Twilight is Less Entertaining than I Expected

[4thofeleven]

Alright, so it seems everyone on earth is familiar with the Twilight series except me. There’s four books and a movie already – how did this completely escape my notice until now?

Anyway, a friend of mine has the whole series, so I borrowed the first book to read. Hey, vampires, right? How bad can it be?

Here’s the thing – Twilight isn’t actually that bad, but only in so far as not enough actually happens to criticise. The book is bizarrely slow-paced. Out of five hundred pages, more than two hundred pass before it’s revealed that, yes, the mysteriously handsome young man who appears to have superpowers is, in fact, a vampire, a shocking twist to everyone who hadn’t read the back cover blurb. We then continue for another two hundred pages before we get anything resembling an antagonist, an evil vampire who rather ineffectually menaces our heroine for the remaining couple of chapters until he’s dispatched off-stage.

Padding out the book are detailed descriptions of the logistics of how various characters are getting to school, which car they’re taking, how fast the car can go, and how the protagonist is going to retrieve her jacket after accidently leaving it in a friend’s cars. (Spoiler: She gets her jacket back!)

This isn’t too bad, because it means less time being devoted to the least menacing vampires in literary history. I say with no exaggeration that I find the Count from Sesame Street infinitely more terrifying than any of these losers. How un-menacing are they? Well, they don’t drink human blood, instead hunting animals to survive. Well, sure, I hear you say, lots of vampires survive off animal blood, but surely they’re still tempted by human blood? Yeah, not so much here. The head vampire here? He works as a surgeon. I mean, yeah, you get a few lines here and there about how the heroine’s boyfriend is scared of losing control – but he never actually seems in any particular danger of doing so. He is, apparently, especially tempted by her scent when he first meets her, but then he spends a few days alone in Alaska, and after that he seems fine. These guys seem to be less "Terrifying predators of an ignorant humanity" and more "Like a good steak every now and then."

Oh, and they can walk around in daylight, cross running water, eat food if necessary, and don't have to hide from the sign of the cross. Being a vampire always sounds like more fun than being a regular human, but in this case there doesn’t even seem to be a token downside to becoming one of the undead. Being Superman seems to have more drawbacks than being a Twilight vampire.

And on that subject? Isn’t the main thing about vampires that they’re soulless living corpses, returned from the grave in a blasphemous parody of the resurrection of Christ? Sure, you can write a vampire novel without assuming an explicitly Christian cosmology, but shouldn’t the religious issue come up sometime? Vampires are, traditionally, a violation of the natural order. You leave that aspect out, and you’ve pretty much written out the ‘supernatural’ from your supernatural romance.

Granted, the main vampire character does come across as kind of creepy – I’m not sure it’s intentional though. The author doesn’t seem to have actually considered the implications of a ninety-year old vampire masquerading as a seventeen year old high school student and dating a teenage girl. Oh, and he’s got supernatural seduction powers. It’s unclear if the protagonist falls in love with him purely because of his sparkly beauty, or because of the effects of his vampire seduction power, but this seems to be less of an intentional ambiguity so much as due to the characterisations being paper thin, and therefore determining motivations being an exercise in futility.

So yeah. Not recommended.

Comments

[sunnyskywalker]

I feel I should read what all the kids are reading, since I work in a school library, but we can't keep these books on the shelves long enough for me to check one out. Considering that I know the series ends with [highlight for spoiler] the leads getting married and popping out a perfect half-undead baby who soul-bonds with the werewolf boy, I can't bring myself to be disappointed about not getting this chance.

On the other hand, the idea put forth on Feminist SF - The Blog! that the story is essentially about negotiating with the patriarchy is interesting.

[4thofeleven.livejournal.com]

Sounds interesting! Link?

[sunnyskywalker]

Here. It's by someone who hasn't read it either, but it's just an interpretation of the basic premise which may or may not hold up with the details. Let me know! The first half of the entry is actually a review of a Swedish vampire movie, which sounds interesting.

There's another analysis here which has different ideas - but compatible, I think.