Twilight

OK, I’ve finally broken down and read the books even though I found the first movie nearly intolerably girly. Since I was watching it with Critter though it wasn’t all that bad.

So I’ve read the whole series (I will not call it a saga, it doesn’t qualify and cheapens the word) over the past two days, and they aren’t as horrible as people are making them out to be. I really don’t see how they’ve turned into the multi-million dollar money machine that they have but they aren’t horrible. There are a lot of misconceptions out there about them as well, obviously put forward by someone who has never read them through cover to cover. They aren’t magnificent examples of writing (the first person perspective wears on me after a while) and there are several points at which I have to flip (or click, in my case, love the Kindle) back several pages to resolve what seems to be a continuity error but is actually the result of poor phrasing and paragraph construction. I lay that squarely at the feet of the editors, not the author; it is after all what they are supposed to correct.

The first three books were easily devoured in about thirteen hours; Breaking Dawn required a full twelve on its own, which I just finished. I think this is due to the more complex structure of the story at this point but I could be wrong. I think there was a bit of a cop-out in the last book regarding a major plot point that I won’t go into details about here. Suffice to say it was supposed to take years to fully recover from the fallout of this plot point, and after it happened suddenly there is no fallout at all which flies in the face of the whole of the previous three books. I’m thinking someone put a bug in Ms. Myer’s ear and told her to wrap it up, she didn’t really have the chops to stretch the plot out to five or more books.

I do hope this experience has been a good one for Ms. Meyer, as a whole, and that her skills (or at least choice in editors) improve should she decide to make another foray into the world of young adult fiction. I’d really like to see a similar buzz around the Young Wizards novels that Diane Duane, one of my favorite YA and Sci-Fi authors has penned, but I doubt it will ever happen.

Over all, I’d give them books two and a half out of four stars as a whole, if anyone is interested.