Well, I have decided to review the Twilight Series this week to cut out stress from finals. First of all I should say that I will not refer to it as a "saga", because it has an extraordinarily large lack of vikings--something that is necessary for a saga, and would have made it more enjoyable for me. I will not get into how silly I think the Twilight universe is, because that would be futile. This is simply a critique on Meyer's writing. I will also not complain too badly about characters that are deplorable, or any logical fallacies--which there are many of--but these will be hard to avoid at times. Today I will discuss the first book in the series. If I start acting like an editor it is because I have been talking too many workshop classes. I admit that even when I was a teenager I did not read much teen fiction, because it did not interest me. I had to read THE OUTSIDERS by S. E. Hinton for class, a novel that I enjoyed then--as well as now. This novel was published when she was only 16 or 17 years old.
Now I will talk about the use of adverbs, so that I can get it out of the way and not discuss it in the next installments of the reviews. Meyer's favorite seemed to me to be "Suddenly", which appears 92 times in the novel. I know this, because I am a pirate and downloaded .pdf files of the novels, and asked Adobe Reader how many times that word is in the novel. Granted, it is better than having "All of a sudden" show up 92 times.
However this does not over shadow her use of color adverbs, such as in Chapter 1, "The Air filtered down greenly" Now I understand that the 1st person narrative format allows for language such as this, but I will get to that later. Adverbs are a quick way of describing an action, and can have their place. However when used to describe every action in a novel, they do become tedious.
Now about the narrative. There are times that Isabella's descriptions carry more of a 3rd person omniscient quality. I saw many info dumps, and voice changes in the first few, and the last few chapters. She gives new meaning to the term "unreliable narrator". She presents herself as an honor role student, that is really into English, but she still ends a lot of her sentences with prepositions. I was a C student in high school, so I am allowed to do this, because it fits my personality. Early in the book she does not give much of a description of herself. Just a pale girl, with hair. It isn't until Chapter 7 that she mentions her hair is brown and curly, the same as her father's hair. This fits in with how often the narrative shifts within time, often without warning. It seems to me that a girl that is as intelligent as she leads us to believe would be able to have her thoughts compiled in a better fashion, instead of the LiveJournal format that we are presented. I was seriously waiting for her to say "LOL" in her sometimes tedious depositions that distract from the action.
Now not all of the novel was bad. There were a few scenes that were written well. The scenes that were written well were the ones that read like 3rd person limited. One of my notes mentioned that the book should have been written from that point of view. One thing is that Meyer liked to end most chapter's on a cliffhanger, which really helped the flow of the book. I found my favorite parts were the beginnings and endings of the chapters.
Now for one complaint about Isabella constantly blaming her hysteria for what happens. Seriously? She needs to stop reading that Victorian literature.
Moving on. I am almost out of steam, because finals have me exhausted. But before anyone asks if I am Team Jacob or Team Edward. I am neither. Edward is a possessive, creationist that hates music from the 60s and 70s, which makes him my sworn enemy. He is also nothing but pillow talk. Jacob's character has not been fully developed for me yet, so I will have to get into that after I read the next book. However, since both characters potentially want to eat me in the literal sense I can't go with either. I am on Team Mike so far. Why? Because he is the first person to try to be nice to Isabella, even knowing that she is the Sheriff's daughter. Being the child of a Sheriff in high school is like automatic exile, because all the kids will assume you are a narc. The fact that he had the balls to try to welcome her to the new town, do nice things for her, even while she was being a bitch says a lot about his quality.
That should do it for now. On the whole it was a good way to waste a few hours. It really is not an escapist novel at all. Twilight helped point out some mistakes in my writing. I actually edited a portion one of my finals that is due today to take out some adverbs.
Would I suggest it to a friend? If you have the time and nothing else to do, but want a book that you can put down and pick up easily then it could make a good addition to that pile of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader books that you have been through a thousand times.
Wait...What do the Cullens do when the high school girls are on their monthly cycles? That's what I call will power.
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