The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer

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#1

Despite my efforts to not get into this series of books, I caved and gave in to reading them. :wink: A younger cousin begged me to read the vampire/romance/angst novels so that she would have someone to talk to about them (aside from friends during her summer break). I am curious if anyone else has read any of the books or the complete series? If so, what are your reactions?

I enjoyed Twilight and Eclipse. However, I was disappointed with Breaking Dawn. The final book could have easily been 300 pages. Towards then end, I felt I was reading just to get it over with. The plot and conflict left more to be desired, I thought.

On a separate (yet still related) note, looking forward to the film release of Twilight in November. :cool:

#2

I finally caved to the peer pressure and started the Twilight series. I am just about to start ‘New Moon’. I enjoyed ‘Twilight,’ and from what folks tell me, the books keep getting better.

I have read some articles comparing this author/series to JKR/Harry Potter; which is a separate thread in itself. (It is too early in my experience with the Twilight series for me to have a hard-line stance here, however I will say I am a HUGE fan of JKR/Harry Potter, so I am probably biased.)

#3

I enjoyed Twilight, New Moon, and the third one more than I thought I would, but I don’t love them the way that lots of people do. They’re fun junk-food reading. However, I read some spoilers of Breaking Dawn adn decided to skip it. I won’t go into it, but, ew.

On the other hand, I like The Host, her new non-Twilight book, quite a lot more than I thought I would. It wasn’t well-written, but it was well considered. I would actually recommend it.

#4

My sister loves these books, and she HATES reading. She had been trying to get me to read them for a while, and I bought all of them for her birthday this summer.I finally borrowed the Twilight from her last month, and I enjoyed it. I will probably read the next one and see the movie sometime in the near future.

#5

I felt like this after New Moon. I was just reading it to get it over with.

I liked Twilight, New Moon and Breaking Dawn. But the I the the entire series could have been condensed to two books.

#6

I devoured the Twilight series. Those books are chocolate - not like enhancing your life or helping you grow or anything, but pure pleasure.

Also really liked The Host - more than Twilight. I agree, it’s not like amazingly written, but it’s a good, thought provoking story that makes you think.

#7

I just downloaded Twilight from Audible. I feel that while it is not quite in the same legue as Harry P, it is very entertaining. I will most likely get the folowing 3 books, as well as The Host.

#8

I powered through the Twilight novels quickly, I thought they were very entertaining but I had to turn off my inner critic to really enjoy them. I think that my favorite book of the series was Eclipse because Jacob is my favorite character.

Once I was done with the last book in the series, all the things that I glossed over while reading rose to the surface. For me a romance book is only a good as the heroine it revolves around, and there were things Bella did that drove me up the frakkin’ wall!

I have a long list of complaints about her, but I think the thing that tweaked me the most was her willingness to just throw away her humanity in order to be with Edward. I can only remember one or two moments where she has some hesitation but I thought that she should have spent a lot more time mulling over the fact that she was volunteering to become an uncontrollable killer, walking away from the possibility of having normal human relationships, and leaving her friends and family behind to die of old age while she lives on forever. Apparently she has faith that Edward won’t let her hurt anyone but—and maybe I’m just being picky—it would bother me that the only thing preventing me from becoming a bloodsucking murderer was the vigilance of my boyfriend.

But other than that I thought it was great.

#9

OK, I will be discussing main plot points here, so er, SPOILER WARNING NOW.

These books drove me crazy. I’d never really paid attention to them until the month before Breaking Dawn came out. Then, it seemed EVERYONE in my office was reading them. So I caved and read them. I have to admit, for the first 3, I was pretty well hooked. Personally, I think that sensuality is sexier then actual sex, so the slightly repressed sexuality of the books kinda spurned me on and got me to ignore the major problems. Then came Breaking Dawn, about 3 weeks after I finished the third book. I read it in a day, and immediatly felt abused. Everything that was wrong with the series came crashing down on me, and I have since given all the books away. Here are my main issues:

*Edward exhibits the classic characteristics of a controlling/abusive boyfriend
*Bella has been heralded as a “strong female character” but EVERY decision she makes is based upon Edward, she thinks terrible things about herself and has no self-esteem whatsoever, how is this strong? She only becomes strong after becoming a vampire, and even then, she stills lets others fight most of her battles for her
*the message about sex: While I admit that the sensualness appealed to me, once I figured out that the message was clearly “NO SEX BEFORE MARRIAGE BECAUSE IT IS EVIL” it got to me. I’m not encouraging teenage sex, but a portrayal of it this way seemed lame. Meyer is a hardcore Mormon, so it’s no surprise here- Abstinence till marriage, they frak TWICE and she gets pregnant, baby is born in less then a month, Jacob imprints BOOM nuclear family (Edward = Dad, Bella= Mom, Renesme= kid, Jacob = dog). The message became more sex=baby ONLY, so any sex outside marriage=bad, which might fit the wolrdview of some people, but not a majority.
*Meyer forshadowed an epic battle through the first 3 books, she forshadowed a major Sacrifice on Bella’s part, She forshadowed an unhappy resolution to the love triangle - NONE of which we got. Some people argue that Bella sacrificed her humanity, but she didn’t. Charlie somehow is OK with it, she can exert more self-control over her vamp instincts then any other vamp, she gets her husband, she gets her kid, she gets her best friend/future son-in-law/dog, she gets her family, it even mentions seeing her friends from school at a later time, so WHAT did she loose? Her klutziness and her appetite for non-blood substanence…

These books annoyed me to no end by the time i was done…

The Host was kinda cool, the concept of “what happens AFTER the invasion of the body snatchers” really hooked me, but it still had that weak female character masquarading as a strong female character thing that annoyed me…

#10

I couldn’t finish the first one. Besides the terrible prose and absolute lack of pacing, Edward was giving me flashbacks to my abusive ex-boyfriend.

That said, I get more enjoyment than I should out of watching fandom divide itself and freak out, or horrifying my writer’s group with excerpts. Oh, and there’s nothing like enjoying a nice session of snarking it with professional authors–Stephen Brust seemed quite taken aback at the concept of sparkling abstinent vampires a couple of weeks ago.

That said, if you like it, you like it. I’m not sorry that I don’t.

#11

Ah-HAH! I be liking you a great deal (between this thread, and the one on what we are reading now). I completely forgot to even mention the poor writing style Meyer engages. IT was one of the bad qualities I glossed over on initially starting out in these books.

Have you per chance seen this:

http://twilightsucks.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=fangirls&action=display&thread=5175

While none of these stories have any official documentation, if even half of them are truth, it’s freaky.

These books are really polarizing.

#12

Not having read any, I can attest to that. Listening to others: either they’re the greatest thing since Harry Potter, or they’re propaganda for co-dependence. I guess I’m going to have to read at least some of them.

#13

i_tego: :smiley: Bahaha, replying in two places at once right now. I’m willing to forgive a lot of bad writing if the story is engaging enough (my favorite book series, Simon R. Green’s Deathstalker saga, suffers from some crazy repetitive prose) but it didn’t balance out for me here. Yeah, I saw that link on the SomethingAwful forums and gave it a skim, and DANG. I’d like to think that the majority are exaggerations or outright falsehoods, but having once been an overzealous fan myself (not to the point of violence, but god help you if you badmouthed Star Wars around me when I was younger) and knowing how rabid people can get, there’s probably a few true stories there. And that makes me sad.

Pike: By all means, read them and form your own opinion. I decided to give it a fair shot since my aunt loves them and I really did want to see what the hubub was about, and it didn’t pan out well for me. I’d just recommend borrowing them vs. buying them if you’re on the fence.

#14

I hate when I get sucked into hype! I read the 1st before the movie and then finished the series. I have to say I am Team Jacob. Edward also reminded me of the “badboy” boyfriend and Jacob was way better for Bella. The first person prose and Bella’s whining made it hard to get through. Eclispse didn’t add anything to the series and could probably be skipped. My favorite was Breaking Dawn simply because it had a better arc than any of the others.

My biggest beef had to be her “rules” on vampires. In my day, vampires burst into frakking flame in the sun! I’ll tkae Spike or Angel any day over Edward!

#15

fist-bump

tottally agree.

funny, i just started re-watching buffy season one today…

#16

Allow me to share my mental image of the last book.

Picture if you will a vast meadow, filled with tire tracks from a large jeep and a cadre of faintly sparkly people in dark velvet cloaks. They advance menacingly across the meadow towards their prey, a small coven of misbehaving children, easily quashed by the powerful cadre and their supporters who trail along in their wake. A menacing growl breaks the silence of the early morning and the cadre stops, pondering the meaning of this sound. What’s this? Werewolves? WTF? The cadre blinks in curiosity and confusion.

A voice, intelligent and thoughtful wafts acros the misty ground to the leader of the cadre, “You better hold up right there buddy, I’ve got lots of bad ass on my side and we’ll whoop your butt!”

“No! I am powerful and old!” comes the defiant and confident reply.

“Yeah? Well I’m young and smart. And I … think I can take you. gulp Maybe…”

“Never! I will attack you without provocation and destroy you without breaking a nail!”

Hissing ensues from the various parties and they edge closer to each other, throwing their abnormally silly “powers” at each other in a show of how violent and bad ass they are despite their poofy outward appearances. The “powers” colide and the sparkly beings hesitate for a moment as they try to figure out who is better at the whole power thing. Neither can decide.

The break and return to their team sides to confer with each other as to how to best spank the other side without putting forth any real effort. A few of the younger ones slip out (as teenagers are prone to do) and taunt the other party to prove the superior bad assery of their team. A few of the other team wince slightly and ignore the taunting. The bad assery is denied.

This denial of bad assery makes the leader of the cadre of sparkly dudes and dudettes miffed and huffy. He attacks with a close approximation of effort. Dawn breaks across the meadow as dawn is wont to do in novels titled “Breaking Dawn” and the light shimmers across the mist igniting the insane sparkly bits of the vampires massed there. The wolves whine and squint around the intenseness of the sparkling and decided that hanging with vampires just ain’t worth it when you can’t wear dark shades.

The brilliantly shimmering cadre attacks as one and the smaller group huddles in fear as they brace themselves for certain death, or whatever happens to vampires when they get bi*** slapped by older vampires with freaky skillz. Yet oddly, nothing happens to them. The glance around in wonder and their topaz gems of eyes alight on their saviour, her shallow vapidness enfolding them like a warm blanket as her silky cape flaps in the breeze that wasn’t there a moment ago. She is a hero to them, her hands braced on her hips as she stands fearless in the sunlight against the cadre of old dudes. They will not harm her family! NO! That would be like mean and it would mess up her happy ending.

She stamps her foot petulantly and whines across the meadow, “You leave my family alone! You’re mean and not at all nice and I’m not scared of you because I’m all sparkly and super like now. So go home!”

Her words have great power over the ancient cadre and they cannot deny her intense pouting, “Okay, we’re out. C’ya!”

They turn and leave.

And they lived happily ever after, well after she expanded her super powers and learned how to do all kinds of things that she had always wanted to do, like read her oh so perfect husband’s perfect mind and all that neat stuff.

The End…unless I need more money in the future then I’ll come up with more crap that teenagers across the world will buy no matter what.

**** Anyone think that one’s better? Definitely shorter and approximately the same result.

Now don’t get me wrong, I liked parts of the last one, Jacob was a riot and I actually liked Renesmee too. But Super Mary Sue…erm…Bella just made my teeth hurt.