be a mystery.
It doesn't matter. Edward gets this information and grabs the bucket he's planning to kick: the Volturi. He's going to go to France or Italy or Spain or wherever they hang out in their big, heavy robes and he's going to get them to kill him.
And that, dear reader, is where the prelude comes in.Juliet Bella doesn't die (spoiler) and somehow finds out that Edward is going to kill himself. We get the scene in the prelude where Bella is sprinting across a "crowded square" as a clock inches toward noon. The sun is going to strike down (or something) and I guess Edward is going to be standing there, naked. He goes super-sparkle and the Volturi kill him? I guess to keep their secrets. Bella will save him, big reunion, reconciliation of break up, angry werewolves.
So that's our third act.
I just want to say, the reason Romeo and Juliet is a classic work of tragedy is that Romeo and Juliet DIE.
"Girls are cruel", Mike says. What he means is "Bella is a cruel, heartless ....." but he doesn't. Bye Mike! See you in another dozen chapters!
Bella is stringing Jacob along for protection and mental stability and her protests in the text that things are "complicated" don't really hold water. She's using him, and it's bare emotional cruelty. She spends spring break in La Push hiding from Victoria, who has yet to make any kind of appearance in the text since the wahpireball game in the last book. Ugh. She is an unseen boogeyman and it's hardly inspiring a sense of fear. Bella's protective pack of werewolves disposed of Laurent with barely any effort, why is Victoria some kind of grand threat? She's another lone Vampire in the woods, that situation didn't amount to much last time.
Charlie is visiting La Push as well and they have dinner with Billy and Emily to mend friendships over that whole gang / cult misunderstanding. Bella's explanation is ... pathetic. I know she's having a time trying to keep Charlie out of the loop for his own safety, but she's got hours of free time to come up with better stories.
Jacob and Bella hide out in the garage and hold hands some more. We get a few details about werewolves that we pretty much already knew: they heal fast, they run hot (in contrast to wahmpires) and they don't like to wear shirts. Quil is also on the verge of converting, and everyone is sad / worried. Bella also fills Jake in on the plot of the last book and rats out the rest of the Cullens' superpowers. Good job, Bellz.
Bella moves her long, boring wait time (I hear you, sister) over to Emily's house where she's again overwhelmed by the aura of love that Sam and Emily radiate. I swear, Meyer wants to be Cupid instead of an author. I'd bet money she has an archery range in her back yard.
Jacob starts to feel bad that Bella is bored, so he decides to take her cliff diving. ....
Oh. Crap. Are you serious? Cliff diving? That's going to be the catalyst for Edward's danger? How did I not pick up on the Cliff Diving...
But the next day Billy tells Bella that Jake and company think they have Victoria trapped, so she heads out to the cliff to go solo. As you do, I guess, when you're a moron. There are three pages of "why" where Bella monologues about the pain of potentially losing Jacob and how jumping would serve as a way to flood out her fear with adrenaline. Plus she gets to hear fake-Edward argue with her while she climbs and before she jumps, which probably motivates her even more to leap. In the end, she tosses herself form the highest cliff (naturally) at dusk (of course) and finds out far too late that the water current isn't particularly friendly. She has a final, perfect hallucination of Edward as she drowns and we get to put the book and series away forever, content in this final, almost poetic end to Bella.
No, of course she doesn't die. I can have my mental hallucinations, too.
SumUp F
The moments of conversation between Bella & Jake in the garage are often wonderful. Emily is brought up and Jake very subtly touches on feeling Sam's pain when in wolf form. The telepathic cheating and already flawed Emily statue aside, this is a great moment and the deft hand shown here is far too rare in these books.This scene is touching and real in ways that the rest of the book needs desperately and will never have. Jacques' liver, I've no idea where Meyer keeps this Bella and Jake stuff. Maybe this comes from her real life. Maybe she really feels this way about someone or once did. I don't know. I wouldn't speculate about her personal life except I so badly want to know why she can write about affection and comfort and nuanced conversation when she has two characters who aren't the romantic focus of her novel. Imagine if every child in Maycomb was well described while Scout was a flat, boring sounding board for the rest of the cast of To Kill A Mockingbird. Yes, this isn't love, but these things should be some part of it! Instead, Bella and Edward are moonstruck morons who incessantly marvel at the qualities of the other that have nothing to do with character or personality.
I wanted to start with a nice note, because that's all the nice things I have to say about this chapter. It didn't really work. Sorry.
I'm only going to complain a tiny bit about Bella's ongoing need to see fake-Edward. I also want to add a tiny bit of grief about her putting her one-sided relationship with Jacob into the basket of crazy that she self-medicates with fear. I have a whole truckload of grief, but it's not really important at this point.
I'm also going to grumble just a little about Jacob being "in danger" as a motivator. The pack killed Laurent without so much as a scratch. Even then, the scratches the GET heal in under an hour. The werewolves even complained about it being too easy and not much fun. Vampires in this book seem to die all the time off camera with barely a mention. HOW IS JACOB IN ANY DANGER? This is the spark? Jacob now being in "danger"? Build UP the tension! Why wouldn't Meyer make more out of Laurent vs the Werewolves? That would add tension and some tiny facade of rationality to Bella's fear for Jacob's safety. Instead, we have the weakest reason ever to risk your life: because your not-boyfriend isn't really in much danger doing what he's been doing for the last week and you're tired of loitering on the beach or sitting awkwardly in people's homes. This isn't a reason to go cliff-diving. I don't buy it. Suspension of disbelief has shattered: I'm no longer participating in a story, I'm reading words in a book. And hating it.
All done. Now on to the big thing.
Ka-Thunk.
Hear that sound? That's the last piece.
The puzzle is now complete.
- Bella jumps off a cliff.
- Edward made her promise not to hurt herself.
- Alice can see the future. Sort of.
- Edward can read minds.
- If Bella dies, or if Edward thinks she's dead, Edward is going to kill himself.
- The Volturi can and will kill vampires
- Edward considered them as Suicide Plan A the last time Bella might've died.
Edward is planning to kill himself sooner or later. We know this. He's already left Bella (for her own good, I'm sure he'll explain) and whether she dies in a retirement home at 99 or is hit by a meteor on graduation day, she's going to die. Edward has already stated that he's going to punch his own ticket right behind her, so it's down to timing.
So. Bella is now jumping off a cliff. In the best possible scenario, Victoria sees this and somehow communicates this knowledge to Edward as part of her revenge plot. Which so far is a really pathetic plot. Now this requires that Edward is somewhere near Forks to hear her or that Victoria has the magic power is to project her thoughts. The other option, which I'm bracing for, is that Alice has peeked into Bella's future at some point very recently and sees her leaping off a cliff in an apparent suicide attempt and will tell Edward. Why she wouldn't have seen this way back at the motorcycle training session will be a mystery.
It doesn't matter. Edward gets this information and grabs the bucket he's planning to kick: the Volturi. He's going to go to France or Italy or Spain or wherever they hang out in their big, heavy robes and he's going to get them to kill him.
And that, dear reader, is where the prelude comes in.
So that's our third act.
I just want to say, the reason Romeo and Juliet is a classic work of tragedy is that Romeo and Juliet DIE.
Friday, September 24, 2010
T.02.14 Family
In Which We Meet Werewolves. Again.
And they're "really big half-naked boys". Guess Meyer really knows her audience, wonder how she'll neuter the werewolves so they can't possibly have sex.
Jacob takes Bella to meet the rest of the pack: Sam, Embry, Paul and Jared. Paul goes all wolfy when he sees Bella and Jacob responds in kind to protect her. Naturally. They disappear and Sam follows to make sure... something something I don't care because they won't actually hurt each other. It's almost exciting. Embry and Jared take Bella to Emily's house, who is Sam's girlfriend.
At Emily's house, I get conflicted. On the one hand, Emily has clearly been mauled by Sam in a werewolf rage. It establishes actual danger, sets up a heartbreaking foundation for their relationship and her continued dedication to Sam is frankly a beautiful plot element to set up. On the other hand, she's some statuesque goddess of beauty who's been marred, not just a pretty girl. Instead of her beauty making the situation worse it flatly overplays the hand. This isn't some pretty local girl who fell for the wrong guy and suffered, this is a "satiny copper skin... long, black hair" goddess statue that he's scratched. With a heart of gold, no less. It's yet another poorly drawn caricature of love. Emily is a fantastic cook and when Sam arrives there's birds and flowers and an orchestra starts playing Vivaldi (the "Spring" love song in all the commercials). It's trite.
Jacob and Paul arrive, now best buds again, and they all discuss Victoria and Bella as bait.
Finally, we cut back to Billy's house where Charlie has arrived. Friendship is mended over TV basketball as part of the plan to keep Bella in La Push so the Wolves can watch over her.
SumUp C-
The werewolf pack is fine and I was very relieved that the requisite information revelation was done via actions and varied conversation rather than the tedium of Edward's 3-chapter interrogation. So the reveals are gently paced and intermixed with bits of other information about the werewolves themselves.
It doesn't offset Bella being so slow to understand things, the ultra-powerful Werewolves and the train wreck that is Emily.
The setup appears to be in place. The werewolves will protect Bella so she can moan and whine and be scared for us. I'm almost certain Victoria has to appear so we can get our danger catalyst in place and launch the third act. Please?
And they're "really big half-naked boys". Guess Meyer really knows her audience, wonder how she'll neuter the werewolves so they can't possibly have sex.
Jacob takes Bella to meet the rest of the pack: Sam, Embry, Paul and Jared. Paul goes all wolfy when he sees Bella and Jacob responds in kind to protect her. Naturally. They disappear and Sam follows to make sure... something something I don't care because they won't actually hurt each other. It's almost exciting. Embry and Jared take Bella to Emily's house, who is Sam's girlfriend.
At Emily's house, I get conflicted. On the one hand, Emily has clearly been mauled by Sam in a werewolf rage. It establishes actual danger, sets up a heartbreaking foundation for their relationship and her continued dedication to Sam is frankly a beautiful plot element to set up. On the other hand, she's some statuesque goddess of beauty who's been marred, not just a pretty girl. Instead of her beauty making the situation worse it flatly overplays the hand. This isn't some pretty local girl who fell for the wrong guy and suffered, this is a "satiny copper skin... long, black hair" goddess statue that he's scratched. With a heart of gold, no less. It's yet another poorly drawn caricature of love. Emily is a fantastic cook and when Sam arrives there's birds and flowers and an orchestra starts playing Vivaldi (the "Spring" love song in all the commercials). It's trite.
Jacob and Paul arrive, now best buds again, and they all discuss Victoria and Bella as bait.
Finally, we cut back to Billy's house where Charlie has arrived. Friendship is mended over TV basketball as part of the plan to keep Bella in La Push so the Wolves can watch over her.
SumUp C-
The werewolf pack is fine and I was very relieved that the requisite information revelation was done via actions and varied conversation rather than the tedium of Edward's 3-chapter interrogation. So the reveals are gently paced and intermixed with bits of other information about the werewolves themselves.
It doesn't offset Bella being so slow to understand things, the ultra-powerful Werewolves and the train wreck that is Emily.
The setup appears to be in place. The werewolves will protect Bella so she can moan and whine and be scared for us. I'm almost certain Victoria has to appear so we can get our danger catalyst in place and launch the third act. Please?
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
T.02.13 Killers
In Which We Suffer Through Dramatic Irony
Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows things the characters in the book don't know. It provides tension because we see a character make mistakes while we have full knowledge of why it's a mistake. It's a powerful tool, but only if the characters aren't unaware because they're morons. Watch me lose respect for the main characters.
Bella thinks Jacob is a killer, despite the blindingly obvious fact that there's an actual Vampire in the woods. A creature that Bella is familiar with as an actual killer and one that she's personally afraid will come and kill her.
Jacob thinks Bella won't accept his werewolf-ism because it makes him a monster. Yet she dated a Vampire not six months ago, a fact that he's very much aware of. I can almost forgive this, Jacob is young and naive and Bella hasn't really been sharing emotions very well. The problem comes from the conversation, he's blind to what Bella believes because it's convenient to the miscommunication subplot.
After chatting with Billy and peeking in on a sleeping Jacob, Bella decides to let Jacob sleep and warn him about Charlie & the hunters when he wakes. She sits down on the same beach where Scary Stories took place in T.01.06. "Jacob was my friend, whether he killed people or not", she decides. Wow. If any friends of mine are considering starting a hiker killing spree, put my lost friendship on the "con" side of your decision scale. Just sayin'.
Jacob finally arrives and we get to endure a 4 page long "comedy" of errors where Bella thinks Jacob is talking about killing people and he thinks she's angry at him for being a monster who doesn't actually kill people. Jacob then explains that the werewolf pack has been protecting Forks from a vampire. Bella suddenly understands that if Laurent is dead and if the werewolf pack isn't offing hikers, then Victoria is in the area. Oh, it's a revelation. Now maybe we're all caught up.
Bella then fills in some missing motivations for Victoria, explaining that Bella is the intended blood donor thanks to her connection to James' death. Which is a weird, nonsensical bit of logic. Why would Victoria care about Bella? Bella's job in the whole Hunt was to get lugged around and then to deliver herself to James, the guy trying to kill her. Ultimately, she was rescued by the Cullens who then killed James. I'll remind everyone this "killing James" was done off-camera and barely rated a mention which is high on the on the list of literary crimes the first book committed. I'm not going to rant again. The short of it is that Bella had close to nothing to do with James' death. Her only failure was not dying fast enough to prevent the Cullens from finding her.
Regardless, Jacob thinks this will help the pack with their plans to protect Forks and kill Victoria. Bella also clues Jacob (and the pack via more telepathy, ugh) to the fact that Edward can read minds and Alice can sort-of see the future. Guess that's fair play for telling Edward about Jacob's loose lips. Someone needs to stop telling Bella secrets. Jacob drags Bella off to meet the rest of the pack.
SumUp F
Finally, the big werewolf reveal and acceptance so we just have to suffer through some Q&A next chapter and it's done.
Why an F? The dramatic irony on Bella's side was manufactured and unbelievable. It existed just so the reader could chuckle as Jacob and Bella argued across each other until they worked out the misunderstanding. The conversations tell us what we already know and they drag out for 80% of the chapter. It's tedious and I'm guessing most readers would skim through it.
As for character development, we find ourselves in very familiar territory. Bella is once again threatened by a vampire while surrounded by super-powerful beings to keep her safe. In other words, a damsel in distress. She's scared. She's a sounding board for other characters to reveal their actions and motives. She blabs stuff that her "friends" would probably rather she shut up about. She's essentially pointless. She is Bella from book 1. And Bella from book 1 was a miserable character.
Dramatic Irony is when the audience knows things the characters in the book don't know. It provides tension because we see a character make mistakes while we have full knowledge of why it's a mistake. It's a powerful tool, but only if the characters aren't unaware because they're morons. Watch me lose respect for the main characters.
Bella thinks Jacob is a killer, despite the blindingly obvious fact that there's an actual Vampire in the woods. A creature that Bella is familiar with as an actual killer and one that she's personally afraid will come and kill her.
Jacob thinks Bella won't accept his werewolf-ism because it makes him a monster. Yet she dated a Vampire not six months ago, a fact that he's very much aware of. I can almost forgive this, Jacob is young and naive and Bella hasn't really been sharing emotions very well. The problem comes from the conversation, he's blind to what Bella believes because it's convenient to the miscommunication subplot.
After chatting with Billy and peeking in on a sleeping Jacob, Bella decides to let Jacob sleep and warn him about Charlie & the hunters when he wakes. She sits down on the same beach where Scary Stories took place in T.01.06. "Jacob was my friend, whether he killed people or not", she decides. Wow. If any friends of mine are considering starting a hiker killing spree, put my lost friendship on the "con" side of your decision scale. Just sayin'.
Jacob finally arrives and we get to endure a 4 page long "comedy" of errors where Bella thinks Jacob is talking about killing people and he thinks she's angry at him for being a monster who doesn't actually kill people. Jacob then explains that the werewolf pack has been protecting Forks from a vampire. Bella suddenly understands that if Laurent is dead and if the werewolf pack isn't offing hikers, then Victoria is in the area. Oh, it's a revelation. Now maybe we're all caught up.
Bella then fills in some missing motivations for Victoria, explaining that Bella is the intended blood donor thanks to her connection to James' death. Which is a weird, nonsensical bit of logic. Why would Victoria care about Bella? Bella's job in the whole Hunt was to get lugged around and then to deliver herself to James, the guy trying to kill her. Ultimately, she was rescued by the Cullens who then killed James. I'll remind everyone this "killing James" was done off-camera and barely rated a mention which is high on the on the list of literary crimes the first book committed. I'm not going to rant again. The short of it is that Bella had close to nothing to do with James' death. Her only failure was not dying fast enough to prevent the Cullens from finding her.
Regardless, Jacob thinks this will help the pack with their plans to protect Forks and kill Victoria. Bella also clues Jacob (and the pack via more telepathy, ugh) to the fact that Edward can read minds and Alice can sort-of see the future. Guess that's fair play for telling Edward about Jacob's loose lips. Someone needs to stop telling Bella secrets. Jacob drags Bella off to meet the rest of the pack.
SumUp F
Finally, the big werewolf reveal and acceptance so we just have to suffer through some Q&A next chapter and it's done.
Why an F? The dramatic irony on Bella's side was manufactured and unbelievable. It existed just so the reader could chuckle as Jacob and Bella argued across each other until they worked out the misunderstanding. The conversations tell us what we already know and they drag out for 80% of the chapter. It's tedious and I'm guessing most readers would skim through it.
As for character development, we find ourselves in very familiar territory. Bella is once again threatened by a vampire while surrounded by super-powerful beings to keep her safe. In other words, a damsel in distress. She's scared. She's a sounding board for other characters to reveal their actions and motives. She blabs stuff that her "friends" would probably rather she shut up about. She's essentially pointless. She is Bella from book 1. And Bella from book 1 was a miserable character.
Monday, September 20, 2010
T.02.12 Intruder
In Which Jacob Is Mysterious and Bella is Dumb
Bella wakes up (shot). Jacob is breaking into her window, she yells at him, smacks him around and faints. Hey, the flashback light is flashing like mad, I wonder why? Essentially, Jacob can't tell her what's wrong with him, but since he promised not to hurt her and has expanded that to mean emotional distress, he's in a bit of a bind. We, of course, know what's going on and he gives her the clue to remember the "scary stories" scene. I was waiting for him to pull out a copy of the first book with a bookmark at chapter 6, but no luck.
After he leaves, Bella goes back to sleep and dreams. This allows her to figure it all out and she pegs Jacob as a Werewolf and she realizes he's part of Sam's pack. Really? Why do this via dream sequence? Why not give your protagonist some brains? Gods, it's bad enough that Bella is physically incapable thanks to Meyer's stable of super-powered monsters, but she's also constantly prevented from doing anything intelligent. Here's a golden opportunity to have Bella sit down and put the pieces together. Instead, Meyer hands her the answer via dream.
She wakes up after her epiphany and tries to rush off to see Jacob, but it's really early and she runs into Charlie downstairs. He's leading a hunt to track down the big, bad wolves. Bella has a crisis moment.
WHY?
Bella's hysterical card has expired. She's got all morning to put 2+2 together. She should know that Victoria is after her or at LEAST believe that Laurent is still out in the woods. She knows Victoria isn't a wahmpire and she knows that Jacob spelled out the Vamp vs WWolf thing way back when. How many more clues do you need? Apparently one, the clue where Jacob tells her outright they don't kill people. I'll bet that comes soon. I bet there's a lot of misunderstandings first.
SumUp D-
Duplicate boyfriends. Dream Sequences. Jacob the tongue-tied. Bella the idiot.
I honestly think Meyer doesn't like her protagonist very much. She certainly doesn't draw her as being very good at figuring things out on her own. The big mystery in the first book was Edward's wahmpireism. Bella had some early ideas, but it essentially boiled down to her being spoon-fed all the information she needed in a ludicrously simplistic manner. Jacob spelled out the vampire facts for her at the beach. Edward refused to give her any misinformation (even with perfect reasons) and either told her the truth outright or just acted mysterious. Once she had the base foundation we got three chapters of Q&A to fill in the rest of the structure. Viola, Bella didn't have to do much of anything.
Now that Bella doesn't have all the pieces laid out for her and has to do a tiny bit of work, she fails to do anything except accept the situation as given. How does she reach "Werewolf"? Dream sequence reveal, also known as deus ex machina. Then, she has a little misdirection thrown at her about dead hikers and wolves by Charlue. What does she conclude? Jacob is a murderer. Which you'd think she wouldn't bat an eye at, what with Edward's history of bloodshed. But no, she's all aflutter and upset. This means she can't draw the obvious line between Victoria or Laurent, one of whom has to be lurking in the woods, and the deaths of hikers. Guess the dream sequence should have highlighted the part about Werewolves being Native Protectors.
So there will be a big confrontation and lots of Q&A about Werewolves. We'll learn they're the good guys and Bella will again be surrounded by super-powerful beings to protect her from the other, super-powerful beings. Somehow this Werewolf and Victoria battle will draw Edward into danger and Bella will have to do something. Hopefully, she'll have to use some skill or brains to solve the problem, but I doubt it.
Bella wakes up (shot). Jacob is breaking into her window, she yells at him, smacks him around and faints. Hey, the flashback light is flashing like mad, I wonder why? Essentially, Jacob can't tell her what's wrong with him, but since he promised not to hurt her and has expanded that to mean emotional distress, he's in a bit of a bind. We, of course, know what's going on and he gives her the clue to remember the "scary stories" scene. I was waiting for him to pull out a copy of the first book with a bookmark at chapter 6, but no luck.
After he leaves, Bella goes back to sleep and dreams. This allows her to figure it all out and she pegs Jacob as a Werewolf and she realizes he's part of Sam's pack. Really? Why do this via dream sequence? Why not give your protagonist some brains? Gods, it's bad enough that Bella is physically incapable thanks to Meyer's stable of super-powered monsters, but she's also constantly prevented from doing anything intelligent. Here's a golden opportunity to have Bella sit down and put the pieces together. Instead, Meyer hands her the answer via dream.
She wakes up after her epiphany and tries to rush off to see Jacob, but it's really early and she runs into Charlie downstairs. He's leading a hunt to track down the big, bad wolves. Bella has a crisis moment.
WHY?
Bella's hysterical card has expired. She's got all morning to put 2+2 together. She should know that Victoria is after her or at LEAST believe that Laurent is still out in the woods. She knows Victoria isn't a wahmpire and she knows that Jacob spelled out the Vamp vs WWolf thing way back when. How many more clues do you need? Apparently one, the clue where Jacob tells her outright they don't kill people. I'll bet that comes soon. I bet there's a lot of misunderstandings first.
SumUp D-
Duplicate boyfriends. Dream Sequences. Jacob the tongue-tied. Bella the idiot.
I honestly think Meyer doesn't like her protagonist very much. She certainly doesn't draw her as being very good at figuring things out on her own. The big mystery in the first book was Edward's wahmpireism. Bella had some early ideas, but it essentially boiled down to her being spoon-fed all the information she needed in a ludicrously simplistic manner. Jacob spelled out the vampire facts for her at the beach. Edward refused to give her any misinformation (even with perfect reasons) and either told her the truth outright or just acted mysterious. Once she had the base foundation we got three chapters of Q&A to fill in the rest of the structure. Viola, Bella didn't have to do much of anything.
Now that Bella doesn't have all the pieces laid out for her and has to do a tiny bit of work, she fails to do anything except accept the situation as given. How does she reach "Werewolf"? Dream sequence reveal, also known as deus ex machina. Then, she has a little misdirection thrown at her about dead hikers and wolves by Charlue. What does she conclude? Jacob is a murderer. Which you'd think she wouldn't bat an eye at, what with Edward's history of bloodshed. But no, she's all aflutter and upset. This means she can't draw the obvious line between Victoria or Laurent, one of whom has to be lurking in the woods, and the deaths of hikers. Guess the dream sequence should have highlighted the part about Werewolves being Native Protectors.
So there will be a big confrontation and lots of Q&A about Werewolves. We'll learn they're the good guys and Bella will again be surrounded by super-powerful beings to protect her from the other, super-powerful beings. Somehow this Werewolf and Victoria battle will draw Edward into danger and Bella will have to do something. Hopefully, she'll have to use some skill or brains to solve the problem, but I doubt it.
Friday, September 17, 2010
T.02.11 Cult
In Which There Is Pointless Padding
Bella continues to try and contact Jacob through the great wall of Billy, then decides to confront him directly. She calls Charlie who reveals that the missing hiker watch has been upgraded to dead hiker warning.
When she reaches the reservation she picks up Quil, who is scared and reveals that Jacob has now joined Sam's cult. Bella drops him off and parks in front of Billy's house to wait out Jacob. When Jacob finally arrives, he is angry and brooding. Bella drags him away from Sam, Embry, Paul and Jared, but Jacob is conflicted and short. To illustrate this, the eye emotes flow in like a river. Shots at the ready:
"I'm not good enough to be your friend anymore", Jacob tells her. "I'm not good". These are flashbacks to you-know-who as we ride the same rollercoaster painted a new color. Bella gets upset and goes home. Charlie is concerned, so she shares the cult idea with him and Charlie gets into a fight with Billy over the phone. Ah, actual drama. Sort of.
SumUp: D
Second verse, same as the first. We've ridden the romance-o-coaster with Jacob up to this point and now that we're at the big reveal, it's pretty much a let down. The eye-emoting doesn't help, but we're back to mucking around in the swamp of "I'm no good for you". We know he's a werewolf, we know Bella will find out (by someone telling her, I'm guessing) so why are we stuck going through the obvious motions?
Let's recap the Jacob saga, starting back in "Waking Up":
I hope I'm wrong. I hope this trend continues, but I'm looking around wildly for some path other than the romance novel reunion at the end of this book and that doesn't give me anything to grab.
Bella continues to try and contact Jacob through the great wall of Billy, then decides to confront him directly. She calls Charlie who reveals that the missing hiker watch has been upgraded to dead hiker warning.
When she reaches the reservation she picks up Quil, who is scared and reveals that Jacob has now joined Sam's cult. Bella drops him off and parks in front of Billy's house to wait out Jacob. When Jacob finally arrives, he is angry and brooding. Bella drags him away from Sam, Embry, Paul and Jared, but Jacob is conflicted and short. To illustrate this, the eye emotes flow in like a river. Shots at the ready:
- eyes = hostile
- eyes = fear
- eyes = rage burning
- eyes = critical
- eyes = fury
- eyes = desperate
- eyes = angry
- eyes = full of pity.
"I'm not good enough to be your friend anymore", Jacob tells her. "I'm not good". These are flashbacks to you-know-who as we ride the same rollercoaster painted a new color. Bella gets upset and goes home. Charlie is concerned, so she shares the cult idea with him and Charlie gets into a fight with Billy over the phone. Ah, actual drama. Sort of.
SumUp: D
Second verse, same as the first. We've ridden the romance-o-coaster with Jacob up to this point and now that we're at the big reveal, it's pretty much a let down. The eye-emoting doesn't help, but we're back to mucking around in the swamp of "I'm no good for you". We know he's a werewolf, we know Bella will find out (by someone telling her, I'm guessing) so why are we stuck going through the obvious motions?
Let's recap the Jacob saga, starting back in "Waking Up":
- Chapter 4: C-
- Chapter 5: B-
- Chapter 6: A
- Chatper 7: B-
- Chapter 8: C
- Chapter 9: B
- Chapter 10: B+
I hope I'm wrong. I hope this trend continues, but I'm looking around wildly for some path other than the romance novel reunion at the end of this book and that doesn't give me anything to grab.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
T.02.10 The Meadow
In Which We Finally Meet Werewolves
Bella can't get in touch with her new fix... for 8 pages. Yes, it adds to the dramatic tension if Jacob is offscreen and Bella doesn't know why. It's not really dramatic irony because while I don't think we're meant to know he's transforming into a werewolf, given all the hype and setup it'd be tough not to figure this out.
Jacob is sick.
Jacob has mono.
Jacob isn't there.
Billy runs the gamut of excuses, then stops taking Bella's calls altogether.
Finally, Bella decides to do some meadow searching without Jacob. She's jonsing for a fix and without either monster-man in her life there's only so many dangerous activities left. She can't go motorcycling anymore, it's too safe.
When she reaches the meadow, there's no magic. No hallucination. No sparkles. It's a dramatic moment of loss and despair, and I actually liked it. What Bella does find there is Laurent, who doesn't sparkle (cloudy day) and who is equally surprised to see Bella. They begin a conversation in which Laurent is trying to get information from Bella while she slowly realizes just how dangerous her situation is. Making it worse is fake-Edward in her head giving her (generally awful) advice all the while. Aside from that, Laurent plays a smooth game of cat and mouse with Bella and ends up revealing quite a bit:
Before Laurent can hurt Bella, five werewolves appear out of the woods. They're described as common looking wolves scaled up to bear-size. With all the clues we've had so far, I'm not sure how anyone doesn't know what these are. There are 5, which makes Sam's pack (spoiler) one larger to include the recently-converted Jacob (spoiler). So according to my list from back at the cliff-dive, that's Sam, Jacob, Embry, Paul and Jared. The werewolves chase Laurent away, and Bella is terrified and confused.
I'm willing to let this slide for a short bit given her acceptably hysterical condition, but honestly, Bella, you've accepted vampires into your reality and Jacob spelled this out last year. Even Edward gave you a pretty solid confirmation during the car ride back from Port Angeles when he marveled at the tribe's extraordinary century-long memory. Those are werewolves. You dated a Wahmpire and were chased by Vampires. You know for a fact that Vampires will kill a bear single-handed and eat it. You don't have to expect fairies and goblins, but they're BEAR-SIZED Wolves that all but dismissed you as a meal/threat and chased away a Vampire and likely killed it. The moment a Vampire flees from a giant wolf, assume "wolf" is now just a descriptive term. When you finally meet Edward again, demand he spell out whatever other supernatural creatures exist so you have a handy checklist.
So Bella flees and gets lost in the woods and finally makes her way home. There she tells Charlie about the wolves and goes to bed terrified that Laurent is going to pounce her at any moment.
There's a big issue here. Bella tries desperately to imagine that the (were)wolves could have been able to kill Laurent, sparing her from being hunted down by Victoria and or Laurent, but she can't. She can't imagine that Laurent isn't still out there and won't kill her personally or report here whereabouts to Victoria. But what, exactly, is Laurent going to report? Bella is living in the same place she was living before? Same house. Same room. Maybe she moved the furniture around. How is Victoria not a risk even if Laurent is killed? Wouldn't Victoria start by looking for Bella there, especially if Laurent disappeared while scouting the area? Bella ignores what she personally witnessed, five monstrous wolves chasing an obviously terrified -vampire- into the woods as if it makes any difference. Ugh.
SumUp C+
Laurent's verbal undressing of Bella in the meadow was sweet, sweet nectar. He was intelligent, inhuman, detatched, aware and destroyed Bella's feeble mental defenses. Steinbeck's belt-buckle, that was wonderful stuff. The natural descriptions were vivid the werewolves are bestowed hair and teeth and claws in the correct abundance and they feel like a valid threat.
Bella, however, once again undermines the whole operation. The broken but outgoing and determined Ms Swan of the last few chapters is again reduced to helpless damsel, now haunted by the obviously dead Laurent, Victoria and a pack of giant Wolves. This is our protagonist, ladies and gents, the ever at risk Bella M Swan and her amazing powers of getting others to protect her.
As for the new mystery, Bella seems to be waiting for someone to (again) spell it out to her. We, however, can start to put some puzzle pieces into place. Victoria is going to return to kill Bella. This actually answers our "Do Vampires Have Sex" question a bit, they at least pair off heterosexually as "mates", whatever that may involve. In any case, Victoria has returned, Laurent is (presumably) now dead and the Werewolves are defending Forks & Bella from her attack. So it seems like the last piece Bella needs is labeled "Werewolf".
As for me & my Edward theories, I have a new piece, too. I suspect Victoria might use Bella in the same way James did, as bait. It would be an awfully similar premise to the first book, but that hasn't stopped Ms Meyer yet. The other option is the Romeo and Juliet ending, which I'm dreading. If Edward thinks Bella is actually dead because Victoria tricks him, then that whole scene about the Voltari and Edward's suicidal tendencies comes into play.
Bella can't get in touch with her new fix... for 8 pages. Yes, it adds to the dramatic tension if Jacob is offscreen and Bella doesn't know why. It's not really dramatic irony because while I don't think we're meant to know he's transforming into a werewolf, given all the hype and setup it'd be tough not to figure this out.
Jacob is sick.
Jacob has mono.
Jacob isn't there.
Billy runs the gamut of excuses, then stops taking Bella's calls altogether.
Finally, Bella decides to do some meadow searching without Jacob. She's jonsing for a fix and without either monster-man in her life there's only so many dangerous activities left. She can't go motorcycling anymore, it's too safe.
When she reaches the meadow, there's no magic. No hallucination. No sparkles. It's a dramatic moment of loss and despair, and I actually liked it. What Bella does find there is Laurent, who doesn't sparkle (cloudy day) and who is equally surprised to see Bella. They begin a conversation in which Laurent is trying to get information from Bella while she slowly realizes just how dangerous her situation is. Making it worse is fake-Edward in her head giving her (generally awful) advice all the while. Aside from that, Laurent plays a smooth game of cat and mouse with Bella and ends up revealing quite a bit:
- He's been to Alaska and Denali.
- He has been with Tanya and her sister Irina
- He "cheats", that is he eats people.
- Victoria is looking for Bella to avenge Jame's death.
- Laurent is working for Victoria as a scout
Before Laurent can hurt Bella, five werewolves appear out of the woods. They're described as common looking wolves scaled up to bear-size. With all the clues we've had so far, I'm not sure how anyone doesn't know what these are. There are 5, which makes Sam's pack (spoiler) one larger to include the recently-converted Jacob (spoiler). So according to my list from back at the cliff-dive, that's Sam, Jacob, Embry, Paul and Jared. The werewolves chase Laurent away, and Bella is terrified and confused.
I'm willing to let this slide for a short bit given her acceptably hysterical condition, but honestly, Bella, you've accepted vampires into your reality and Jacob spelled this out last year. Even Edward gave you a pretty solid confirmation during the car ride back from Port Angeles when he marveled at the tribe's extraordinary century-long memory. Those are werewolves. You dated a Wahmpire and were chased by Vampires. You know for a fact that Vampires will kill a bear single-handed and eat it. You don't have to expect fairies and goblins, but they're BEAR-SIZED Wolves that all but dismissed you as a meal/threat and chased away a Vampire and likely killed it. The moment a Vampire flees from a giant wolf, assume "wolf" is now just a descriptive term. When you finally meet Edward again, demand he spell out whatever other supernatural creatures exist so you have a handy checklist.
So Bella flees and gets lost in the woods and finally makes her way home. There she tells Charlie about the wolves and goes to bed terrified that Laurent is going to pounce her at any moment.
There's a big issue here. Bella tries desperately to imagine that the (were)wolves could have been able to kill Laurent, sparing her from being hunted down by Victoria and or Laurent, but she can't. She can't imagine that Laurent isn't still out there and won't kill her personally or report here whereabouts to Victoria. But what, exactly, is Laurent going to report? Bella is living in the same place she was living before? Same house. Same room. Maybe she moved the furniture around. How is Victoria not a risk even if Laurent is killed? Wouldn't Victoria start by looking for Bella there, especially if Laurent disappeared while scouting the area? Bella ignores what she personally witnessed, five monstrous wolves chasing an obviously terrified -vampire- into the woods as if it makes any difference. Ugh.
SumUp C+
Laurent's verbal undressing of Bella in the meadow was sweet, sweet nectar. He was intelligent, inhuman, detatched, aware and destroyed Bella's feeble mental defenses. Steinbeck's belt-buckle, that was wonderful stuff. The natural descriptions were vivid the werewolves are bestowed hair and teeth and claws in the correct abundance and they feel like a valid threat.
Bella, however, once again undermines the whole operation. The broken but outgoing and determined Ms Swan of the last few chapters is again reduced to helpless damsel, now haunted by the obviously dead Laurent, Victoria and a pack of giant Wolves. This is our protagonist, ladies and gents, the ever at risk Bella M Swan and her amazing powers of getting others to protect her.
As for the new mystery, Bella seems to be waiting for someone to (again) spell it out to her. We, however, can start to put some puzzle pieces into place. Victoria is going to return to kill Bella. This actually answers our "Do Vampires Have Sex" question a bit, they at least pair off heterosexually as "mates", whatever that may involve. In any case, Victoria has returned, Laurent is (presumably) now dead and the Werewolves are defending Forks & Bella from her attack. So it seems like the last piece Bella needs is labeled "Werewolf".
As for me & my Edward theories, I have a new piece, too. I suspect Victoria might use Bella in the same way James did, as bait. It would be an awfully similar premise to the first book, but that hasn't stopped Ms Meyer yet. The other option is the Romeo and Juliet ending, which I'm dreading. If Edward thinks Bella is actually dead because Victoria tricks him, then that whole scene about the Voltari and Edward's suicidal tendencies comes into play.
Monday, September 13, 2010
T.02.09 Third Wheel
In Which Jacob Gets Brothered
Bella finds that motorcycles no longer inspire hallucinations, so she's looking for a new high.
Jacob buys her a small Valentines day gift, which given her admiration of his chest recently isn't a huge leap. Bella deflects again and decides to set up a group trip to the movies to put Jacob off the scent. Ouch. Who does she recruit for this? Her other admirer, Mike. I have to admit, that's a whole new level of cold. Sarcasm: I can't see this going badly!
So on Friday they're going to Port Angeles to see the new bloodbath shoot-em-up movie. Lots of invites, not many coming. Quill is grounded. Jessica is not her friend anymore. Lauren never was. Tyler and Conner won't go because of Jessica and Lauren and Ben and Angela (the only friend Bella has left) gots the stomach flu. So riding to Port Angeles in Jacobs now-finished VW = Bella, Jacob and Mike. The Beetle Blackheart Love Triangle. Also a good band name, by the way.
Lots of love triangle stuff on the way to and in the theater, Bella is saved by Mike getting sick when the movie gets going. Turns out it's the flu, so they have to head back. Triangle crisis sort-of averted.
Jacob and Bella have a long heart to heart while Mike barfs his lungs out. Jacob = pursuing. Bella = broken. Jacob = more than friend. Bella = you're wasting time on me. Gods, they hold hands and debate the meaning of the hand-holding, then head home with sick Mike.
During the dropoff, car-shuffle Jacob promises he'll never hurt Bella, which I assume is a big fat plot point because he's about to be a Werewolf. Hopefully soon so we can get this bus moving. Bella heads home and establishes Jacob as a brother in her mind, which is probably ten times worse than Mike's "golden retriever" dismissal in the last book. That romance smothered, she then goes on to douse it with water and bury it in a shallow grave:
"I needed Jacob now ... like a drug".
"He was my best friend. I would always love him and that would never be enough"
Wow and wow.
Bella and Jacob both get the flu and Bella spends quite a lot of time describing how miserable it is. Charlie shows some more fatherly concern.
SumUp B
So time to close out the complaint box. Final gripes, then these are off the table unless they directly affect the plot in new ways:
So I'm in a very forgiving mood. I'm whisking through chapter after chapter as if I were reading a novel. Not a great novel, not a wonderful story, not even something I'd generally read for pleasure, but I am reading this without hating it.
I wanted to get that out before things go wonky. As I suspect they will shortly. Werewolves are coming sooner and sooner and their introduction, no matter how well it's handled, will herald the return of the core problem with this series: the wahmpires. There's no escape from them, they represent the foundation of the series and this temporary escape changes nothing. Like Meyer says, we're trapped in the orbit of Edward.
Bella finds that motorcycles no longer inspire hallucinations, so she's looking for a new high.
Jacob buys her a small Valentines day gift, which given her admiration of his chest recently isn't a huge leap. Bella deflects again and decides to set up a group trip to the movies to put Jacob off the scent. Ouch. Who does she recruit for this? Her other admirer, Mike. I have to admit, that's a whole new level of cold. Sarcasm: I can't see this going badly!
So on Friday they're going to Port Angeles to see the new bloodbath shoot-em-up movie. Lots of invites, not many coming. Quill is grounded. Jessica is not her friend anymore. Lauren never was. Tyler and Conner won't go because of Jessica and Lauren and Ben and Angela (the only friend Bella has left) gots the stomach flu. So riding to Port Angeles in Jacobs now-finished VW = Bella, Jacob and Mike. The Beetle Blackheart Love Triangle. Also a good band name, by the way.
Lots of love triangle stuff on the way to and in the theater, Bella is saved by Mike getting sick when the movie gets going. Turns out it's the flu, so they have to head back. Triangle crisis sort-of averted.
Jacob and Bella have a long heart to heart while Mike barfs his lungs out. Jacob = pursuing. Bella = broken. Jacob = more than friend. Bella = you're wasting time on me. Gods, they hold hands and debate the meaning of the hand-holding, then head home with sick Mike.
During the dropoff, car-shuffle Jacob promises he'll never hurt Bella, which I assume is a big fat plot point because he's about to be a Werewolf. Hopefully soon so we can get this bus moving. Bella heads home and establishes Jacob as a brother in her mind, which is probably ten times worse than Mike's "golden retriever" dismissal in the last book. That romance smothered, she then goes on to douse it with water and bury it in a shallow grave:
"I needed Jacob now ... like a drug".
"He was my best friend. I would always love him and that would never be enough"
Wow and wow.
Bella and Jacob both get the flu and Bella spends quite a lot of time describing how miserable it is. Charlie shows some more fatherly concern.
SumUp B
So time to close out the complaint box. Final gripes, then these are off the table unless they directly affect the plot in new ways:
- Bella is incapable of real love. Period. If you're on Team Jacob, you're out of luck, ain't happening. She can only be whammied by the Goddess Meyer to love anyone, regardless of reason or human nature or time or situation. End of line.
- Bella is substituting Jacob & adrenaline for Edward because she's clinically insane.Will this ever start to mean something in the plot? Dunno.
- Bella is a pitiless, manipulative ice queen. Her feeling bad about it afterward doesn't change that fact if she does it over and over and over.
So I'm in a very forgiving mood. I'm whisking through chapter after chapter as if I were reading a novel. Not a great novel, not a wonderful story, not even something I'd generally read for pleasure, but I am reading this without hating it.
I wanted to get that out before things go wonky. As I suspect they will shortly. Werewolves are coming sooner and sooner and their introduction, no matter how well it's handled, will herald the return of the core problem with this series: the wahmpires. There's no escape from them, they represent the foundation of the series and this temporary escape changes nothing. Like Meyer says, we're trapped in the orbit of Edward.
Friday, September 10, 2010
T.02.08 Adrenaline
In Which Bella Needs To Buy A HELMET
Jacob starts giving Bella riding lessons, going through the mechanics of how to ride. Credit to Meyer for doing this correctly, even emphasizing the braking, which Bella, of course, forgets. As a rider, I can confirm that you can essentially ignore the rear (foot) brake when you first start learning to ride. She manages to stall the bike the first time when Hallucination-Edward shows up to give her crap about riding, then he's all over her when she takes off in first gear and manages to wreck the bike on a curve. Maybe Meyer has a ride, maybe her editor does good research.
Note to Jacob: a windy road in the woods is not an ideal training locale. Find somewhere less tree-lined.
So Bella cracks her head open (+1 clumsy) and has to get stitches. En route, Jacob takes off his shirt and Bella notes "you're sort of beautiful". Wow. Way to hold firm on those friendship boundries and not tease him along, you cold-hearted...
There's another accident a weak later, but it's really poorly written. After describing the fallout from the first wreck there's a paragraph break and suddenly "The next Wednesday before I could get back from the ER..." is thrown at you. I'm reading this carefully and I was confused when Charlie goes from believing her trip & fall story (the first one) to not believing it (because it's suddenly a week later and the same lie). Minor quibble, but annoying. Might just be me.
Anywho, on this particular crash Bella is thrilled to get a solid 5 minutes of Edward harassment in her mind before flying headlong into a tree.
BUY A HELMET, YOU MORONS.
I'm not going to rant about helmets in the real world. I personally would never ride without one (I have a retired helmet with some nice gashes across the top) but if you've got the insurance and want to go all-in on never, ever crashing, so be it. This, however, is ludicrous. Bella is over-established as the clumsiest person in the history of history and she's apparently riding in flip-flops and a t-shirt in the woods. Yeah, it's first-gear tooling around, but as far as I can tell she's wrecked every time she's ridden and cracked her noggin in at least 2 of those. Why don't you have a jacket and helmet, you work at a sporting goods store!? Grab a baseball helmet or something.
Why does she do this, again? "I'd take whatever pain..."
Oh, that's right, it's a tool to get her cantankerous ghost of an ex to show up and abuse her verbally. I know I'm harping on this point, but I really cannot move past the psychological train-wreck that Meyer is presenting as our heroine. Given an opportunity to expand Bella without the constant rescuing by her supernatural boyfriend or their interminable mooning and angsting over their predicament, what we get instead is a protagonist who can barely function on her own and who is now starting to abuse the friendship/cursh of a 15 year old. Bella's victimhood has simply been replaced by another form of codependency.
In order to avoid explaining another head wound to Charlie, Bella decides to go hiking with Jacob. By the way, Bella, hiking is the activity you used as an alibi for your last injury. Maybe your "safer activities" should actually be safer. She picks the sparkle-meadow as a target for a potential adrenaline/memory jolt so she can be abused again and Jacob plots out a search pattern to find it. While discussing their plans, Charlie reveals that there have been a rash of bear sightings in the area, and warns the two to be careful. On the other side of town, Billy is amused by Bella's concern about bears. So that clues us in to the werewolf factor pretty directly.
On their first hike the topic of discussion returns to Sam's cult. Embry has now joined, but somehow Billy isn't worried about this, either. So more obvious werewolf clues or we have to assume that Billy is senile. I have to think these clues are for the readers, since neither Jacob or Bella seem to question the idea of bears. I'm not sure who possibly isn't on board with the werewolves & Sam connection by now.
SumUp C
Lots of disconnected thoughts:
OK, so last of the complaints about Bella's masochistic need to hear her ex boyfriend admonish her terrible decisions. Done. Seriously. Done. Big deep breaths. Clearly this isn't some psychic connection with Edward or Alice, so this truly is in her head. I suspect this is somehow going to be connected with Bella's love for Edward summoning up rational thoughts during irrational moments. The problems with this are numerous. Bella's ideal version of a concerned Edward comes off as a verbally abusive father figure rather than a concerned love interest. Her psychotic need to hear his voice is yet another layer of addiction on an already tall addict cake. It does nothing to add to a sense of lost love or Bella escaping her funk. Moving on. Moving on.
The not-romance between Bella and Jacob is crossing the line to tiresome. The descriptions are satisfying and the conversation still rings true, but it's dragging on and starting to become romance-novel padding. I'm not docking any points, but I'm not giving any until this actually goes somewhere.
Buy a helmet. Anything. Gods.
I'm wondering about sparkle meadow and what it will mean romantically for Bella and Jacob or the plot. I'm tempted to put money on Jacob making a move on her there while she's overwhelmed by memories, but I just can't bring myself to do it. There's too many werewolves in the woods, ready to jump onto the plot bus. Clearly Sam & company are werewolves and Embry was the latest to turn. That means Jacob shouldn't be far off. Maybe he tries a move and suddenly wolfs out. Rescued by Sam & company who've been following and waiting. Bella trips and he has to turn to get help. Options, options.
Casting my thoughts wider, I'm trying to figure out Edward's return. I'd have a pile of money on him rescuing Bella from the werewolves (or similar) if it weren't for the prelude and Jacob's description of werewolves in the last book being so positive. Taking him at his word, werewolves are nothing like the established myths. They're like Native Superheros and that clashes with being a huge risk to Bella. Plus, I'm trying to picture how the idea of Bella trying to rescue Edward fits into the story anywhere but near the end. That has to be the big climax, the big romance novel reunion and unless Edward shows up soon, then wanders off again to need rescuing I can't see him popping up in the werewolf-hijinx that are surely mere pages away.
I just need a few more pieces...
Jacob starts giving Bella riding lessons, going through the mechanics of how to ride. Credit to Meyer for doing this correctly, even emphasizing the braking, which Bella, of course, forgets. As a rider, I can confirm that you can essentially ignore the rear (foot) brake when you first start learning to ride. She manages to stall the bike the first time when Hallucination-Edward shows up to give her crap about riding, then he's all over her when she takes off in first gear and manages to wreck the bike on a curve. Maybe Meyer has a ride, maybe her editor does good research.
Note to Jacob: a windy road in the woods is not an ideal training locale. Find somewhere less tree-lined.
So Bella cracks her head open (+1 clumsy) and has to get stitches. En route, Jacob takes off his shirt and Bella notes "you're sort of beautiful". Wow. Way to hold firm on those friendship boundries and not tease him along, you cold-hearted...
There's another accident a weak later, but it's really poorly written. After describing the fallout from the first wreck there's a paragraph break and suddenly "The next Wednesday before I could get back from the ER..." is thrown at you. I'm reading this carefully and I was confused when Charlie goes from believing her trip & fall story (the first one) to not believing it (because it's suddenly a week later and the same lie). Minor quibble, but annoying. Might just be me.
Anywho, on this particular crash Bella is thrilled to get a solid 5 minutes of Edward harassment in her mind before flying headlong into a tree.
BUY A HELMET, YOU MORONS.
I'm not going to rant about helmets in the real world. I personally would never ride without one (I have a retired helmet with some nice gashes across the top) but if you've got the insurance and want to go all-in on never, ever crashing, so be it. This, however, is ludicrous. Bella is over-established as the clumsiest person in the history of history and she's apparently riding in flip-flops and a t-shirt in the woods. Yeah, it's first-gear tooling around, but as far as I can tell she's wrecked every time she's ridden and cracked her noggin in at least 2 of those. Why don't you have a jacket and helmet, you work at a sporting goods store!? Grab a baseball helmet or something.
Why does she do this, again? "I'd take whatever pain..."
Oh, that's right, it's a tool to get her cantankerous ghost of an ex to show up and abuse her verbally. I know I'm harping on this point, but I really cannot move past the psychological train-wreck that Meyer is presenting as our heroine. Given an opportunity to expand Bella without the constant rescuing by her supernatural boyfriend or their interminable mooning and angsting over their predicament, what we get instead is a protagonist who can barely function on her own and who is now starting to abuse the friendship/cursh of a 15 year old. Bella's victimhood has simply been replaced by another form of codependency.
In order to avoid explaining another head wound to Charlie, Bella decides to go hiking with Jacob. By the way, Bella, hiking is the activity you used as an alibi for your last injury. Maybe your "safer activities" should actually be safer. She picks the sparkle-meadow as a target for a potential adrenaline/memory jolt so she can be abused again and Jacob plots out a search pattern to find it. While discussing their plans, Charlie reveals that there have been a rash of bear sightings in the area, and warns the two to be careful. On the other side of town, Billy is amused by Bella's concern about bears. So that clues us in to the werewolf factor pretty directly.
On their first hike the topic of discussion returns to Sam's cult. Embry has now joined, but somehow Billy isn't worried about this, either. So more obvious werewolf clues or we have to assume that Billy is senile. I have to think these clues are for the readers, since neither Jacob or Bella seem to question the idea of bears. I'm not sure who possibly isn't on board with the werewolves & Sam connection by now.
SumUp C
Lots of disconnected thoughts:
OK, so last of the complaints about Bella's masochistic need to hear her ex boyfriend admonish her terrible decisions. Done. Seriously. Done. Big deep breaths. Clearly this isn't some psychic connection with Edward or Alice, so this truly is in her head. I suspect this is somehow going to be connected with Bella's love for Edward summoning up rational thoughts during irrational moments. The problems with this are numerous. Bella's ideal version of a concerned Edward comes off as a verbally abusive father figure rather than a concerned love interest. Her psychotic need to hear his voice is yet another layer of addiction on an already tall addict cake. It does nothing to add to a sense of lost love or Bella escaping her funk. Moving on. Moving on.
The not-romance between Bella and Jacob is crossing the line to tiresome. The descriptions are satisfying and the conversation still rings true, but it's dragging on and starting to become romance-novel padding. I'm not docking any points, but I'm not giving any until this actually goes somewhere.
Buy a helmet. Anything. Gods.
I'm wondering about sparkle meadow and what it will mean romantically for Bella and Jacob or the plot. I'm tempted to put money on Jacob making a move on her there while she's overwhelmed by memories, but I just can't bring myself to do it. There's too many werewolves in the woods, ready to jump onto the plot bus. Clearly Sam & company are werewolves and Embry was the latest to turn. That means Jacob shouldn't be far off. Maybe he tries a move and suddenly wolfs out. Rescued by Sam & company who've been following and waiting. Bella trips and he has to turn to get help. Options, options.
Casting my thoughts wider, I'm trying to figure out Edward's return. I'd have a pile of money on him rescuing Bella from the werewolves (or similar) if it weren't for the prelude and Jacob's description of werewolves in the last book being so positive. Taking him at his word, werewolves are nothing like the established myths. They're like Native Superheros and that clashes with being a huge risk to Bella. Plus, I'm trying to picture how the idea of Bella trying to rescue Edward fits into the story anywhere but near the end. That has to be the big climax, the big romance novel reunion and unless Edward shows up soon, then wanders off again to need rescuing I can't see him popping up in the werewolf-hijinx that are surely mere pages away.
I just need a few more pieces...
Wednesday, September 8, 2010
T.02.07 Repetition
In Which We See The Cliff Coming
"I felt so much, much healthier when I was with Jacob"
Healthier. Not just better, healthier. I think Meyer is suggesting that Bella + Jacob is better than Bella alone in her depressed funk. As far as I can tell, however, she's vastly better with Jacob than she ever was with Edward. This whole section reads normal, or as close to Normaltown as we can get in this series.
Now I know the Jacob = werewolf thing is lurking somewhere in the distance. I know that Edward is going to come back and at the end of this book we'll be right back in the rank quagmire of their moronic relationship. I know that it's all going to annoy me, so I just want to point out that right now, in this section of the book, I can believe in a relationship between Bella and Jacob-the-human. Bella suddenly grew a soul in the last few chapters. Jacob is slightly unrealistic and flat still, but he at least has some character and presence and it's early. They've established some common interests. They've spent time together and enjoyed it without forced instant microwave love. Instead, there's a budding friendship/romance building between two teenagers and it kills me that Werewolves and Wahmpires are going to get dumped all over it like motor oil on ice cream.
If I keep reading it's all going to go wrong. Sigh.
Bella takes a trip back to Vampire Manor. She wants it to spark some kind of Edward-fugue like her flashback to rapistville, or she wants some sign that this real connection to Edward is disappearing. It honestly succeeds in the text, she monologues like a druggie in recovery driving past some old crack dens to sharpen memories or ignite fear. It also emphasizes just how right Edward was about one thing (the real one, not the crazy one in her head): he's bad for her. He might not mean it psychologically, but there's no clearer indicator than Bella's obvious struggle to recover. This isn't post-love blues, lady, this is withdrawal.
Her need to touch base with her horrible, traumatic past satisfied, Bella hightails it to see Jacob. There's some banter and he shows her the vastly improved motorcycle in the shed. Bella is impressed, and they discuss future, non-mechanical plans. It certainly appears Bella is over her manipulative streak, and she starts to talk about her and Jacob as a couple rather than a team of mechanics.
At school, Bella finds herself dodging the amorous moves of Mike, who welcomes her back to the land of the living with a movie date. She postpones and heads home to do homework with Jacob. And to make dinner for an enthusiastic Charlie: +1 domestic (ugh), then back to the garage, repeat.
Then, the bikes are done so Bella and Jacob head out into the woods to start riding lessons. On the way, Bella freaks out over some cliff divers (the hell?) and gets a lesson in bored kids in the Northwest or something. Bella wants to do it as an adrenaline rush, Jacob resists for a few seconds before agreeing.
Jacob describes the "gang" of tribesmen that Bella was watching cliff-dive, including her rescuer Sam and a few of his "disciples". It's clearly important to the plot, especially the part about Jacob being "special" and this strange cult following Sam has. Jacob doesn't like Sam or how distant/isolated his followers seem. I'm smelling werewolves, thankfully we get on to motorcycle instruction.
Jacob starts to put more moves on Bella, she puts up the friend bubble. I'm sensing a pattern here.
SumUp B-
So in the cliff-diving scene Meyer is setting up the werewolf conversion thing as part of tribal puberty. If true, it might (MIGHT) get her some slack in regards to Jacob spilling the plot beans in the last book. IF Jacob is a werewolf who doesn't know he's a werewolf, his "scary stories" in the last chapter boil down to really lazy exposition on Meyer's part rather than a horrible train wreck of character motives. We're still in readable territory and I'm feeling generous, so we'll see how this pans out. I don't understand why the Werewolves are suddenly being sighted by hikers, maybe it goes somewhere.
In fact, almost everything post-depression reads like an entirely different book. Actually, not an entirely different book. Drop the first few chapters (even my favorite second chapter) and apply the depressed funk to Bella's move and you essentially have the exact same story as the first book up to this point. Sad Bella goes to school, meets a hunky guy (Jacob, this time) and starts a romance to avoid the depressing boredom of Forks. Sadly, this one is often written well and doesn't need the idiotic love-hammer, there's no statuary or (thus far) emoting eyes.
OK, now I really am worried.
"I felt so much, much healthier when I was with Jacob"
Healthier. Not just better, healthier. I think Meyer is suggesting that Bella + Jacob is better than Bella alone in her depressed funk. As far as I can tell, however, she's vastly better with Jacob than she ever was with Edward. This whole section reads normal, or as close to Normaltown as we can get in this series.
Now I know the Jacob = werewolf thing is lurking somewhere in the distance. I know that Edward is going to come back and at the end of this book we'll be right back in the rank quagmire of their moronic relationship. I know that it's all going to annoy me, so I just want to point out that right now, in this section of the book, I can believe in a relationship between Bella and Jacob-the-human. Bella suddenly grew a soul in the last few chapters. Jacob is slightly unrealistic and flat still, but he at least has some character and presence and it's early. They've established some common interests. They've spent time together and enjoyed it without forced instant microwave love. Instead, there's a budding friendship/romance building between two teenagers and it kills me that Werewolves and Wahmpires are going to get dumped all over it like motor oil on ice cream.
If I keep reading it's all going to go wrong. Sigh.
Bella takes a trip back to Vampire Manor. She wants it to spark some kind of Edward-fugue like her flashback to rapistville, or she wants some sign that this real connection to Edward is disappearing. It honestly succeeds in the text, she monologues like a druggie in recovery driving past some old crack dens to sharpen memories or ignite fear. It also emphasizes just how right Edward was about one thing (the real one, not the crazy one in her head): he's bad for her. He might not mean it psychologically, but there's no clearer indicator than Bella's obvious struggle to recover. This isn't post-love blues, lady, this is withdrawal.
Her need to touch base with her horrible, traumatic past satisfied, Bella hightails it to see Jacob. There's some banter and he shows her the vastly improved motorcycle in the shed. Bella is impressed, and they discuss future, non-mechanical plans. It certainly appears Bella is over her manipulative streak, and she starts to talk about her and Jacob as a couple rather than a team of mechanics.
At school, Bella finds herself dodging the amorous moves of Mike, who welcomes her back to the land of the living with a movie date. She postpones and heads home to do homework with Jacob. And to make dinner for an enthusiastic Charlie: +1 domestic (ugh), then back to the garage, repeat.
Then, the bikes are done so Bella and Jacob head out into the woods to start riding lessons. On the way, Bella freaks out over some cliff divers (the hell?) and gets a lesson in bored kids in the Northwest or something. Bella wants to do it as an adrenaline rush, Jacob resists for a few seconds before agreeing.
Jacob describes the "gang" of tribesmen that Bella was watching cliff-dive, including her rescuer Sam and a few of his "disciples". It's clearly important to the plot, especially the part about Jacob being "special" and this strange cult following Sam has. Jacob doesn't like Sam or how distant/isolated his followers seem. I'm smelling werewolves, thankfully we get on to motorcycle instruction.
Jacob starts to put more moves on Bella, she puts up the friend bubble. I'm sensing a pattern here.
SumUp B-
So in the cliff-diving scene Meyer is setting up the werewolf conversion thing as part of tribal puberty. If true, it might (MIGHT) get her some slack in regards to Jacob spilling the plot beans in the last book. IF Jacob is a werewolf who doesn't know he's a werewolf, his "scary stories" in the last chapter boil down to really lazy exposition on Meyer's part rather than a horrible train wreck of character motives. We're still in readable territory and I'm feeling generous, so we'll see how this pans out. I don't understand why the Werewolves are suddenly being sighted by hikers, maybe it goes somewhere.
In fact, almost everything post-depression reads like an entirely different book. Actually, not an entirely different book. Drop the first few chapters (even my favorite second chapter) and apply the depressed funk to Bella's move and you essentially have the exact same story as the first book up to this point. Sad Bella goes to school, meets a hunky guy (Jacob, this time) and starts a romance to avoid the depressing boredom of Forks. Sadly, this one is often written well and doesn't need the idiotic love-hammer, there's no statuary or (thus far) emoting eyes.
OK, now I really am worried.
Monday, September 6, 2010
T.02.06 Friends
In Which Chapter 5 Simply Continues and We go back to school
Bella and Jacob drag the bikes to the shed and Jacob starts to disassemble them. They start talking, or specifically Jacob starts to talk while Bella does her manipulative "nudging" to keep him going. Jacob happens to mention two friends, Quil Ateara and Embry Call, who show up a paragraph later. I don't know why Meyer didn't just have them show up rather than insist on this awkward "coincidence".
After introductions and more shop talk, Bella leaves to make Charlie dinner. That night = no nightmares.
Right here = where the last chapter should have ended.
The next day she and Charlie go back to visit Billy and Jacob. The kids ditch the fogies and go for a stroll at the dump (not a junkyard?) and a parts store 2 hours away to get gear for the motorcycles. As they drive we get actual teenagers having teenager conversations. Jacob is friendly and obviously has some interest in Bella. She's not turning him down, but she's also not described as being a manipulative fiend or insensitive. Bella feels relaxed and friendly and hey, you know who you were never relaxed and friendly around? Yeah... what's his name?
Back at the garage/shed, Jacob sets to work on the bikes. That evening Bella and Charlie stick around to have dinner with Billy and Jacob and another family: Harry, Sue, Seth and Leah Clearwater. Who will never show back up in this book.
After a nice ride home, Bella has a new nightmare involving Sam, the guy who found her after the breakup.
We then get a description of Bella's next day in school, which is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, we get real insight into Bella's break from her depression. She describes feeling invisible all day and understands that she's been acting invisible since the breakup. This shifts to her noticing changes amongst her friends (Jessica, Angela, and not-friend Lauren), which gives the reader some actual insight into people we've barely known exist for a book and a half now. Wow, characterization abounds. Next, there's a description of increased bear sightings around Forks, which I'm assuming either has to do with the lack of Wahmpires hunting them or people spotting Werewolves. Finally, Mike manages to drag Bella into the conversation and she mends some bridges with Angela.
SumUp: A
Woolf's eyebrows, I might just faint. Other than the strange place for a chapter break, this was straight-out pleasant reading with no-kidding characterization.
Bella + Jacob were interesting.
Bella at the dinner party was interesting
Bella's emotional responses at school were both interesting and enlightening
Bella's friends were dynamic and her observations were interesting
Ye gods, it's a miracle of storytelling and nothing magical or ludicrous or nonsensical happened! And you know why? Because Edward wasn't around to screw with Bella's mind. Now none of this is Pulitzer material or fantastic prose, but it performs necessary and desirable characterization and plot progression in an enjoyable manner, and that has been all but absent throughout the first book.
Edward is the dark cloud to the silver lining that is this chapter, of course. This is the Twilight series. It's a love story about Bella and Edward, not Bella and Mike or Bella and Jacob (the not-a-werewolf). The Edward who turns Bella from normal teenager into a suicidal drug addict. I know how Bella feels because when Edward's around I'm miserable, too. Now that he's gone, I feel like a veil's been lifted on my life. It's not going to last, though. Her self-destructive path is clear and I can't escape the undertow.
Bella and Jacob drag the bikes to the shed and Jacob starts to disassemble them. They start talking, or specifically Jacob starts to talk while Bella does her manipulative "nudging" to keep him going. Jacob happens to mention two friends, Quil Ateara and Embry Call, who show up a paragraph later. I don't know why Meyer didn't just have them show up rather than insist on this awkward "coincidence".
After introductions and more shop talk, Bella leaves to make Charlie dinner. That night = no nightmares.
Right here = where the last chapter should have ended.
The next day she and Charlie go back to visit Billy and Jacob. The kids ditch the fogies and go for a stroll at the dump (not a junkyard?) and a parts store 2 hours away to get gear for the motorcycles. As they drive we get actual teenagers having teenager conversations. Jacob is friendly and obviously has some interest in Bella. She's not turning him down, but she's also not described as being a manipulative fiend or insensitive. Bella feels relaxed and friendly and hey, you know who you were never relaxed and friendly around? Yeah... what's his name?
Back at the garage/shed, Jacob sets to work on the bikes. That evening Bella and Charlie stick around to have dinner with Billy and Jacob and another family: Harry, Sue, Seth and Leah Clearwater. Who will never show back up in this book.
After a nice ride home, Bella has a new nightmare involving Sam, the guy who found her after the breakup.
We then get a description of Bella's next day in school, which is interesting for a variety of reasons. First, we get real insight into Bella's break from her depression. She describes feeling invisible all day and understands that she's been acting invisible since the breakup. This shifts to her noticing changes amongst her friends (Jessica, Angela, and not-friend Lauren), which gives the reader some actual insight into people we've barely known exist for a book and a half now. Wow, characterization abounds. Next, there's a description of increased bear sightings around Forks, which I'm assuming either has to do with the lack of Wahmpires hunting them or people spotting Werewolves. Finally, Mike manages to drag Bella into the conversation and she mends some bridges with Angela.
SumUp: A
Woolf's eyebrows, I might just faint. Other than the strange place for a chapter break, this was straight-out pleasant reading with no-kidding characterization.
Bella + Jacob were interesting.
Bella at the dinner party was interesting
Bella's emotional responses at school were both interesting and enlightening
Bella's friends were dynamic and her observations were interesting
Ye gods, it's a miracle of storytelling and nothing magical or ludicrous or nonsensical happened! And you know why? Because Edward wasn't around to screw with Bella's mind. Now none of this is Pulitzer material or fantastic prose, but it performs necessary and desirable characterization and plot progression in an enjoyable manner, and that has been all but absent throughout the first book.
Edward is the dark cloud to the silver lining that is this chapter, of course. This is the Twilight series. It's a love story about Bella and Edward, not Bella and Mike or Bella and Jacob (the not-a-werewolf). The Edward who turns Bella from normal teenager into a suicidal drug addict. I know how Bella feels because when Edward's around I'm miserable, too. Now that he's gone, I feel like a veil's been lifted on my life. It's not going to last, though. Her self-destructive path is clear and I can't escape the undertow.
Friday, September 3, 2010
T.02.05 Cheater
In Which Bella Buys A Bike
We avoid another "Bella wakes up" chapter intro with Bella at work with Mike. She leaves early and heads toward home so we can have a detailed dream sequence presented through a distracted monologue. ARGH. She's remembering dreams while she's driving and not paying attention!
So Bella is driving and having a crisis where she rants internally about Edward's unfair demand that she not hurt herself AND pretend he never existed. The text ranges from exciting and well visualized to cliche and tedious as we go through two and a half pages. Finally, Bella decides that she can escape her crushing depression, skirt her half-hearted promise not to end her life and (I assume) summon up visions of Edward the Chastiser, by doing reckless things. Sort of like the movie Crank, only with more teen angst. As fate would have it, Bella has driven aimlessly into a neighborhood and spots a pair of dilapidated motorcycles for sale. Since she promised Charlie she'd never ride on one and considers them life-threatening, this satisfies her as a double adrenaline fix. Bella ends up getting them for free, and she and a 15 year old load them into her truck.
I'm tempted to call foul on putting motorcycles into pickups, a task I've actually attempted, but we find out that one of the bikes is a Harley Sprint. While H-D might conjure images of big, monster cruisers, the Spirit was essentially a single-cylinder thumper engine bolted to a tiny, dirt-bike style frame used in flat track racing. I assume the other bike is equally small, but this becomes a different kind of problem shortly given who the other driver is supposed to be.
Bella takes the bikes to Billy's house to see Jacob and convinces him to help rebuild the bikes. She provides the cash, he provides the labor and know-how and at the end they both get motorcycles. Jacob is now 6' '5" tall and is going to look ridiculous on a tiny Sprint, though.
There's a good bit of flirting going on here, and it's played subtle, which is very nice. Jacob is hunky and friendly, which I know from outside the book is leading us to a romance of some sort. I'd grumble, but this is the most realistic bit of book I've had handed to me since the breakup and I'm going to cherish it like a tiny, sick bird.
Then the chapter just ends in the garage. I don't know why, the logical end places would have been coming to the house or after the next bit of garage-talk (sorry to spoil that for you). I guess Meyer is contractually obligated to pump out 25 chapters and by gum she's going to do it somehow.
SumUp: B-
Bella's depression is grating, but here it's played very realistically within the psychological frame described in the last chapter, so I can only complain so much. The references to Edward drag everything back down, though. The motorcycle plan is a little silly, but it sounds like something a teenager would come up with as a way to escape a boring town life, so I'll bite. That's not Bella's plan, of course, but since I'm now pretending her entire relationship with Edward was a horrible psychotic fantasy, it gives me more construction material for my version of the book. The interaction between Bella and Jacob (who is playing the human still) is realistic and vastly preferable to the bulk of time we spent with Bella and Edward. Which is sort of sad.
That said, don't sign me up for Team Jacob (ugh) just yet. I'm pretty sure he wolfs out at some point and that's going to ruin everything. Still, this is a nice bit of fresh air and sunshine. In fact, sign me up for Team Mike, or better still, Team Jessica.
We avoid another "Bella wakes up" chapter intro with Bella at work with Mike. She leaves early and heads toward home so we can have a detailed dream sequence presented through a distracted monologue. ARGH. She's remembering dreams while she's driving and not paying attention!
So Bella is driving and having a crisis where she rants internally about Edward's unfair demand that she not hurt herself AND pretend he never existed. The text ranges from exciting and well visualized to cliche and tedious as we go through two and a half pages. Finally, Bella decides that she can escape her crushing depression, skirt her half-hearted promise not to end her life and (I assume) summon up visions of Edward the Chastiser, by doing reckless things. Sort of like the movie Crank, only with more teen angst. As fate would have it, Bella has driven aimlessly into a neighborhood and spots a pair of dilapidated motorcycles for sale. Since she promised Charlie she'd never ride on one and considers them life-threatening, this satisfies her as a double adrenaline fix. Bella ends up getting them for free, and she and a 15 year old load them into her truck.
I'm tempted to call foul on putting motorcycles into pickups, a task I've actually attempted, but we find out that one of the bikes is a Harley Sprint. While H-D might conjure images of big, monster cruisers, the Spirit was essentially a single-cylinder thumper engine bolted to a tiny, dirt-bike style frame used in flat track racing. I assume the other bike is equally small, but this becomes a different kind of problem shortly given who the other driver is supposed to be.
Bella takes the bikes to Billy's house to see Jacob and convinces him to help rebuild the bikes. She provides the cash, he provides the labor and know-how and at the end they both get motorcycles. Jacob is now 6' '5" tall and is going to look ridiculous on a tiny Sprint, though.
There's a good bit of flirting going on here, and it's played subtle, which is very nice. Jacob is hunky and friendly, which I know from outside the book is leading us to a romance of some sort. I'd grumble, but this is the most realistic bit of book I've had handed to me since the breakup and I'm going to cherish it like a tiny, sick bird.
Then the chapter just ends in the garage. I don't know why, the logical end places would have been coming to the house or after the next bit of garage-talk (sorry to spoil that for you). I guess Meyer is contractually obligated to pump out 25 chapters and by gum she's going to do it somehow.
SumUp: B-
Bella's depression is grating, but here it's played very realistically within the psychological frame described in the last chapter, so I can only complain so much. The references to Edward drag everything back down, though. The motorcycle plan is a little silly, but it sounds like something a teenager would come up with as a way to escape a boring town life, so I'll bite. That's not Bella's plan, of course, but since I'm now pretending her entire relationship with Edward was a horrible psychotic fantasy, it gives me more construction material for my version of the book. The interaction between Bella and Jacob (who is playing the human still) is realistic and vastly preferable to the bulk of time we spent with Bella and Edward. Which is sort of sad.
That said, don't sign me up for Team Jacob (ugh) just yet. I'm pretty sure he wolfs out at some point and that's going to ruin everything. Still, this is a nice bit of fresh air and sunshine. In fact, sign me up for Team Mike, or better still, Team Jessica.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
T.02.04 Waking Up
In Which We Return To Rapistville
So there are months printed on blank pages to indicate the passing of time. It's not a terrible system, and when we learn what Bella's been feeling / doing, it actually makes sense as an indicator of blank time. So more points.
Charlie is giving Bella a hard time about her 4 months of moping and laying around. He even goes so far as to suggest therapy for her obvious depression or sending her to Florida to live with Renee. In self-defense, Bella decides to draft no-longer-friend Jessica into going to the movies in Port Angeles. Seems Bella has been neglecting her friends and Jessica is rather peeved. There's a nice bit of interaction between them, but it starts to become really manipulative, especially when Bella keeps prompting Jessica to gossip during the car ride and then tuning her out so Bella doesn't have to reveal any internal details or participate in this mock friendship. Jessica seems really happy to be on the mend with Bella for entirely non-selfish, non-psychopathic reasons and that makes Bella look like a real brute.
They go to the movies to see a zombie flick, but Bella freaks out at the similarities in the movie's monster dude vs heroine plot, has a bit of an episode and bails the theater. After explaining it away as fear, the two girls walk down the long, dark block to hit a Mickey D's.
And here.. things go a little wonky.
Bella sees a group of guys outside a bar and flashes back to her last trip to Port Angeles when Edward saved her from Rapistville. The group of guys in the dim night inspire her to try and recreate that wonderful moment, over the entirely reasonable protests of Jessica. The inspiration for this moment is difficult to grasp from the text, it seems like Meyer had an idea for Bella and tossed her into a situation. Anyway, Luckily for Bella the guys turn out to be of the non-rapey variety, but it still sparks a psychotic break in Bella's fragile mind (at least that's how I read it) where she imagines Edward verbally reminding her that she promised not to do crazy, self-destructive things. You remember? The promise she sort of agreed to while he had her in an emotional tailspin while he was dumping her in the woods and leaving her there to die? Because those sorts of promises hold up in vampire court, I guess. Bella continues to sort of hang around the confused barflies to hear more of her mind-Edward give her grief about what she's doing, then goes to eat with an angry and confused Jessica.
Jessica drops Bella off and that seems to pretty much end Bella's only human to human relationship in her peer group. Sorry, Jessica! I sort-of liked you. Bella then monologues about how she now feels like her mind has cleared. Which is exactly the opposite diagnosis I'd give in my non-professional opinion.
SumUp: C-
So Bella is clinically depressed and going through Edward withdraw. She discovers that by putting herself in harm's way she can dredge up a mental image of him to give her a hard time, which thrills her and settles the jitters and jonsing.
What isn't wrong with this scenario? Once again the relationship between Edward and Bella is clearly framed in entirely unhealthy, drug addiction terms. Worse, Bella has now learned how to trick herself into getting an Edward-rush by acting suicidal. The best part is that this imaginary, methadone version of Edward is even less emotionally supportive than the real version. This is Bella's made-up version of Edward and he's essentially bossy and condescending. I didn't know how this relationship could be any less healthy, guess I should have turned my imagination to the fertile fields of psychiatric medicine. The internal debate Bella has about what's going on is so far out there that I had to read it repeatedly to understand what she was going on about because it really seemed like Edward showed up out of nowhere to protect her. Or at least whisper to her from the shadows. When I realized she was having a breakdown, I had to go back to the theater part of the chapter to start over to try and track this mental crash. Add to this Bella's blatant exploitation of Jessica's dwindling friendship and I'm stuck really not liking our main character while being worried about her sanity.
I wanted to connect Bella's actions to the classic stages of grief or 12 steps for addiction, but sadly they don't line up enough to be amusing. I also considered contacting some family members in the psychiatric/psychologist field to get an actual diagnosis, but I didn't want to admit to them that I was reading Twilight. So everybody loses.
The problem with this chapter is the combination of Bella's over the top reaction to Edward leaving with her new, psychotic "cure" and the disjointed way it's presented. I'm really baffled by the progression here, and I've no idea where this book is going.
So there are months printed on blank pages to indicate the passing of time. It's not a terrible system, and when we learn what Bella's been feeling / doing, it actually makes sense as an indicator of blank time. So more points.
Charlie is giving Bella a hard time about her 4 months of moping and laying around. He even goes so far as to suggest therapy for her obvious depression or sending her to Florida to live with Renee. In self-defense, Bella decides to draft no-longer-friend Jessica into going to the movies in Port Angeles. Seems Bella has been neglecting her friends and Jessica is rather peeved. There's a nice bit of interaction between them, but it starts to become really manipulative, especially when Bella keeps prompting Jessica to gossip during the car ride and then tuning her out so Bella doesn't have to reveal any internal details or participate in this mock friendship. Jessica seems really happy to be on the mend with Bella for entirely non-selfish, non-psychopathic reasons and that makes Bella look like a real brute.
They go to the movies to see a zombie flick, but Bella freaks out at the similarities in the movie's monster dude vs heroine plot, has a bit of an episode and bails the theater. After explaining it away as fear, the two girls walk down the long, dark block to hit a Mickey D's.
And here.. things go a little wonky.
Bella sees a group of guys outside a bar and flashes back to her last trip to Port Angeles when Edward saved her from Rapistville. The group of guys in the dim night inspire her to try and recreate that wonderful moment, over the entirely reasonable protests of Jessica. The inspiration for this moment is difficult to grasp from the text, it seems like Meyer had an idea for Bella and tossed her into a situation. Anyway, Luckily for Bella the guys turn out to be of the non-rapey variety, but it still sparks a psychotic break in Bella's fragile mind (at least that's how I read it) where she imagines Edward verbally reminding her that she promised not to do crazy, self-destructive things. You remember? The promise she sort of agreed to while he had her in an emotional tailspin while he was dumping her in the woods and leaving her there to die? Because those sorts of promises hold up in vampire court, I guess. Bella continues to sort of hang around the confused barflies to hear more of her mind-Edward give her grief about what she's doing, then goes to eat with an angry and confused Jessica.
Jessica drops Bella off and that seems to pretty much end Bella's only human to human relationship in her peer group. Sorry, Jessica! I sort-of liked you. Bella then monologues about how she now feels like her mind has cleared. Which is exactly the opposite diagnosis I'd give in my non-professional opinion.
SumUp: C-
So Bella is clinically depressed and going through Edward withdraw. She discovers that by putting herself in harm's way she can dredge up a mental image of him to give her a hard time, which thrills her and settles the jitters and jonsing.
What isn't wrong with this scenario? Once again the relationship between Edward and Bella is clearly framed in entirely unhealthy, drug addiction terms. Worse, Bella has now learned how to trick herself into getting an Edward-rush by acting suicidal. The best part is that this imaginary, methadone version of Edward is even less emotionally supportive than the real version. This is Bella's made-up version of Edward and he's essentially bossy and condescending. I didn't know how this relationship could be any less healthy, guess I should have turned my imagination to the fertile fields of psychiatric medicine. The internal debate Bella has about what's going on is so far out there that I had to read it repeatedly to understand what she was going on about because it really seemed like Edward showed up out of nowhere to protect her. Or at least whisper to her from the shadows. When I realized she was having a breakdown, I had to go back to the theater part of the chapter to start over to try and track this mental crash. Add to this Bella's blatant exploitation of Jessica's dwindling friendship and I'm stuck really not liking our main character while being worried about her sanity.
I wanted to connect Bella's actions to the classic stages of grief or 12 steps for addiction, but sadly they don't line up enough to be amusing. I also considered contacting some family members in the psychiatric/psychologist field to get an actual diagnosis, but I didn't want to admit to them that I was reading Twilight. So everybody loses.
The problem with this chapter is the combination of Bella's over the top reaction to Edward leaving with her new, psychotic "cure" and the disjointed way it's presented. I'm really baffled by the progression here, and I've no idea where this book is going.
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