Twilight

Everywhere I go, someone's talking about how much they love these Twilight books, so I'll go ahead and post a review of Twilight by Stephenie Meyer that I wrote for a family website a couple of years ago:

I really enjoyed reading Twilight, and it was a page turner. I'd say it was a better than average teeny bopper-vampire-romance novel. The back cover compares Twilight to Anne Rice's stuff, and that comparison is way out in left field. We do not have Anne Rice's signature elevation of evil, or maybe you would say disregard for morality (which has driven me to go on the wagon where Anne Rice is concerned---yeah, I heard, she converted to Christianity and has written a novel about Jesus---scary thought--not the conversion, the novel), nor do we have her beautiful mastery of using language to involve the senses (which I did enjoy). Even the vampires are vastly dissimilar. I will try not to give plot stuff away here. I think Twilight was better than L.J. Smith, but not as good as "Buffy" at its best (unfortunately, as I believe most of you would agree, "Buffy" and "Angel" weren't as good after their first few seasons). Twilight lacks that wonderful, poking fun at teeny-bopper/vampire melodrama humor that "Buffy" has. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the book a great deal, but there were some annoyances for me. I prefer it when staples of vampire lore are observed. I don't mind messing with a few things, but it really bugs me when sunlight doesn't hurt the vampire. (Often teeny-bopper-vampire romance novels need to fudge this so that the centuries-old vampires can attend high school---yes, cheesy. But at least in Twilight the sun is problematic for them.) I like the wooden stake thing, but I'm not horribly offended if it's taken out (the wooden stake is not mentioned in Twilight). I think allowing the vampire to be in sunlight makes it far too easy for the vampire. Humans would have no chance if not for that. Also, since in Twilight vampires don't lose their souls, can go out in sunlight, and are virtually indestructible, everyone would want to be one. That always bothers me too. I like it when being a vampire is somehow undesirable. In this novel our dark, dashing hero thinks he shouldn't turn his ingenue into a vampire, and we wonder why. I prefer something "Buffy"-like here. Vampire is tortured. In Angel's case, cursed with a soul he will lose should he become truly happy. Spike, though a fun character (we loved him watching "Passions" with Buffy's mom), I thought was handled poorly. They lost Angel and wanted another vampire for Buffy (well, Riley sure didn't work), but Spike developing his own morality didn't really fit in the "Buffy" universe. Sorry. Back to Twilight. Back to the ingenue. As is typical in romance novels (the better to make her everywoman), the heroine is rather dull. Her token character flaw is clumsiness that is somewhat unbelievable and gets annoying. Also, she sometimes seems kinda dumb, and we do wonder what Mr. Vampire finds so fascinating. For that matter (don't stone me, ladies), he's not really very original either, but he makes up for it by being a dashing, moody vampire, so who can resist him anyway? Despite the fact that I've spent a lot of time ripping, the book was a lot of fun.