Alexander Cavalcante Cavalcante itibaren Furjanići, Croatia
A colleague of mine talked me into reading the Twilight-series. I feared the worst, for I did read the reviews of this book before picking it up - and I have to say that they were quite hateful towards both the book & Ms. Meyer herself. Personally I don't think that all the bad reviews that this book has received were due to the style it was written in. I think that it's mainly based on envy and prejudice towards the author herself: for how could this housewife, mother of three, and a Mormon too, ever be capable of writing a vampire-fiction novel that has been so well received by the readers? Remember that many of those reviewers are writers and authors too, and many of them only dream of having just half of the success that Meyer’s has received, while others have struggled for many years to be where they are today. That’s what I think. Now on to the book: I honestly enjoyed reading this book, but honestly I also expected the worst, so it was easy to be positively surprised. Basically it was by far much better than the hateful reviews claimed it to be. It was not “awesome” or remarkable, though, but it certainly WAS entertaining. Granted, the language/content of the book was somewhat repetitive, but not as much as the “haters” want the rest of us to believe. I have read other books (for instance the “Sookie Stackhouse”-series and the “Vampire Diaries”-series – just to remain in the genre) that were written far worse and had a much thinner plot and characterisation than this one. In this book you actually get to feel something for this Edward & Bella couple – deep annoyance in my case, but that’s beside the point – and you cannot do that with a storyline and characters that are poorly written. Because of the positive surprise this book turned out to be for me and the reinvention of the vampire genre (even though I personally did not like the direction, but it sure was inventive), I give this book a 2-star rating. I wanted to give it more, but I don’t think that would be a fair assessment of it. It's too bad that you cannot give half-stars. This book is not great literature, but simply an enjoyable read, what I would not repeat. UPDATE 22/04/2011: I recently came across this little movie, which I find awesome, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZwM3GvaTRM This is what the maker of this video has to say about it, and I couldn't agree more: In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward's character and generally creepy behaviour. Seen through Buffy's eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed - in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century. UPDATED on March 11th 2012: These two are too funny not to post: