Thursday, August 7, 2008

The Twilight Series


There are no spoilers in the first two paragraphs so feel free to read those without worry.

Yeah I read it. I couldn’t pass up something like that given my current Vampire phase (Buffy, Moonlight, Jaz Parks’ books…) and the fact that people keep touting it as “bigger than Harry Potter.”

Because the books are constantly being compared to Harry Potter in terms of hugeness and impact on the reading world I’m going to have to address that. Technically both books were written for and marketed to young adults (even children in Harry’s case) and hoped to gain an adult following, both seemed to have accomplished that pretty handily since they’ve sold millions upon millions of copies and quite frankly there aren’t that many children who read. I finished Breaking Dawn in about 10-12 hours over two afternoons and Harry Potter #7 in about 13 straight-can’t-put-it-down-shut-up-don’t-talk-to-me-I’m-reading hours. The difference here is that while I wanted to know what happened in the end to Bella & Edward, you could interrupt me and I would be fine with that. The Twilight series just wasn’t as engrossing as Harry Potter. Another difference, upon finishing Harry Potter (and recovering from that ending) all I wanted to do was read it again because the story was amazing and because I KNOW I missed stuff and would get more out of it a second time. I really don’t feel a need to reread the Twilight series, I don’t think I missed anything and I don’t think anything will be gained by rereading any of the series. It was definitely a Young Adult series – a good one but still, where Harry Potter is arguably (certainly towards the end of the series) an Adult Series that children can enjoy as well.

SPOILERS BEGIN NOW

Now, off of Harry Potter comparisons and onto the books themselves.

Anyone who was in the Jacob camp is an idiot, how could you EVER in a million years think that Jacob could possibly end up with Bella??? I mean seriously, really? You’re stupid, and I think maybe you SHOULD re-read the books because obviously you missed something vitally important. Don’t get me wrong, I love Jacob and I wanted him to be happy, which is how I knew that he was going to imprint on someone because that is the only way he could possibly be happy without Bella. Of course having him imprint on Bella’s vampire-hybrid baby was an awesome little twist that I absolutely loved.

As to Bella & Edward’s vampire-hybrid baby, enjoyed it. Interesting story line to add so that Bella gets to keep some humanity and have those human experiences so yeah, good decision but really my favorite part of the whole pregnancy thing was Jacob. I’ll deal with a slightly out of left field (although who didn’t see it coming as soon as Carlisle told the story about the immortal children???) story arc just for that moment when Bella finds out that Jacob imprinted on “Nessie.”

The ending was OK. Again, wonderful to know that everyone lives happily ever after but who didn’t see that coming? The thing with the Volturi seemed almost like an afterthought, like oh yeah, I the Volturi have to check on Bella, okay, we’ll do it at the end, with little or no build-up and make it slightly lame. I mean they talked the Volturi out of attacking? Happy and unlikely.

In the end, I found the books highly enjoyable but not as amazing as everyone has been going on about. I’m glad I read them but I don’t think I’ll read them again and I’ll see the movie although maybe not in theaters. I’ll probably send my copies to my mom if she wants to read them and I don’t really care about getting them back.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go re-read #6 and #7 in the Harry Potter series because movies are coming out soon and I need to be prepped.

1 comment:

Abhishek said...
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