Twilight series: Book review

I was going to publish this much later, but the time is ripe :)

Written on Feb 11, in Germany, this review is based on Twilight & New Moon, although by now I have finished reading all of them.

Since the Twilight series has become such a phenomenon, I borrowed a copy of the first book "Twilight" to read during my long flight. The story is about a girl who falls in love with a good vampire (the kind that doesn't eat people) and wants him
to make her a vampire so she can truly live on forever with him. Around this story line the author has woven PG rated teenage drama with uniformly benign characters (except the uniformly evil ones), and more teenage drama.

The book started very unimpressively. The main character, Bella, has returned to the Pacific northwest after spending several years in Phoenix. She begins to describe the dreary green of the area: "Everything was green: the trees, their trunks covered with moss, their branches hanging with a canopy of it, the ground covered with ferns. Even the air filtered down greenly through the leaves". The rest of the book follows in a similar vein where 5 sentences are used to say something that can be expressed in one. Perhaps someone was paying Ms Meyer by the page?

Filled with contempt and a certain "I could write better than that" feeling, I decided to trudge on. And on. And on. I could not put the damn thing down. I read the first 300 pages on my 10 hour international flight and the remaining 200 or so in another 2 days during my vacation. I bought book 2 (New Moon) in India, off the Best Sellers shelf, no less.

Deja vu: I read the first 300 or so pages of New Moon on my 10 hour flight and finished the book in the next two one day. Yeah. Now I need to get back to the US and borrow the remaining books of this series and finally lift this spell off me.

In summary, this is what my opinion of the books is: It is freaking addictive trash. A book that captivates you like a B grade horror flick that you can't stop watching, where the horror is not the plot, but the presentation itself. If I have to read one more time how her heart rate soared and they could both hear it thumping when he kissed her, I will have to throw up a little bit. Ed: I had to read that about 50 more times while getting through the next 2 books. Presumably because of her religion, the author spends a lot of time skirting around kissing. She got the biggest laugh out of me by writing that Bella wanted to go about things "the right way" - marriage, sex, immortality. Sure. I don't know why no mainstream religion has picked up on vampirism as the way to immortality!

PS: At the time of publishing this, I have finished reading the series. I had to buy Eclipse at the Frankfurt airport, and then Breaking Dawn 3 days later while in Target for baby food. A very fitting ending. And I overheard MrM say "I have my wife back now". Heh.