{"id":436,"date":"2009-01-04T19:13:23","date_gmt":"2009-01-05T00:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=436"},"modified":"2010-06-12T20:26:52","modified_gmt":"2010-06-13T00:26:52","slug":"the-twilight-saga-by-stephenie-meyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/?p=436","title":{"rendered":"The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" \"\" \"\" \"\"<\/p>\n

After witnessing a portion of the release party for Breaking Dawn<\/em> I had to read the books for myself to understand what the big fuss was all about.\u00c2\u00a0 I mostly borrowed the books of a co-worker and I finished Breaking Dawn<\/em> during the Labor Day weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 (A lot of the time I read faster than I can type up a review.)\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Now that\u00c2\u00a0Twilight<\/em> has been released as a movie, here are my thoughts on the series.\u00c2\u00a0 (This qualifies as part of the Lit Flicks Challenge.)\u00c2\u00a0 Spoilers follow.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In Twilight<\/strong><\/em>, the reader is introduced to Bella, a not very graceful high school girl who has moved to\u00c2\u00a0damp Washington state from sunny Arizona.\u00c2\u00a0 When I read it, I already knew\u00c2\u00a0the series was about a human girl who\u00c2\u00a0falls in love with a vampire which tainted my reading of it.\u00c2\u00a0 For instance,\u00c2\u00a0when\u00c2\u00a0Bella\u00c2\u00a0sits next to Edward Cullen in biology class and he recoils away from her in apparent disgust I thought, “He must be\u00c2\u00a0the vampire!”\u00c2\u00a0 Throughout the entire book I kept thinking things like that.\u00c2\u00a0 I never got a sense of the “great romance” between Bella and Edward except for some scenes like the baseball game.\u00c2\u00a0 I read Stephenie Mayer was writing New Moon<\/em> while doing the edits for Twilight<\/em> and that could only make the series more cohesive.\u00c2\u00a0 A lot of the book felt repetitive but that could be because I’ve already lived through teenage angst once.\u00c2\u00a0 For some reason I kept reading it, wanting to find out how it ended.\u00c2\u00a0 Once it was finished I felt like I had to read more to decipher the phenomenon.<\/p>\n

New Moon<\/strong> <\/em>was my favorite of the series though from reviews I’ve read it seems like it was the least favorite of most readers.\u00c2\u00a0 I really enjoyed the banter between Bella and Jacob Black.\u00c2\u00a0 An incident happens with the Cullens that makes Edward believe the best thing for Bella is to have the Cullens leave town and have no more vampires in her life.\u00c2\u00a0 Edward is a character that goes to extremes to protect Bella and it usually backfires.\u00c2\u00a0 Since Edward hasn’t been able to use his mind reading ability on Bella, she keeps surprising him.\u00c2\u00a0 Not all humans are as predictable as Edward thinks.\u00c2\u00a0 Because Edward wasn’t in the book as much the reader gets to know Bella as herself more.\u00c2\u00a0 And it gives her human friends a little opportunity to shine.\u00c2\u00a0 After this book they all fall off the face of the earth for the most part.\u00c2\u00a0 One thing never explained in the book was how she could keep hearing Edward in her head whenever she was about to do something reckless.\u00c2\u00a0 The mythology behind the werewolves and the pack relationship was fascinating.\u00c2\u00a0 When Bella and Alice (one of the Edward’s sisters) travel to Italy to stop Edward from a hasty decision, the Voltari coven is introduced to the series.\u00c2\u00a0 As vampire royalty they decide Bella must become one of them soon or pay the consequences for having knowledge of vampires.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Eclipse<\/em> <\/strong>Bella and Edward are together once more.\u00c2\u00a0 Edward and Bella have many discussions on the future of their relationship.\u00c2\u00a0 He wants her to have as normal a life as she can while she just wants to be with him forever – even if it means she must be turned into a vampire.\u00c2\u00a0 Spending so much time with Jacob during New Moon<\/em>makes Bella care for him and she must choose between them.\u00c2\u00a0 The stakes for Bella are higher this time.\u00c2\u00a0 She has an enemy from the first book trying to destroy the Cullens and the Voltari have an eye on the Cullens as well to make sure Bella gets turned into a vampire.\u00c2\u00a0 When the werewolves and the Cullens come together to destroy a common enemy it made the book for me.<\/p>\n

Bella chose Edward over Jacob.\u00c2\u00a0 In Breaking Dawn <\/strong><\/em>they get married, take their honeymoon, have a baby, turn Bella into a vampire\u00c2\u00a0and have one heck of a fight with the Voltari that starts because of a misunderstanding.\u00c2\u00a0 (Vampire royalty can get as greedy as their human counterparts, though which gives the Voltari reason to push the fight.)\u00c2\u00a0 And the characters that appear to deserve a happy ending get one.<\/p>\n

It’s always when Bella is in danger from the vampires that\u00c2\u00a0the books got exciting for me.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0How is this human going to overcome creatures with superior physical abilities and special powers?\u00c2\u00a0 With each book the back stories of the Cullen family come to light and allows each one to shine.\u00c2\u00a0 The world building was well done as was the cohesiveness of the characters.<\/p>\n

As for the Twilight<\/em> movie<\/strong>?\u00c2\u00a0 That “great romance” between Bella and Edward came alive during the movie.\u00c2\u00a0 The actors out of costume look like walking ads for Abercrombie and Fitch but in costume can be believable.\u00c2\u00a0 Can’t Hollywood find an overweight actor to play a vampire, though?\u00c2\u00a0 The screenplay is a decent adaptation of the novel.\u00c2\u00a0 It hits the important scenes but does leave out explanations (examples include\u00c2\u00a0newborn vampires and how difficult it can be to be “vegetarian”) that would be helpful to viewers who haven’t read the books.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll be seeing the rest of the movies to see what gets translated to the silver screen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After witnessing a portion of the release party for Breaking Dawn I had to read the books for myself to understand what the big fuss was all about.\u00c2\u00a0 I mostly borrowed the books of a co-worker and I finished Breaking Dawn during the Labor Day weekend.\u00c2\u00a0 (A lot of the time I read faster than… Continue reading The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,3],"tags":[24,51,37,50,23,48,28,49],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-event","category-review","tag-book","tag-breaking-dawn","tag-challenge","tag-eclipse","tag-film","tag-new-moon","tag-stephenie-meyer","tag-twilight","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2507,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/2507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.amberstults.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}