Vampires Don't Glitter

A while ago I made a deal with my wife in which I agreed to read the Twilight series if she would read the first book of my Wheel of Time series, "The Eye of the World".  While she hasn't started yet because she wants to wait until the last book comes out in case she enjoys it and wants to finish the series, I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and start the Twilight series.

While I have seen the movies I worried about the book as I've heard it is a tween romance type novel, and honestly that doesn't appeal to me at all.  However I do enjoy reading and like being entertained, so I dove right into the book and honestly it was pretty easy reading and I flew through the first book.  I grabbed the second one this morning, but before I get going on it I'll touch on the first book here first.

First off, I give the author, Stephenie Meyer, full credit for putting her unique twists on the classical vampire.  Sure, some have had vampires who could go out in the day, others had vampires that didn't need sleep ... but the biggest and most unique twist she gave them was that sunlight didn't harm them but rather they glittered in the sunlight.  To that I just have to say "vampires don't glitter" and seeing it on the screen and reading it in the books both just bugged me.  I didn't care for this change in the creatures but I accepted it and didn't let it bother me further.

The next thing that kinda bothered me was her early dream about Edward and Jacob, shortly after talking to Jacob for the first time.  In their talk Jacob tells how the "Cold Ones" aren't allowed on the reservation and tells about how his ancestors could turn into wolves, but he says it as someone who doesn't believe the legends.  However Bella then dreams that night that Edward and Jacob are a vampire and werewolf respectively.  To me that bothered me because it seemed that she jumped from this "legend" and already knew the big secrets of the other characters.  Though Edward could be figured out without that dream or the talk, revealing the werewolves in the dream went beyond foreshadowing.

As for the "romance" claims for the book, I didn't really get that.  Yeah, it was a bit rushed in the "teen love" theme as they fell for each other rather quickly it seemed, and there were some over the top descriptions of how she was feeling or made to feel about him at times, but overall it wasn't anything that couldn't be accepted in the flow of the book.

Now speaking of the flow of the book, perhaps it was the ease of reading or that the book wasn't monstrously big like many of the recent Wheel of Time books, but it did seem to flow well and I moved through the book rather quickly, a feat for me.  It did a good job moving the story along while developing the necessary characters (really only a few at this time in the story) and also keeping things interesting.  The character interactions were well done and the descriptions were good as well, though perhaps having a movie reference in this case helped instead of hindering in my picturing of the story as I read.

There was little of the rest of the Cullen clan that the book touched on, and there was little time given to anyone beyond Bella, Edward, and to an extent Charlie, through much of the book, so the story did a good job focusing on those important in this story while giving outlines for characters that should be given more time and attention in future stories as well.

Overall the book felt almost more like an introduction to the series more so than a stand alone book, and the climax at the end, the fight with the tracker, really felt like it was put in to give the book a tense moment to really give the book some sort of action before signing off and moving on to the second book.  It was well done though and given that the book was from her view, I really liked that they didn't describe the fight itself since she was unconscious.

I would have liked to seen more about her seeing her father again after tearing his heart apart rather than just "he was stricter when I returned" and leaving it at that, but overall I enjoyed the reading.  I think I'll give the series a thumbs up or thumbs down when I finish reading rather than doing so for this book now as like I said it felt more like an introduction into the series than an individual book, so on to the second book.