And for those of you, who like fairey_queen will call me out on the Buffy/Angel 'ship, I'll state it up front - I was never a fan of Angel/Buffy, for many of the same reasons I'm not comfortable with Bella/Edward. The difference between Twilight and Buffy is that there was more going on in Buffy than there is in Twilight.
Now that I am significantly further in than 50 pages, I have a lot more to say - a first, I was going to try to put this into a semblance of order and make it flow, but instead, you're stuck with somewhat sequential bullet points.
(AB, if you're reading this - read all the way through it. There's lotsa good in with the bad.)
Beware spoilers below.
- Meyer answered one of my major questions - maybe the only mystery that really stuck in my head from those first fifty pages - why did Bella move to Forks in the first place? The answer was satisfying and shed light on Bella and her dysfunctional family.
I enjoyed the look into her mother's life and attitude - and I can see why she and Charlie didn't work out. - One moment in the story that stuck in my mind is when Bella realizes her father put snow chains on her tires before he went to work; that little jolt of emotion was the most real the character of Bella Swan has been to me.
She's not very good with emotion from her parents, and in some ways, I think Charlie might be a better parent than her mother. He doesn't push her, but he obviously cares and wants to take care of her. Her mother does, too - but it sounds like Bella did more taking care of her mother than the other way around. - Edward. He frustrates me. First off, he's an ass. I understand that he saw something in Bella that makes her very attractive to him - I'm willing to buy into that, run with it, even. I understand his initial reaction was probably one of hunger and desire for her blood.
What gets me is the way he acted after he saved her life.
He was an ass. He leads Bella through this intricate little dance where he teases, frustrated and mocks her. He stops traffic so a boy can get turn down by her? He ignores her and glares at her and apologizes vaguely by turns? He drops ten-ton hints he's not normal and is a freakin' Great Mysterious Pretty Boy and expects her to just walk away?
Not hardly. Anyone who can read minds and has lived for 100 years and has had, at any point, a functioning brain cell, would be able to tell you how to bait a pretty little girl.
This guy is an ass. He's playing with not only Bella, but her friends - and he either has to be aware of it, or has such a case of such profound dumb that his being in high school after a century of un-life actually starts to make sense.
But Bella has already been hooked by the mystery, and like every single teenage girl I have ever known (bar none - sorry, ladies), she goes for the asshole instead of the nice guy. Of course, Meyer writes the nice guys as utterly useless, clueless (okay, the clueless is very true to life) and generally as endearing as puppies who pee on themselves when they get excited chasing their own tails.
To say nothing of the stalking. Why does he get to be a stalker and be a romantic hero? He's a psychosexual predatory exsanguinist unnaturally selected by parasitic evolution to be unbearably and irresistibly attractive to girls. How can Bella resist him?
But no. He has to be a stalker. Most guys who stalked a girl the way he did would be labeled a creep, possibly get a slap and kick for their trouble, and get a restraining order. Regardless of her penchant for finding trouble and him rescuing the poor damsel in distress, the stalking bit is over the top. At that point, I stopped suspending my disbelief and started beating it back into a corner with a large blunt object.
Seriously, though. I don't get it. Explain it to me. What is sexy and appealing and romantic about stalking the girl? Is it because she's already enthralled by him? Or is it because women actually want creepy?
In all honestly, the only difference between Edward stalking her and say, Mike stalking her is the fact that Edward is pretty and he wants to suck her blood. Because that makes it all okay. - Bella is a strange child, and one I find myself strangely compelled by. She's a fearless little bookworm with almost no idea how unusual she really is, despite her inability to fit in. I wish Meyer would have given us a clearer idea what she looks like, but I'm getting the idea of a petite, pale and delicate brunette. Her constant physical inability coupled with a natural curiosity, misanthropic tendencies and a lack of patience for social games makes her endearing, even when she's being annoyingly whiny and girly.
My favorite scene with Bella has to be her walking around Port Angeles - she's searching for books (which, I can't fault anyone for) and her naivety carries her to wander into the bad part of town. This is very belieable and very real. So is her inability to handle the group of hooligans who herd her to a nice, dark little corner to rape and rob her. (Every thug's favorite R&R). She doesn't suddenly develop a fea response (which, so far, has been absent). Instead, she switches gears and starts trying to figure out how fight back.
You go, girl!
That was an awesome moment. No thoughts of giving up. No thougts of surrender. No panic. Just a fierce readiness to protect herself and make sure the hooligans work for what they get. Then, she gets rescued by Edward, ruining a shining moment for the heroine. I like strong women characters who stand up for themselves - I like that she was ready to fight. I don't like it when the girls have to be rescued by the boys. I think it's because I grew up around so many strong women that 'weak' women, who don't fight their own battles, sometimes bother me. - Which is, I think, why I dislike the relationship with Edward. Bella is passive, there. She's a passive person overall, but in every other situation, she finds a way to exert her will over a situation. Whether cooking for Charlie, setting up all her new friends with dates, or going to Seattle instead of the dance, she' always does something about her situation. (Another reason I like the character, despite her being a Mary Sue.) That, and I don't believe in love at first sight - I do believe in connection at first sight, lust at first sight, consuming interest at first sight - but not love. So that's hard for me to swallow, too.
- Yes, Bella is a Mary Sue. She has a pretty name (Isabella Swan? Possible reference to the Ugly Duckling aside, the name is a Mary Sue name.), has guys falling all over her (almost literally) and the circumstances are such that she is the center of the world from the get go - and not just because she's a 1st-person narrator. There are things that happen (Edward not able to read her mind) that seem to happen Because Bella Is Special.
Now, that said - I have no intrinsic objection to Mary Sues as long as they're written well, which Bella seems to be. I just wanted to point it out. - If Bella is so accident/disaster prone in Podunk Nowhere, how did she survive Phoenix, Arizona? And why is the 100-year-old vampire in high school?
- I want to meet/read more about Edward's family, especially Alice. I want to see the dynamic between them all, because I want to know how his relationship with Bella is affecting his relationship with his family.
- The writing is good enough to keep me reading, but the storytelling is a bit bouncy - some of that may be the 1st-person narration, but a lot of it has to do with things like the random boy she sorta-but-not-quite remembers telling her exactly what she wants/needs to know exactly at the right time. I can buy her believing Edward is a vampire as easily as she does because of the way the character is written so far - and she saw him stop a van about make roadkill pizza out of her with his bare hands. But still - the scene with Jacob was too contrived. Again, I had to beat back my disbelief with a now well-used stick.
Overall, I'm enjoying it, despite myself. I'm invested enough in the characters (especially Bella) that I want to know what happens and how it happens. I'll be done with the book by the end of the week, and if the ending doens't leave me with literary blue balls, I'll probably want to read the second book in fairly short order.
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