Twilight by Stephanie Meyer

Yep, I did it. I finally gave in and read the latest fangirl craze that's spawning all the vampire-themed novels, movies and TV shows. Despite the tepid to horrified reviews I'd heard, despite the fact that I've always considered vampire stuff to be rather silly, and despite the creep-out factor I get every time Robert Pattinson shows up on posters and magazine covers, I gave it a try.

Somewhat to my surprise, therefore, Twilight wasn't quite as painful as I expected. Granted, that was partially because it was often so bad that it broke through to hilarious. But not completely.

The story itself isn't bad at all, good enough to have me looking forward to the next book. It's cliched, of course, but stories become cliche for a reason. The secondary characters are well done, and I might even like the two main characters if they weren't so cursed annoying.

Unfortunately, the core of an engaging world and a decent story is destroyed by terrible, horrible, no-good prose and narrative voice. I blame a very large part of this on the first-person point of view. First of all, the main effect of a brooding Byronic hero is destroyed when you only see him from his lover's point of view--Bella only see the good in Edward, which is as it should be. The reader is supposed to see the torment, angst and eventual triumph of good over evil or whatever, but because we only see through Bella's eyes, there's no real development of the duality. Second, you can tell us that Edward is a very good looking guy the first time we meet him, and then maybe once more as the relationship really gets going, but after that we'll remember, I promise. You don't have to remind us in every single paragraph for the remainder of the book. And finally, if you're going to build up to a dramatic rescue and crazy vampire fight as the climax of the book, don't make your only POV character unconscious for the vast majority of it. That was a big disappointment >_<

I could go on, but as I mentioned earlier I liked the book enough to continue the series, so there's really no point in picking it apart bit by bit. One more thing I'd like to share though--one of those so-bad-it's-funny moments:

Ever since these books have hit it big, I've been seeing derrogatory references to "sparkly" vampires--often comparing the Twilight variety to the real bad-boys of modern vampire lore. I just assumed that it was just a way of saying that the Twilight brand were wussy little vampires, too pretty and sweet to deserve the name. Nope, silly me :-p Meyer's vampires quite literally sparkle in the sunlight, as if they had crystalline skin o_O

Really? Sparkles?