Eclipse

(Warning: This post contains spoilers… as usual.)

Saturday I finished the third book of the Twilight series.  I didn’t have as many reactions while reading it as I did with New Moon, which I think is because it’s generally a less ridiculously silly book.  I believe I liked it better, though at the same time, the plot of it is less concrete in my mind.  New Moon is about Edward leaving and Bella falling in love with Jacob, but also about the birth of the werewolf pack and the threat posed by constant attacks from Victoria and Laurent.  With Eclipse, the action of the plot, the threat of the newborn vampires, was not quite as major as I might have preferred, and the drama surrounding the Edward/Bella/Jacob triangle seemed somehow than either her finding Edward in Twilight or her losing Edward in New Moon.  Maybe I feel this way because it seems like it’s been building to some kind of confrontation between Edward and Jacob, and old-fashioned vampire/werewolf throw-down, if you will, and it never came to that.  Of course, it’s a good thing that it never did, because it’s better that they get along, and one or both of them probably would have at least gotten hurt, if not killed.  It feels a bit like a gun that’s loaded, cocked, pointed, then set aside.  I suppose it could still come to that in the last book, but since they’re no longer fighting for Bella’s love, it wouldn’t have the same weight.

We do get a vampire/werewolf fight, though.  Even if it’s two minor characters.  We also get a vampire/vampire fight, though it moves so quickly that the POV character can’t actually see what’s going on to tell us.  But I was very disappointed we didn’t get to see the big fight that was going on away from Bella.  That would have been much more interesting.  For one, I wanted to see some of the other vamps fight.  At least we get that little training scene and get to see Emmett, Edward, Jasper and Alice spar.  However, it’s not that hard for me to imagine Emmett, Jasper, and Edward fighting, and I could guess that Jasper would fight a lot like Edward, so no real insights or surprises there.  It was very nice to see how Alice fights, but I’m equally curious to see Esme, Carlisle, and Rosalie fight.  That’s who I would much rather have seen, and why I kind of wish for once that Bella had been stupid and gone down to where they were fighting, so we could see what’s going on.

The stuff between the werewolves and the Cullens was always interesting, and I wish we could have gotten more of it.  After all, that was kind of the major tension for this book.  Usually when we did see it, it was mostly just Edward and Jacob.  I wanted to see the rest of the people interact.  I wanted to see some stuff between Esme and Emily, Quil and Emmett, and all the rest.  That’s one of the most annoying things about these books: everything revolves around Edward and Bella, when there are so many other (more) interesting characters to explore.  Actually, I have similar feelings about the Harry Potter books.

There are three issures I have with Meyer’s writing style which, while perhaps present in the other books, really stuck out to me in this one.  One is the fact that too many revelations rely on characters just suddenly having an epiphany, with no real logic in how they came to that conclusion.  Not only does that not make sense, but it’s kind of a cheat to have a character gain knowledge without earning it (from the character’s perspective, or in the sense of the story earning it).  Like when Edward is suddenly nice to Jacob because, for apparently no good reason, he just decided that would be easier on Bella.  Or when he just suddenly isn’t tempted by her blood any more, because he knows what it’s like to live thinking she’s dead.  For something that was such a central, critical conflict in the first story, to just dismiss it out of hand and not even tell us about it until months after he’s gotten over it is incredibly unsatisfying.

Another thing that bothers me is Bella’s reaction to Edward wanting to marry her.  It just doesn’t make sense.  She’s totally averse to the idea of marriage, and yet what is she afraid of?  She’s absolutely certain that she wants Edward forever, so I really don’t know why she’d have anything less then pure enthusiasm for his wanting to marry her.  This seems like just a plot device to draw out the story.

The third thing that bugged me was the way the issue of sex was dealt with.  First Bella tells her dad that she’s a virgin and doesn’t plan to change that soon, then not too long after, she’s practically begging Edward to do her while they make out on his bed.  Then Edward is adamant that they not because he’s afraid that he’d hurt her, then adds that he’s also concerned about breaking the rules and that doing so would hurt her chances of getting into heaven (basically saying that he doesn’t want to hurt either her body or her soul), and insists they be married before they “try”.  Then later he just goes, “Aw, screw it,” and wants to take her in the meadow… but then she stops him because apparently she likes the idea of getting married first now.  Now, Meyer is a Mormon, and as such probably has strong beliefs about premarital sex.  So I can totally understand and appreciate her desire for her characters to be married before having sex.  However… it seems as if she’s so afraid of giving her characters any sort of real moral beliefs that she sacrifices logical characterization.  If she wants her characters to have her morals, then she should give them her morals–but if they don’t, then she should allow them to act as their characterization dictates and not try to force something that doesn’t make sense.  Again, I’m glad that she has them wait, but I’d much rather they didn’t get so near the edge, and that they waited for the right reasons: because they wanted to, not just because the story necessitated they do so.

One other thing that bugs me, though not as much, is her tendency for characters to be way more verbally forthcoming with their feelings than people really are.  This happens a lot with Edward and Bella, but what really struck me was a conversation that Edward and Jacob had in which they’re talking very openly about their feelings and their love for the same girl.  It’s just not realistic.  People, particularly guys, just don’t talk that way.  And they especially don’t talk that way with another guy who is their rival not only in love, but in pretty much everything about them.

There was a lot of good entertainment, though.  The stuff between Edward and Jacob when they’re getting at each other, especially when they were being particularly vicious, was quite interesting.  The beginning of the chapter with their silly talk, where Edward has to sit by and watch Jacob snuggle with Bella in a sleeping bag because he’s the only one who can keep her warm, was actually very amusing.  The backstories from Rosalie and Jasper, as well as the Quileute legends, were all very enlightening and helped to make the world seem like a bigger place, and giving more focus to the other Cullens is something I’m always for.  Kinda makes me wish that Meyer would write a book about the Cullen family, starting from when Carlisle was human and going through his change, his suicide attempts and discovery of a lifestyle he could live with, his time with the Volturi, finding Edward, more about Esme and how they got together, the three of them meeting Rosalie while she’s still human, dealing with Emmett as a newborn, meeting the Quileute wolves the first time and making the treaty, integrating Alice and Jasper into their family, and everything else.  For that matter, I’d like to see more about what happened to them during New Moon, as well.  I have the strange desire to read New Moon from Jasper’s point of view: perhaps dealing with guilt over his almost killing Bella and basically being the reason they had to leave, him attending Cornell, how he felt while Alice was in Italy… could be quite interesting.

I hope Meyer gets over this hissy fit about Midnight Sun and gets back to writing about the Cullens soon.