Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

If you don’t already know about Twilight…what rock have you been hiding under?  I feel that, with it’s unprecedented popularity, I should make it an early priority of this blog to set down my opinions on it.

If you haven’t read it, you probably know what it’s about.  Girl meets vampire, girl falls in love with vampire, there is a lot of overly sappy romance, and vampire saves girl from certain death by another vampire.  Not a whole lot going on, and I still can’t figure out how Meyer stretched that story to 498 pages.

Basically, Twilight is a novel for people who don’t read.  Case in point:  My cousin, who I don’t believe has ever finished a book in her life, loved Twilight.  Not to mention the million or so people I’ve heard say, “I’m not a big reader, but I really liked Twilight.”  If you’re actually a fan of literature, if you enjoy a good book, then please spare yourself the frustration and stay away from this series.

For one, there’s a significant lack of plot.  Here’s the first 350 pages:  “Bella and Edward like each other, but he’s a vampire and that complicates things. ”  That is basically it.  The only exciting part, the part where another vampire stalks Bella, doesn’t start until close to the end of the book.

As for the characters, they’re extremely one-dimensional.  Bella is a klutz with a pretty face, and Edward is serious and overprotective.  They’re overdramatic and very, very predictable.  That makes for quite the lengthy snooze fest.

All in all, Meyers has a weak writing style.  It reminded me a lot of RL Stine’s Fear Street series, which I loved when I was in elementary school, but which I recognize now has no real literary merit.  And while I’ll admit that the ten-year-old girl lurking in my psyche loved the romance, I’m not ten years old anymore and I can’t be appeased by a cute love story alone.  People keep telling me, “It’s a young adult book, it doesn’t have to be well-written.”  Yeah, not a good excuse.  Everyone is reading this book, so age isn’t an issue anymore.  Harry Potter, the phenomenon that a lot of people are comparing Twilight to, was also for young adults.  Harry Potter was written much, much better.  Same goes for Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy, one of my favorite reads, also geared toward young adults.  Young adult fiction doesn’t have to lack substance.  If that’s Stephanie Meyer’s excuse for writing shit fiction, then she should find a new day job.

The other excuse for Twilight? “Well, at least it’s getting kids to read.”  Okay, I’ll allow that.  But only on the condition that it helps them move on to bigger and better books, from which standpoint they can look back on this soul-sucking insult to literature and say, “Man, I can’t believe I thought that was good writing.”  Reading is good.  But one can only get so much benefit from reading crap.  You can’t read the back of a cereal box and declare yourself well-read.

That’s my two cents.  I didn’t feel the need to go any farther than the first book, especially since I hear that it’s the best out of the four.  Maybe I’ll go back to the series when I really feel masochistic, but I don’t think it’ll be anytime soon.