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isabelle_grey97 's review for:
Eclipse
by Stephenie Meyer
Okay, so I had at first planned to just leave my rating be for this one. But I realized I can't do that. I realize, as many do, that The Twilight Saga by Stephenie Meyer is no masterpiece by any means at all. In fact, I rated all of the books, expect this one, with two stars. That was when I realized I had to write another review for this series and so here I am.
To start, I'm going to do a basic recap of the plot here. So this story picks up basically where the trudge-fest of New Moon left off. Edward and the Cullens are back in Forks, Bella has her great love back and is now happy and ready to take that plunge to become immortal. But with the return of the Cullens comes a few new problems. One being the loss of her friend Jacob Black, a werewolf who's kind solely exist to fight and kill vampires. The other is the fact that a murderous vampire by the name of Victoria is back, building an army of newborn vampires is ready to seek revenge on Edward for the death of her mate James.
Okay, so that's the basic plot points right there, and of course I'll go into more detail in a moment. However, first, I'm gonna break down all the issues I had with this novel first, because, as with the first two books, there are many.
Firstly, in New Moon Bella and Jacob had grown close when Edward left and now that Edward is back, Bella has to chose between them. In short we have a love triangle.
Now speaking in a general sense, I'm not fond of love triangles. In my experience, they don't tend to be very well done. If it's two girls and one guy, the main character who is a female is superior to the other in every way possible and is clearly the better choice. And in the case of this novel where it's two guys and a girl, her role is diminished to choosing which guy she ends up with and that becomes her focus.
Such was the case here and that wasn't my only issue with the love triangle for a few reasons.
For one, even if I could get past how Bella's main role was to make a choice between two men, (and she's supposed to be the protagonist) she is still a horribly written character. As I stated in my review of Twilight, she has no qualities outside of her love for Edward to define her as a character, she's supposedly not like other people because she's selfless and virtuous, but all her actions prove that to be untrue. In reality, Bella is very whiny, selfish and so insecure it makes me role my eyes. You'd think surviving a few near death encounters would make her feel more strongly about herself, but that's not the case. And yes, despite this, she has two guys, both of whom are fairly decent for the most part, fawning over her.
Yeah, I know this is a book about vampires, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far on that one.
And this pretty much consumes Bella for the most part during the course of the novel-and that made me want to scream. Why? Because she as a vampire hell-bent on revenge hunting her down with an army! And she spends the majority of her time worrying about choosing between Edward and Jacob.
Another low point for this book. The main character is still terribly written. Then you have the writing itself, the prose is still purple and I'm sure the vocabulary employed by Meyer was done in an attempt to make Bella seem smart to the reader. But I'll say this, a good vocabulary does not a smart person make. If you keep making stupid, wishy-washy choices, I don't care how many SAT words you know, you're not that smart.
But despite these flaws, Eclipse had some very high points for me as well, and that was why I gave it an extra star, and rated it the highest out of all the series.
Why? Well that's what I'll explain now.
I stated earlier in this review that there is an army of newborn vampires after Bella. Now what's a newborn? Well this book explains that. The term "newborn" refers to a vampire who has been newly made and has not yet hit their first year mark. In this time before the first year, the newly created vampire is impossibly strong, stronger than any of their older counterparts and if that wasn't risky enough, they are also ruled by their hunting instinct. Everyone in their first year, all they want is blood. All that matters is how thirsty they are. So combined with their incredible strength and bloodlust, newborns are very dangerous and very hard to control.
I loved this aspect of the book for a few reasons. The first bit would be how we were introduced to the concept, as it turns out, one of the Cullen clan, Jasper has extensive experience with them. As when he was changed, during the American Civil War, vampires were waging wars too and they were using newborn armies to do the fighting. This was a nice insight to how vivid Meyer's imagination could be. I loved how she align human and vampire conflicts. But even more than that, this is the first time we see the dark side of becoming a vampire.
In the first two books, being a vampire is more like being a superhero. You have the incredible speed, the strength, the skin like steel and the whole impossible beauty thing and even the blood drinking thing isn't a big deal because there's another option. Animals, so you don't have to hurt people. All sounds cool right? Well now you see the cost of it.
The first year, reason doesn't matter. It's about blood and the blood you'll be drawn to is of the human variety. For the first time, Bella is forced to confront how, after being changed, she could become a serious threat to strangers as well as her family and friends because of that change. It wouldn't just come easily, she'd spend a minimum of a year as a very wild vampire who was difficult to control and restrain. There is no guarantee she wouldn't hurt anyone.
Then, if that's not enough, you also get another drawback to vampire life from another member of the Cullen clan, Rosalie. Jasper outlined how tough the first year is, but Rosalie went beyond that, beyond the issues that do not go away after a year. The permanence of it all. How you can't really change your mind about the life you want after you've been changed.
In a conversation with Bella, she talked about how when she had been Bella's age, she hadn't really known exactly what it was she truly wanted out of life. And now, as she was much older, she knew what it was; simply a home and family with a man who truly loved her, but now, her knowledge didn't matter, because there was a huge portion of that, that she could never have just due to her being a vampire now.
Though Bella claims to know what she wants, fact remains Rosalie still gives her some food for thought. Are you willing to take that giant step, make that huge commitment without any way to go back and lose all the possibility that come with a human life?
And the drawbacks of vampire life don't end there either. Not with potentially becoming a murderer in the first year, becoming someone you don't recognize. Not the inability to change your mind and go back. Not with the loss of a family of your own and growing old. Nope, not at all. It comes with the loss of human friends and family. It was stated at the end of New Moon, the Cullens had swore to never create another vampire. If they change Bella, that breaks the treaty with the wolves and that means war. So guess who can never come back to Forks if she takes the plunge into immortality?
And those reasons were the reason I gave this book an extra star. For the very first time in the series, we see the negative side of being a vampire. We, the readers finally see what Bella would have to give up to become immortal. When I had read this the first time, I had finally thought Meyer was coming to her own as a writer. I had thought she was finally going to take some serious risks with the book, writing the rules to show that Bella could not have it both ways and that her choice to become a vampire would come with a serious personal cost and that it could not be avoided.
Hence my three star-rating. Meyer seemed to finally dive into the cost of joining the vampire world and made it clear that you can't have it both ways. The fact that she finally showed the darker side of vampire life, as well as further developed the backstory of two minor characters, really made this book standout for me as the highlight of the series.
Whether I'll review the final book is still up in the air for me, but we'll see.
To start, I'm going to do a basic recap of the plot here. So this story picks up basically where the trudge-fest of New Moon left off. Edward and the Cullens are back in Forks, Bella has her great love back and is now happy and ready to take that plunge to become immortal. But with the return of the Cullens comes a few new problems. One being the loss of her friend Jacob Black, a werewolf who's kind solely exist to fight and kill vampires. The other is the fact that a murderous vampire by the name of Victoria is back, building an army of newborn vampires is ready to seek revenge on Edward for the death of her mate James.
Okay, so that's the basic plot points right there, and of course I'll go into more detail in a moment. However, first, I'm gonna break down all the issues I had with this novel first, because, as with the first two books, there are many.
Firstly, in New Moon Bella and Jacob had grown close when Edward left and now that Edward is back, Bella has to chose between them. In short we have a love triangle.
Now speaking in a general sense, I'm not fond of love triangles. In my experience, they don't tend to be very well done. If it's two girls and one guy, the main character who is a female is superior to the other in every way possible and is clearly the better choice. And in the case of this novel where it's two guys and a girl, her role is diminished to choosing which guy she ends up with and that becomes her focus.
Such was the case here and that wasn't my only issue with the love triangle for a few reasons.
For one, even if I could get past how Bella's main role was to make a choice between two men, (and she's supposed to be the protagonist) she is still a horribly written character. As I stated in my review of Twilight, she has no qualities outside of her love for Edward to define her as a character, she's supposedly not like other people because she's selfless and virtuous, but all her actions prove that to be untrue. In reality, Bella is very whiny, selfish and so insecure it makes me role my eyes. You'd think surviving a few near death encounters would make her feel more strongly about herself, but that's not the case. And yes, despite this, she has two guys, both of whom are fairly decent for the most part, fawning over her.
Yeah, I know this is a book about vampires, but I can only suspend my disbelief so far on that one.
And this pretty much consumes Bella for the most part during the course of the novel-and that made me want to scream. Why? Because she as a vampire hell-bent on revenge hunting her down with an army! And she spends the majority of her time worrying about choosing between Edward and Jacob.
Another low point for this book. The main character is still terribly written. Then you have the writing itself, the prose is still purple and I'm sure the vocabulary employed by Meyer was done in an attempt to make Bella seem smart to the reader. But I'll say this, a good vocabulary does not a smart person make. If you keep making stupid, wishy-washy choices, I don't care how many SAT words you know, you're not that smart.
But despite these flaws, Eclipse had some very high points for me as well, and that was why I gave it an extra star, and rated it the highest out of all the series.
Why? Well that's what I'll explain now.
I stated earlier in this review that there is an army of newborn vampires after Bella. Now what's a newborn? Well this book explains that. The term "newborn" refers to a vampire who has been newly made and has not yet hit their first year mark. In this time before the first year, the newly created vampire is impossibly strong, stronger than any of their older counterparts and if that wasn't risky enough, they are also ruled by their hunting instinct. Everyone in their first year, all they want is blood. All that matters is how thirsty they are. So combined with their incredible strength and bloodlust, newborns are very dangerous and very hard to control.
I loved this aspect of the book for a few reasons. The first bit would be how we were introduced to the concept, as it turns out, one of the Cullen clan, Jasper has extensive experience with them. As when he was changed, during the American Civil War, vampires were waging wars too and they were using newborn armies to do the fighting. This was a nice insight to how vivid Meyer's imagination could be. I loved how she align human and vampire conflicts. But even more than that, this is the first time we see the dark side of becoming a vampire.
In the first two books, being a vampire is more like being a superhero. You have the incredible speed, the strength, the skin like steel and the whole impossible beauty thing and even the blood drinking thing isn't a big deal because there's another option. Animals, so you don't have to hurt people. All sounds cool right? Well now you see the cost of it.
The first year, reason doesn't matter. It's about blood and the blood you'll be drawn to is of the human variety. For the first time, Bella is forced to confront how, after being changed, she could become a serious threat to strangers as well as her family and friends because of that change. It wouldn't just come easily, she'd spend a minimum of a year as a very wild vampire who was difficult to control and restrain. There is no guarantee she wouldn't hurt anyone.
Then, if that's not enough, you also get another drawback to vampire life from another member of the Cullen clan, Rosalie. Jasper outlined how tough the first year is, but Rosalie went beyond that, beyond the issues that do not go away after a year. The permanence of it all. How you can't really change your mind about the life you want after you've been changed.
In a conversation with Bella, she talked about how when she had been Bella's age, she hadn't really known exactly what it was she truly wanted out of life. And now, as she was much older, she knew what it was; simply a home and family with a man who truly loved her, but now, her knowledge didn't matter, because there was a huge portion of that, that she could never have just due to her being a vampire now.
Though Bella claims to know what she wants, fact remains Rosalie still gives her some food for thought. Are you willing to take that giant step, make that huge commitment without any way to go back and lose all the possibility that come with a human life?
And the drawbacks of vampire life don't end there either. Not with potentially becoming a murderer in the first year, becoming someone you don't recognize. Not the inability to change your mind and go back. Not with the loss of a family of your own and growing old. Nope, not at all. It comes with the loss of human friends and family. It was stated at the end of New Moon, the Cullens had swore to never create another vampire. If they change Bella, that breaks the treaty with the wolves and that means war. So guess who can never come back to Forks if she takes the plunge into immortality?
And those reasons were the reason I gave this book an extra star. For the very first time in the series, we see the negative side of being a vampire. We, the readers finally see what Bella would have to give up to become immortal. When I had read this the first time, I had finally thought Meyer was coming to her own as a writer. I had thought she was finally going to take some serious risks with the book, writing the rules to show that Bella could not have it both ways and that her choice to become a vampire would come with a serious personal cost and that it could not be avoided.
Hence my three star-rating. Meyer seemed to finally dive into the cost of joining the vampire world and made it clear that you can't have it both ways. The fact that she finally showed the darker side of vampire life, as well as further developed the backstory of two minor characters, really made this book standout for me as the highlight of the series.
Whether I'll review the final book is still up in the air for me, but we'll see.